After years of bringing infamy to professional athletes, could performance-enhancing drugs soon do the same for college students? A psychologist at the University of Sydney in Australia thinks so.
Vince Cakic, a research assistant in the School of Psychology, says in an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics that the increasing use of "smart drugs," or "nootropics"—a phenomenon already seen among some of their professors—could mean that college students taking course examinations will begin facing routine doping tests.
Mr. Cakic says in the article that psychostimulants marketed as Dexedrine and Ritalin are already used by as many as a quarter of the students at some American colleges.
Comments
1. wej1955 - October 01, 2009 at 08:39 am
How else can they do all nighters?
2. timebandit - October 01, 2009 at 12:49 pm
The links to the professors using smart drugs were very interesting, but I wonder what the distribution of ADHD is among the professoriate? My guess is that it's higher than average, so maybe this isn't really overmedicating, but people who actually are ADD, but _say_ they're taking ritalin for their careers....