Students in America want to perform well during their school time, so they have a chance of getting a scholarship at best universities in the country. A lot of young Americans spend all their nights preparing for exams, because they can’t do it in the afternoon due to their sports and social life. Therefore many a night are spend studying hard for exams, so the teacher will not fail them and by that prevent them from getting their dream education.However, this tight and packed schedule causes the young Americans to get really exhausted and overloaded, and later on it might even cause cases of stress. In the meantime, this complex of problems seems to have got a solution.
A solution that is so effective that most people never would have imagined it. Unfortunately, there is yet a problem with the solution. Because the fact is that the solution is ‘study drugs’. As David Sack clearly states in his blog article called: “Do 'Study Drugs' Breed a Nation of Winners – or Cheaters?”, there are many consequences regarding this particular form of drug abuse.The ‘smart pill’ has invaded the American colleges and the students love it. But David Sack asks why? In his experience, the hopeful students, who we call leaders of tomorrow, have no problem using performance enhancing drugs to get higher grades, but using steroids at the gym is still seen as a felony among students.
Really there’s a huge double standard of morality when talking about these ‘smart pills’.David Sack has learned that the young mouths speak: “Why work hard, stay up all night studying and still risk not doing well when you can pop a pill, get good grades, and make teachers, parents and coaches happy? ”1 Of course this is a valid and agreeable argument, but at what price do these brilliant exam results come? David Sack is in the belief that cooperation should beat competition, and this is in spite of competition being taught to children in the busy society of ours.However, while the competition itself can cause many to stress and get low self- esteem with a side of mood swings, performance enhancing drugs like Adderall, Ritalin and normal ADHD pills will only turn up the aforementioned side effects and add a lot more like anxiety, depression, heart rate and blood pressure irregularities, and in the worst case even convulsions and hallucinations. So the questions is, Davis sack asks, should we jeopardize the health of our students just to make them elite students? The answer is a resounding no.
His critique is legitimate and it has more valid arguments than students saying drugs can help them. Furthermore, his critique is really legitimate when he puts the consequences of performance enhancing drugs into perspective. Because as he states: “We need a new definition of intelligence based not only on academic prowess but also emotional intelligence, life skills and other abilities – and a new definition of success based on a young person’s health and satisfaction rather than the name of the college they’ll be attending.”2, we need a new set of standards.
One can’t use shortcuts in life and still expect to get the same glory. So we should all interpret his hidden thought in the critique in our own way and help society deal with this problem, because what would our society be like, if everyone had to use drugs to pass through their education? After reading Davis Sack’s legitimate but nevertheless strong critique of performance enhancing drugs, it’s a whole other scenario listening to Renee Montagne’s radio podcast3 regarding the same problem.The differ is that the podcast is just more explaining than arguing, therefore making it a good piece of media to verify several of David Sack’s key critiques, one of those being another series of side effects - addiction. These performance enhancing drugs are not harmless, they are dangerous.
In fact they are put in “Schedule II controlled substances (in the same class as cocaine) by the Drug Enforcement Administration because they have high potential for abuse.”This furthermore means that young students using these drugs to get the advantages they have to offer study-wise are more likely to become users of heroin and cocaine (among others) when they move on into their adult life. This risk of getting addicted is something the anonymous girl from the interview in the podcast has experienced herself. She tells the reporter how she felt that every time she took a pill, the lust for another one became bigger.
This proves the addiction that David Sack uses as an argument against the young students defending their beloved “study buddy”, as it is called, the interview in the podcast states.Furthermore, it’s a perfectly rational reason to never do study drugs; because what will good grades matter, if one ends up as a drug user due to ones increased risk of falling into an abuse. This also opens another set of problems that Davis Sack does not mention: Having to get these pills without a prescription from one’s doctor’s office is not possible if it should be done legally.Therefore, a lot of the pills being sold and bought around American college campuses are illegally sold by people with an ADHD-diagnosis, or the pills have been stolen from some who actually has a prescription for them and need them, the article at healthyhors. com states4. This proves that taking any kind of study drugs directly can conflict with criminality.
Both steeling and selling the pills and doing drugs later on are felonies punishable with prison. To top it all off the article also mentions the side effects to performance enhancing drugs, thus verifying the worries of David sack. Getting back to David Sack’s critique points; one of those is the growing competitive moral of the society.This has been mentioned above, but it really does hold some interesting thoughts.
It starts with the way children learn how winning is so important. We do not realize that it takes a loser to make a winner. This can easily ruin a child’s self-esteem and affect them later on. Now, this is where it gets really interesting, because David Sack states: “Disproportionately, it is the teens earning As and Bs, striving to get into the nation’s top universities – not the stereotypical druggies – who are finding themselves sidelined by a stint in drug rehab for prescription drug abuse.”This being interpret to mean only smart students use the performance enhancing drugs. Now, in the last bit of the podcast, it is said that the drugs releases dopamine, causing a person to feel good about one self, furthermore meaning that students with low self-esteem can make up for that by using these drugs, well knowing that some of the adverse effects could affect their lives for a long time.
So the critique has been verified, since the podcast and the article are stating points and arguments accordingly to David Sack. So, the use, or abuse, of these performance enhancing drugs clearly appears to have catastrophic consequences to them, for which reason the critique is justified. Society has got it all wrong, not taking action to either prevent or stop the use of performance enhancing drugs. The students call the drug their “study buddy”, when in fact it’s more of a disservice.
