Facing enormous pressure to succeed in school, students are increasingly turning to "study drugs" to stave off sleep and maintain razor focus during marathon study sessions.
Colleges and universities often ignore their students' abuse of prescription drugs like Adderall and Ritalin by not looking into whether or not the practice should be considered cheating. According to one study from the Pediatric Academic Societies, it is happening and some of the countries brightest pupils do not see it as cheating.
"While many colleges address alcohol and illicit drug abuse in their health and wellness campaigns, most have not addressed prescription stimulant misuse for academic purposes," study senior investigator Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York, said in a press release. "Because many students are misusing prescription stimulants for academic, not recreational purposes, colleges must develop specific programs to address this issue."
The study researchers anonymously surveyed 616 sophomores, juniors and seniors at Ivy League institutions in Dec. 2012. The one thing they all had in common was that none were diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD).
About one in five said they had misused prescription stimulant medication and a third did not view it as cheating. Comparatively, one quarter did not make up their mind on whether or not it is cheating while 41 percent believe it is.
"I think it is highly prevalent because so many people procrastinate and then need to study intensely in the end," Hana Rabin, a sophomore at Tulane University, told USA Today. "It's so widely used that in general it is socially accepted."
Duke University banned the use of prescription drugs to enhance academic performance in 2011, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported, but students are still trying to get their hands on Adderall.
Natalie Colaneri, a research assistant at Cohen Children's Medical Center who collaborated on the study, said she hopes schools will work toward more comprehensive policies addressing prescription drug misuse.
"It is our hope that this study will increase greater awareness and prompt broader discussion about misuse of medications like Ritalin or Adderall for academic purposes," she said in the release. "It is important that this issue be approached from an interdisciplinary perspective: as an issue relevant to the practice of medicine, to higher education and to ethics in modern-day society."
