Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
That's an odd definition of "cheating." Cheating would be something like having a secret earpiece and someone on the other end feeding you the answers to your test. If you pass the test on your own, with your own knowledge, how is that "cheating" in any real sense?
Are you honestly saying you wouldn't want a lawyer who used cognitive enhancers if those enhancers led to a better work-product? Do you feel that would be "unfair" to the opposing counsel or something?
Cheating is breaking the rules. Every college receiving federal funding has a rule that makes the use of illegal (i.e. not prescribed or illegitimately prescribed) performance enhancing drugs "cheating".
Same thing with your lawyer scenario. That would be a very risky choice for a lawyer due to the obvious ethical violations going on through illegal drug use. This is exacerbated by the fact that legal ethics are there to protect you as a client. If they are willing to violate one major ethic, what other ethics are they willing to violate?
If they are willing to violate one major ethic, what other ethics are they willing to violate?
That's a bit of a canard, since just about everyone in the country is in violation of some federal rule or other at some point in time. Also, many of the drugs under discussion are either legal (unregulated) or can be easily obtained via a prescription. And to top it off, you could easily make an argument that the FDA shouldn't have the authority to dictate such things in the first place, and reject their specific authority in your own life while maintaining lawful conduct in other realms.
Saying that "cheating is breaking the rules" is, again, an odd definition of cheating. That's like saying a painter or musician is a "cheater" if he drops a tab of acid and takes some kind of inspiration from the resulting visions. Is that actually "cheating?" Is it "cheating" to come up with hit song melody while drugged as opposed to doing the same thing sober?
I hate to disappoint you, but all kinds of drug use are very common in the legal/business worlds. Not just cognitive enhancers, but party drugs and anything else you might imagine. Including among a lot of honest, forthright people who don't engage in fraud or malfeasance or other bad business practices.
What you're talking about is a strict legal "deontological" system of ethics, which is the idea that ethical behavior requires obedience of a legal code, and that "good" or "bad" ethical conduct is determined by one's variance from the code.
I'd say that most ethical systems don't take quite that sort of approach. Most of them recognize that ethics go beyond a legal deontology, and purely rule-based ethnical reasoning runs into all kinds of problems very quickly.
Going back to the lawyer example, if your lawyer was an overanxious mess unless he took a pill before getting to work, I think you'd want him to take that pill, regardless of whether or not the FDA approves. And if it gives him an "edge" he didn't have before, I doubt you'd be upset.
I just graduated from college last year, and it was very common on my campus. From my experience, it was most often used by STEM majors as they seemed to have the most exams and their exams were the most difficult. There was widespread usage among students of all majors during midterms and finals. People who didn't do hard drugs or didn't even smoke weed had no problem taking Adderall like it was nothing.
I also saw a lot of use during homecoming. Everyone wanted to stay up and party all night Friday, but still be awake for kegs and eggs at 5AM on Saturday. For most people, the easiest way to do that was to pop an Adderall.
Yes, it could be potentially dangerous, and yes, it is illegal but you have to be pretty stupid to get busted for using it. Everyone knows someone with a prescription, so it's not like finding a shady drug dealer and meeting him on a street corner to get a pill. It's pretty easy to get a prescription for it from a doctor outside a college town. As others have mentioned, most docs in college towns are very apprehensive to write prescriptions for it.
OMG it sounds crazy! I just finished reading a lot of the corroborating posts. The things I learn on CD.
But I guess these ADHD drugs are the new acid, which was the popular thing for the druggies when I was in college. But honestly, only a few people did acid. Really, it sounds like a LOT of kids are doing these drugs? I hope we don't end up with a totally effed up workforce.
Is this why so many girls in the younger generation look so old? I though it was the pollution.
OMG it sounds crazy! I just finished reading a lot of the corroborating posts. The things I learn on CD.
But I guess these ADHD drugs are the new acid, which was the popular thing for the druggies when I was in college. But honestly, only a few people did acid. Really, it sounds like a LOT of kids are doing these drugs? I hope we don't end up with a totally effed up workforce.
Is this why so many girls in the younger generation look so old? I though it was the pollution.
The kids that are taking ADHD drugs are not looking to escape. They are looking to focus so they can work harder. IMHO, the opposite of the LSD popping heads of years past.
I went to a state university in Texas and while I had never done it, I knew of plenty of friends who did. In my college experience in Texas I would rate it as "common." If I wanted the drugs they were very easily attainable
Saying that "cheating is breaking the rules" is, again, an odd definition of cheating. That's like saying a painter or musician is a "cheater" if he drops a tab of acid and takes some kind of inspiration from the resulting visions. Is that actually "cheating?" Is it "cheating" to come up with hit song melody while drugged as opposed to doing the same thing sober?
Last I knew, there were no written policies against musicians dropping acid to perform their trade.
What do you define as cheating? Seems like if the school has a specific written policy against doing specific activities to get an edge in grading, then that activity is cheating. Seems like you are pointing to the idea that anything you can do to get the grade is not cheating?
Schools have policies against a lot of things, some of which are reasonable and some of which are not. If you found out that your lawyer used to party hard and sneak kegs into his freshman dorm against the rules, would you judge him to be a rule-breaking "cheater" and toss him off your case? Most people wouldn't. He'd be a rule-breaker, but not in a way that anyone really cares about.
Schools also have policies against "academic dishonesty," which makes sense. But that usually relates to the type of cheating where you put your name on work that you didn't actually do. Plagiarism is a big one. Peeking off of someone else's test is also a form of plagiarism, since you didn't actually come up with the test answers on your own. The danger with that sort of cheating is that you are not actually qualified in the way you claim to be qualified. So if you have a secret device sending you back answers for your Fundamentals of Engineering test, and you pass the test, we'd have an unqualified engineer on our hands.
Now, had you somehow "downloaded" an FoE study guide into your brain, and used that information to come up with your own answers, that would not be cheating in the sense most people care about, because you would still have used your own knowledge to pass the test. And since our concern is that you know certain things, if you know them, that's fine.
Taking drugs to become a better student may have other disadvantages (people with heart arrhythmias should avoid stimulants in general), but it's not "cheating" in a way that actually matters in terms of the real life consequences of the work that person is capable of performing, relative to other test-passers who didn't use drugs.
It may be rulebreaking, but rules are often arbitrary. For example, in most colleges, it's fine to take all kinds of drugs as long as you have a prescription from a doctor. Which implies that the drugs themselves are not seen as a problem (otherwise, like earpieces or open books in a closed-book test, they'd be banned for everyone) - merely their potential for misuse or incautious use.
To cite another example, it's legal to buy liquor from a store, but not to make your own liquor without a tax stamp. But if someone likes to drink a shot of moonshine to calm his nerves before a test, I wouldn't call him a cheater, even if his conduct is illegal.
I don't know anyone who takes or has taken ADHD drugs before tests. I do know many who have smoked marijuana or done acid before a test. A number of students at my school were busted for even carrying marijuana or the other drug and briefly arrested quite often.
Actually, I receive regular treatment for bipolar from skilled docs. Consuming unprescribed meds is illegal, but many still do it. I suspect this is because it's very difficult to prove wrong. I'm surprised that they can "purchase" such substances without prescriptions. I've looked online for prescription meds and only expensive alternatives/generics are sold.
Personally, I've never found a need to do it. I was too interested in the academics to even think of taking drugs to help me concentrate on them. However, I find that a combination of what I believe are executive function deficits and the information processing speed of about an 80-year-old induced by my anti-epileptic or brain tumor or both are causing me major problems on the job.
Reminds me of that early episode of the Sopranos where Meadow and her friend seek meth from her uncle to study for the SATs.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
