Prevention Connection: "Smart Pills" Invade the Classroom
A look at drugs that tout the ability to increase thinking abilities.
The following is a guest column by Marilyn G. Belmonte of the Burlington Drug & Alcohol Task Force: When you hear the term “Performance-Enhancing Drugs”, you probably think of sports. But students are now using prescription drugs to compete for better grades. These “smart pills” are being touted as common-place and acceptable in news articles in many well known publications. A group of scientists in a 2008 editorial in Nature encouraged the use of "cognitive enhancers" to produce a nation of people performing at their best. Are they doing our children a disservice by taking this casual attitude about this form of drug abuse? If we accept this behavior as normal, are we breeding a generation of winners? Or cheaters? Children are …
Rose Johnson
9:45 am on Thursday, January 10, 2013
This is frightening.Do we really want to teach our kids that the best way to accomplish anything is to pop a pill? more ›