There exists out there a multitude of writings that detail the negative health effects and addictiveness of Adderall when it is abused as a test-taking drug. However, they do not discuss how this is a complete breech of the honor code, and that by taking Adderall to help concentrate on an exam, students are committing a very serious act of cheating. Yes, taking Adderall can be unhealthy if taken without a prescription, however, more serious is its affects on other students. Using Adderall in this matter gives the students taking it an unfair advantage over their classmates that obey the law and don’t illegally take the drug. Schools need to more actively set out to try to curb the use of the drug as a test aid and harshly punish those students that use it.
The Chronicle of Higher Education and the National Public Radio have articles that describe how many students go online to post ads requesting to both buy and sell Adderall, the “smart drug.” The web is unquestionably a major facilitator in the illegal trade of the drug. Therefore, an effective way for Universities to catch students using Adderall during exams would be to get itself more involved in monitoring sites that these students use such as Facebook and Craigslist. But in accordance with the principle that using Adderall to give one focus during an exam is a violation of the rules of cheating and honorable conduct, schools should not stop here. In the Olympics, officials administer drugs tests to the athletes before each competition. To a professor or a student, an exam is in much the same importance as an Olympic competition. Before all exams, students should be administered a drug test to test for Adderall. The school should promptly expel and even turn in to the police any students whose drug test results come back positive.
The methods suggested here to help curb the habit of university students illegally using Adderall during exams may be harsh, but harsh punishments are often the only way to quickly and surely stop such an illegal practice. Students who take Adderall as an academic enhancer need to know that what they are doing is falsifying the exam scores of both them and their classmates. In respect to all students working hard to perform well in school the honest way, universities need not hesitate in changing their current, lax attitudes and adopting a more gung ho approach in seeking out and punishing unlawful Adderall-using individuals.
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