As if recreational drug use on college campuses wasn’t bad enough, some students are now turning to prescription drugs for enhanced performance.

Karen Weintraub of USA Today reports.

Some students don’t see ADHD drug use as cheating

Society has clearly come out against performance-enhancing drugs in sports, but they are becoming increasingly common in academics.

Nearly one in five students at an Ivy League university have misused ADHD drugs to improve their school performance, according to a new poll being presented Saturday at the Pediatric Academic Societies’ annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada. The lead researcher, Andrew Adesman, declined to name the college he surveyed, saying that he’s confident that the rate is virtually the same at every other school.

“I don’t think this is a phenomenon that’s necessarily any greater a problem in the Ivies than anywhere else,” said Adesman, a developmental pediatrician and chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York in New Hyde Park.

Some school honor codes, such as at Duke University in North Carolina, expressly forbid performance-enhancing drugs, Adesman said.

But many others have not yet acknowledged the growing use of these stimulant medications on their campuses, said Sean Esteban McCabe, a research associate professor at the University of Michigan Substance Abuse Research Center.

Students in the poll reported mainly taking the drugs to write an essay or study for or take a test. One-third did not consider taking stimulants as a form of cheating, while 41% thought it was.

The vast majority of those who misuse ADHD drugs get them from people who have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and prescribed the drugs, research indicates. Some students are pressured by their friends to share medication, said Timothy Wilens, director of the Center for Addiction Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He suggests that college students with ADHD not tell their friends that they are taking medications.