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English / Lifestyle
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Illegal 'smart drugs' bought online by teenagers before exams
 London, March 10 (MIA) - Josh has an exam and, like most of the other boys at his prestigious public school, he’s keen to put his best foot forward. He’s eaten breakfast and dressed smartly, but before he sets off for class, he reaches for a white pill and pops it into his mouth.
He bought 30 of the tablets online for £40 from the U.S., but for all Josh knows they might well have been knocked up in an illegal backstreet ‘pharmacy’ in India.
Still, the drug modafinil - usually used to treat sleeping disorders - has worked before for him and if it works again he is sure to get top marks.
Welcome to the world of ‘smart drugs’, otherwise known as cognitive enhancement pharmaceuticals. This is a world where pupils as young as 15 self-medicate, participate in illegal online drug trafficking and swap notes on the best pill cocktails for good grades.
Concern over smart drugs has been growing for some time among academics, politicians and pharmacologists, but it has been brought into sharp focus with the announcement that the former health minister, Lord Darzi of Denham, is heading a study at Imperial College, London, into their effects.
This might seem odd because most of these drugs have been around for decades for the treatment of conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, and have been found to be safe.
But no one has monitored their chaotic use in healthy young people taking inappropriate doses to boost their intellectual prowess.
And some experts believe this kind of use in brains that are still developing could cause addiction and permanent damage.
The problem in telling students not to take them is that tests have shown these drugs can help with focus, memory, concentration and alertness by interacting in different ways with neurotransmitters - chemical messengers - in the brain.
The ADHD treatments contain amphetamines, which can result in addiction, and there are suspicions that sleep disorder treatments such as modafinil could be addictive.
Barbara Sahakian, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at Cambridge University, says scientists understand how drugs such as Ritalin work by stimulating levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine and noradrenaline in the brain.
These affect mood, cognition and memory. ‘However, there is an optimal dose for ideal performance,’ she says.
‘Levels beyond that could cause problems with addiction. With modafinil, no one really knows how exactly the drug acts in the brain to boost cognition.
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