“New drugs to improve memory and cognitive performance are under intense study and testing on people impaired by brain deficiencies. The possibility of their use on healthy adults, let alone adolescents, trigger debate from the laboratory to the legislature.”
– Philip (2006) Drugs that enhance student achievement in engaging tween and teens.

Using drugs to boost testing score in the US might be new to some people, but to a student who survived from extreme high-stake tests in Asia, it’s just a quite common and acceptable phenomenon to me. The general public’s attitude towards college entrance test pushes it up to prominent position that this once-a-year test can decide your entire life. If a test really could decide your future salary, achievement or even social status, I bet no one would reject a little help from any possible sources. As a result, cram schools and private tutoring, along with drugs that are said to boost memory, flourish in Asia. Some parents and students believe in the advertisements said and constantly take these kinds of medicine, hoping to get better grades in tests. Even though I seriously doubt the effectiveness of these drugs, I still want to try them sometimes in case they really work. However, I heard that most of these drugs are not effective because the main ingredients are vitamins, so basically they only provide you with what you could get from a balanced diet. If there really is a medicine that could make you score higher, like Modafinil in the Article, using the drug can be considered a kind of cheating. First of all, using drugs makes students perform better than their real proficiency level. The test would lose its credibility of evaluating students’ performance. Secondly, not every student could afford the drug. It’s unfair for students who do not take the drugs.

Also, I am considering that using drugs to boost performance may gradually change students’ attitude towards test. Since they can take several pills to help their score, there is no need to study hard. If a student get a high testing score with the help of drugs, it is unfair for others who study diligently.

Last but not least, the side effects of these drugs have not been studied yet. It is possible that taking drugs cause mental damage in a long term.