[dns_snek]

> On a more philosophical basis, should performance-enhancing drugs be available more widely anyway, with appropriate safeguards against abuse?

I recently came across this article discussing a study which found that stimulants lower productivity in people without ADHD.

> “Our results suggest that these drugs don’t actually make you ‘smarter’,” said Bossaerts. “Because of the dopamine the drugs induce, we expected to see increased motivation, and they do motivate one to try harder. However, we discovered that this exertion caused more erratic thinking — in ways that we could make precise because the knapsack task had been widely studied in computer science.

> “Our research shows drugs that are expected to improve cognitive performance in patients may actually be leading to healthy users working harder while producing a lower quality of work in a longer amount of time,” said Bowman.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/smart-drugs-can-decrease...

[cyberax]

This study had just 40 participants and the study design was not great.

But I agree, that's a good argument against drugs.