By toggling between “enhancement” and “treatment,” students not only dodge ethical questions but also avoid the stigma tied to having a formal diagnosis or learning difficulties. Claiming to enhance preserves their image of being “normal” or high-achieving without needing special accommodations, while the treatment narrative lets them justify use without admitting to outright cheating. This dual framing reflects how much social pressures shape their explanations, blending the desire for advantage with fear of judgment.

Between Enhancement and Treatment: An Interesting Contradiction

Healthy students often use health framing to justify PCE use by suggesting they have undiagnosed or mild ADHD-like symptoms, positioning their use as a form of self-treatment rather than enhancement. This allows them to claim a degree of medical legitimacy without undergoing formal diagnosis or facing the stigma of a mental health label. By blurring the line between treatment and enhancement, they reduce the moral weight of their decision and align their actions with perceived therapeutic needs.

Arizona State University

- Normalization of use
- Moral minimization
- Performance pressure 
- Health framing 
- Merit preservation 
- Class-based entitlement

How Healthy Students Justify Their PCE Use

Aikins, Ross. “"The White Version of Cheating?" Ethical and Social Equity Concerns of Cognitive Enhancing Drug Users in Higher Education.” Journal of academic ethics vol. 17,2 (2019): 111-130. doi:10.1007/s10805-018-9320-7

“The White Version of Cheating?” Ethical and Social Equity Concerns of Cognitive Enhancing Drug Users in Higher Education Reference

Students often normalize PCE use by framing it as a common and practical response to academic pressure, especially in competitive university environments. By viewing these drugs as tools/resources rather than shortcuts, they minimize the ethical implications and compare them to socially accepted enhancers like caffeine. This normalization helps students justify their behavior, making it feel less like cheating and more like simply keeping up.

Normalization of PCE Use

Healthy PCE users often engage in moral minimization by distancing their behavior from traditional notions of cheating, arguing that the drugs only help them focus rather than directly boosting intelligence. They rationalize that since they still have to study and perform the work themselves, their academic outcomes remain deserved. This framing allows them to downplay ethical concerns and maintain a sense of personal integrity despite using unprescribed cognitive enhancers.


Moral Minimization 

Many students justify PCE use by citing intense performance pressure and the constant demand to excel academically. They often describe the drugs as necessary tools to keep up with workloads, meet deadlines, or compete with high-achieving peers. In this context, using PCEs feels less like gaining an unfair advantage and more like a survival strategy in an unforgiving academic environment.

Performance Pressure 

Health Framing

Healthy PCE users often justify their behavior through merit preservation, insisting that their academic work remains authentic despite using enhancers. Unlike traditional forms of cheating—such as plagiarism or copying—they argue that they still produce original content and rely on their own understanding and effort. This distinction helps them preserve a sense of personal integrity and merit, even while engaging in behavior that technically violates academic norms.

Merit Preservation

This often underlies how some students justify PCE use, viewing access to prescription stimulants as just another academic resource—similar to private tutoring, test prep, or mental health services. Students from more privileged backgrounds may see their use as an extension of the advantages they already possess, rather than a form of cheating. This perspective normalizes PCEs within elite academic cultures, where leveraging every available edge is often seen as expected or even necessary.

Learn Before

Related

Learn After