Pick your brain: UK public opinion on “smart drugs”
In 1944, Leandro Panizzon first synthesized methylphenidate in Switzerland. His wife, Rita, began to take the compound before playing tennis, to counteract her low blood pressure. He named the new drug Ritaline after her. In the years since, Ritalin has found its place as a common medication to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). But with studies demonstrating the positive impact of Ritalin on memory and attention, Ritalin has also found another use among those who seek chemical methods to improve their mental capabilities.
Nootropics (or study drugs, smart drugs, cognitive enhancers) are a loose group of substances which claim to improve cognitive functions. This includes, depending on who you speak to, substances which have very mild or even debatable effects that you might find in colourfully canned energy drinks, caffeine, as well as controlled substances which might carry the user through an unpleasant essay task at the expense of a headache the next day. Whether or not drugs can make a person “smart” is perhaps more of a question about what “smart” means, but there is little doubt that substances can improve memory, attention and at the very least help someone stay up all night.
We ran a poll in order to understand the UK public’s attitudes towards study drugs like this. This is undoubtedly a fringe topic. Only 9% of our sample said they had ever known someone who uses study drugs, and a majority (57%) did not believe it would be possible for a drug to make someone “smarter”. However, a fifth (20%) of 18-24s had known someone to use the substances. Respondents had heard of some example drugs, with a majority (66%) aware of “amphetamines”, 45% aware of “Ritalin” and 26% aware of “Adderall” (which is itself an amphetamine, or “speed”). Less commonly known Nootropics like Aniracetam (3%) and Modafinil (8%) were about as well heard of as our entirely fake study drug “Sazopram” (6%).
We asked a top-level question about interest in taking a hypothetical drug which improves attention. The public is divided, with 45% interested and 49% not interested. Interest was higher among younger respondents, reaching 62% among 18-34 year olds. But cognitive enhancement extends beyond attention. We asked for a range of different functions which a drug could hypothetically improve. The most popular option was a pill which improved memory (59% expressed interest), and the least popular option the slightly sinister sounding pill which “reduces your need to sleep” (19%).
Interest is divided by age. Older respondents are considerably more interested in memory enhancing substances than the other substances, with a majority of over-65s interested. For the youngest respondents, a pill which reduces stress levels was more popular than among other groups, and we see a steep decline in interest in a pill which improves creativity from 61% to just 16% across the age brackets.
To push this further, we used a conjoint question, where participants were presented with two hypothetical drugs to purchase, and the option to purchase neither. The drugs had randomised properties, with different cognitive effects, side effects, costs and lasting for different lengths of time. 68% of the time, participants would opt for neither of the drugs they were offered.
The age trend persists in this experiment. While those aged 18-34 opted out of both of the pills they were shown 47% of the time, this rose to 68% for 35-54s, and 86% for those aged 55+. In other words, 18-34s in our experiment were on average more likely than not to opt to purchase one of the pills on offer.
Cost had a big impact on selection; 21% of the time participants would select a drug which cost £0.10 per pill, but only select a drug costing £5 per pill 10% of the time. Side effects were evaluated relatively evenly to one another, with dehydration just slightly the least troublesome side effect for participants, and tiredness, headaches and needing the toilet about equal. The impact on selection of having no side effects was roughly the same as reducing the cost of a pill from £5 to £0.10.
When it comes to the legality of substances like this, around half (49%) of the public would support the legalisation of a drug found to improve people’s ability to focus and learn and shown to be as safe as caffeine by the Government and medical experts. 27% were unsure. For those who felt it should not be legal, the main reasons were simply that “it is wrong to take drugs like this” (42%), “People should not be encouraged to take drugs like this” (41%) and a lack of belief that it would actually be safe (41%).
A lack of familiarity with nootropic substances drives the concern on their legalisation. We split our sample, and provided identical descriptions of caffeine and modafinil, a controlled substance which is often thought of as a cognitive enhancer, and used in the treatment of narcolepsy. Participants were told the drug “has been shown to increase people’s wakefulness and alertness. Side effects are limited, but it can cause headaches and some people find it difficult to sleep after taking it.” When the drug described was modafinil 71% of participants said that it was not worth the risks to get the benefits of taking the drug, when it was caffeine this fell to 43%. 66% said that caffeine should be legal, 21% said that modafinil should be legal.
Worth noting that if anything surprised me about these results, it was how talking about caffeine in these terms seems to have led to a surprising amount of uncertainty about it. 14% took the view that caffeine should not be legal, and a further 19% were unsure.
A majority of the public think that it is unfair for students to use study drugs for exams (57%), and a smaller, but still substantial, proportion think it would be unfair for people to use study drugs in their work (48%).
Despite this wariness, participants ended up leaning only slightly towards disagreeing that “a drug which makes people smarter would have a positive effect on the world”. Again, we see big differences along age lines here, with those under-35 tending to feel that such drugs would have a positive effect and those over-35 saying the opposite.
Full polling tables of these results can be found here
