Activity 4

"Go Pills"

After completing the reading of the three articles, "Go pills: A war on drugs?" "Bombing error puts a spotlight on pilots' pills", and "Military looks to drugs for battle readiness" I could not believe what I read. I had no idea that the military especially pilots, were using amphetamines in order to enhance their perform during battle and increase alertness.
Although I was shocked at first, I began to understand and see the rationale behind the military use of these drugs. I was a bit conflicted when reading the articles though, because although I can see why the military would decide to distribute amphetamines to maintain their pilots' alertness during long flights and battles, I also realized that the increase in the use of these amphetamines not only lead to the dependency on these drugs, but also the side effects of these drugs could be detrimental in some users. Basically I concluded my internal debate by realizing that although the use of these amphetamines are being distributed by the military for the SHORT TERM benefits of the military as a whole, it is neglecting the LONG TERM negative effects the use of these drugs have on the men as individuals.
With that being said, I believe the military distribution of these "go pills" or amphetamines is not an ethical practice. By distributing these drugs to men who have not tested positive for the attention deficit disorders that actually require the use of these drugs, they are solely benefiting the military at the detriment of the negative long term effects these drugs have on the individual men.
After these pilots have become accustomed to performing under the use of these drugs, I believe their careers could possibly suffer if they stop taking these drugs because their performance has become so enhanced while taking them, the withdrawal could cause their performance to falter. Of course, this is relative due to how individual bodies react to taking the drugs.
Clearly by taking these drugs, opens the doors for greater liability and risk in terms of accidents. If something were to happen, such as the bombing error that resulted in Canadian deaths discussed in one of the above articles, of course the first thing looked at is the use of drugs and how that most likely caused the issue. This makes a complicated situation even that much more complicated because what would have been considered an accident becomes an issue of drug use and will most likely be blamed on the drugs, even if the drugs weren't the cause of any accident; it becomes the easiest explanation.
As these men become hooked on the amphetamines to perform, the rest of their lives after the use of the amphetamines become hard to maintain. With that being said, sedatives become part of their regular routine to assist them in going to sleep and counteract the consequences of the amphetamines.
Although the use of these drugs "enhance" or "better" their performance for that short term benefit, it causes not only dependency and dangerous side effects for the user, but it opens the door for an unhealthy routine of amphetamine and sedative use to counteract each other. In my opinion, the short-term benefit of these drugs are not worth the long-term costs it produces for the users.

That's all I got for now!

Tootles~~