Way too many policy-type arguments seem to be of the form “Letting people do X, which might be good, will cause them to do Y, which is bad, so we should ban X.”

In a Glengarry Glenn Ross-type workplace situation, performance-enhancing drugs are interesting because they ameliorate some hardships of what would otherwise be backbreaking levels of effort. You can push yourself harder in the do-or-die competition without dying from pushing yourself. Which sounds, all, you know, humane and stuff, except that someone still will end up getting third prize. As with search engine keyword advertising, these ladder-type competitions have strange, counterintuitive strategies, and it’s indeterminate how much harder and more viciously each salesman will work if sleep suddenly becomes biologically option.

As a libertarian (small “l,” not one of the wackadoos), I’d like to see much more choice when it comes to drug use — including the currently illegal ones.

And thanks for the complimentary words about my blog. Coming from you, that’s a real compliment.

The issue you raise is the hardest one–on some level, these new technologies “level the playing field” that was made uneven by the genetic lottery.

A human essentialist might respond to you: well, the given is superior to the made, and nature to this manifestation of culture, so let’s respect it. But that response may prove too much.

Another response might focus on limiting access to drugs like Ritalin/Adderall to those on, say, the bottom 5 or 10% of the attention bell curve (who probably often are at the top 5 or 10% of the creativity bell curve!).

Some might worry that, over time, everyone will eventually get displaced into the bottom 10% by those who, there at time 1, take the drug and are outside of it at time 2. At that point, I suppose we as a society have to try to find some objective, as opposed to a relative, measure of (lack of) attentiveness or focus that would make one eligible for the pill.

As far as “performance enhancing” drugs go, I take Ritalin for ADHD, which I see, not as a disease but simply as a different form of brain function. (I would contend that, for a woman, I have a perfect hunter-gatherer brain: able to look for dinner while watchin for prey and making sure the furry little children don’t crawl off a cliff.) In our “evolutionarily novel” age, in which I work, not as a mother, but as a syndicated newspaper columnist and blogger, Ritalin helps me sit and focus for long periods of time — in situations where others with a different brain composition probably wouldn’t have such a hard time sitting still and doing their work. So, is it an enhancer or simply an equalizer? (In other words, should I go drug free and work in a gas station instead?)