This is the crux of the problem. Education should not be sports - teaching or writing papers is not an end in and of itself. An increased level of output across all academics should result in a net benefit to society.

The goal of teaching is to produce better, more knowledgeable students. The goal of writing papers is to enlarge the current body of knowledge. If this is no longer the case, the solution is not to curtail access to enhancing drugs, but to curtail public funding to the point where the work being done does have a benefit to people other than those doing the work.

The prescription drugs, even those which are non-habit forming, can have serious secondary effects. Undiagnosed heart conditions? High blood pressure? Family history of strokes? Read the warnings on the inserts. These drugs could kill you. They are not toys, and the light tone in the blogosphere about drugs stronger than Red Bull (which can cause heart palpitations) does a disservice to the academic community.

So, would I become addicted to crack if it would make me able to cure cancer? Well, the problems with this hypothetical, aside from the obvious fact that scholars in the humanities will never solve cancer (but we can deconstruct it), are that 1) A crack addiction will pretty much guarantee that I will never cure cancer, 2) Even if I did cure cancer, I would still be addicted to crack and 3) In the end my addiction would come out, as secrets tend to do, and I would lose my job, my funding, my library card, my family, and I would never get the Nobel for medicine, although I doubt it would automatically eliminate me for the MacArthur.