The use and abuse of prescription amphetamines on campus is such a prevalent and accepted facet of our college culture, I feel it doesn’t need your typical journalist’s “grabbing” introductory paragraph or unsubtle lead. Finals week means a big spike in business for your campus speed dealer — and basic economics will tell you that when demand rises and supply drops, the prices are going to increase. Dope-peddlers and “street pharmacotherapists” are making a handsome profit off major exams and their lead-up concentrated study periods.I’ve written before on the sheer panic and feelings of raw terror that pervade finals week. Some, if not all of this, is attributable to taking lots of amphetamines over a short duration and then trying to wrap your mind around some sobering concept like Planck’s quantized energy levels or the bureaucratic Iron Triangle. A scene like that will drive even the most stolid among us utterly mad. Your average dormitory during this ominous “dead week” is collectively ingesting enough prescription amphetamines per day to reach the LD50 — or median lethal dose — for a normal human being. Make no mistake, these are the nefarious drugs that D.A.R.E. warned you about. A handful of these little bead-filled capsules could send Mike the Tiger into a psychotic frenzy — killing his handlers and running amok on the University golf course — until Chancellor Martin finally hunted the beast down and subdued him with a tranquilizer gun on the 17th green.That is a grim scene to imagine, Bubba. But you better believe that 400 miligrams of these potent little tablets peppered in a raw T-bone steak and hurled into the big tiger enclosure might make it happen. I do not want to be on Stadium Drive, or anywhere in East Baton Rouge Parish at all, really, if  that fateful day ever comes.But even the horrifying prospect of a big 300-pound Bengal-Siberian Tiger, jacked up on speed and lunging straight at you, is a silly fantasy compared to the realities of rampant and utterly preventable drug abuses that occur at our University every day.What is most disturbing about the situation is not its prevalence, but the fact that the better part of our student body evinces a shocking ignorance of the health — and especially, legal — ramifications for ingesting or possessing a Schedule II substance like Adderall, Ritalin, Dexedrine or any of the other “legal speed” derivatatives that these freakish quacks in white labcoats and stethoscopes keep doling out to kids under the pretense of an MD. Another horror for me is the growing social acceptability of ADHD pharmaceuticals and stimulant abuse, which makes sense, given the drugs’ majority-level demography.A study by the Journal of American College Health found that “illicit use was highest among white fraternity members.” Well, shucks. Who could’ve predicted a kind of wild hare statistic like that? Not me, old sport. But I have long been onto this brainless subculture of fascistic drunkards — the college-aged white males. I have monitored their habits during the past two years, from an outpost at my fortified apartment, and there is a basic approach they all take to polishing off their schoolwork for the term: After an entire semester wasted guzzling Steel Reserve and sleeping in, yessir, it’s time to finally crack open the books and really go at it. We’re just some chumps who wanted a Chem-E major and an internship with Dad’s friends at Shell. Well, with an answer key for the homework and a baseline participation grade, we’ve got a C-minus going into the final. And since the homework grade expunges one exam, we just have to shoot for a 60 on the final and then bank on the curve to pass…Wonderful. And who can argue with a gameplan like that? This type of hare-brained study strategy, combined with the harsh realities of two final exams a day for the rest of the week, will make your average business major go belly-up and reach for that pocketful of tablets he paid $5 a pop for back in February.The ADHD prescription drug abuse is a commonplace here at LSU, and more generally, in major colleges (particularly in the Northeast). But it is an odious phenomenon, and smart people will steer clear of it. Like Mom, your 7th grade teacher and the FBI all told you, stay away from drugs. Straighten up and fly right, kiddos.–Contact Trevor Fanning at [email protected]