KBIA's Adderall piece

What I like about KBIA’s Adderall piece is the way the story is unfolded in this lead. “Tests, papers, stress, projects, deadlines, sleepless nights, more papers, more test, more coffee, another sleepless night.” The parallel of short words ejaculated at the beginning gives the story a tense tone, and successfully leads to its theme about misuse of Adderall. Overall the entire piece is logically structured, with quotes from a variety of sources including anonymous students, student health center staff and pharmacists. The strength of the story is that it does not only cover the phenomenon from the campus point of view, but touched deeper issues about drug regulation across campuses and possible ways of avoiding over-prescription of Adderall.

But there are also questions about the ways this story is edited. At one point when one of the anonymous Adderall user said that he was able to get the drug illegally, I was wondering how he could do that. And the answer to this question does not come until Student Health Center staff gave all her opinion about the side effects of misusing the drug. My idea is that it could’ve worked better when the audience knows how severe the misuse of this drug is (ie, how easy it is for students to get this drug.) And then have in-depth understanding about the side effects, which provides better understanding about this problem. The other thing I find very interesting is the way the producers juxtapose conflicting points of view about this issue at the end of the program. It shows to the audience how differently drug users and pharmacists think, but there could’ve been a neutral third voice that wraps up the piece in a more problem-solving approach, instead of leaving audiences a strong impression about how students wouldn’t want to stop. Given that a lot of KBIA listeners are students, it wouldn’t be a great idea to let them to think about Adderall as an option when the exam comes.