RE: Mild psychoactive drugs

From: Ramez Naam (mez@apexnano.com)
Date: Thu Mar 06 2003 - 18:12:52 MST

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    From: Anders Sandberg [mailto:asa@nada.kth.se]
    > I think it is a kind of "black market failure". There is not much
    > money in manufacturing "smart" drugs for the current black
    > market, as it is reaping huge profits from the traditional drugs
    > and does not have the sales channels to the people that would
    > like even a black market smart drug.

    Actually I would amend this slightly. I think many consumers of
    psychoactives would be extremely interested in smart drugs. The
    manufacturing cost for such compounds would likely be extremely low.
    The large investment is in the initial identification of such a
    compound. That's where the black market falls down.

    Basically every psychedelic drug that has become even slightly popular
    in the last 30 years was discovered by Shulgin, who used himself and
    his friends as guinea pigs. He did this out of personal enthusiasm.
    There's no market incentive in the black market to discover new drugs.
    As a matter of custom, those who develop new psychedelic drugs release
    their chemical structures and synthesis steps into the public domain.
    Even if they didn't, there would be no effective way to protect a
    patent on an illegal substance.

    mez



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