Mike Power investigates the world of designer drugs, or “controlled substance analogs,” described as “version[s] of a banned compound that [have] been created with the aim of making it legal”:
[H]ow easy is it to design and commission a new legal drug based on a banned one?
For the most part you cannot simply tweak cocaine, add a molecule and dodge the law—most countries are wise to this, and their rules are tightly-written, expert affairs focused on well-known narcotics. But outside of headline drugs … it is simple enough to scan medical literature and look for new compounds that could intoxicate. The resulting drug will, most likely, be legal—though whether the result will be pleasant or not will only be discovered by a process of human trial and error.
I passed my drug along to [clinical toxicologist] John Ramsey at St. George’s [Hospital in London] to be logged into TICTAC, a database that is used by law enforcement and healthcare professionals. We do not know precisely what my legal drug will do: It may be incredibly unpleasant—but it will be active and, with the right marketing, could potentially sell by the truckload.
And here lies the problem. We can ban drugs. But we can’t ban chemistry, and we can’t ban medical research. There are an almost infinite number of different drugs and substitutions that are possible, and a combination of circumstances have radically increased the public’s ability to access and alter them. The openness of the Web, China’s prominence as both a manufacturer and exporter, the ability of laypeople to study organic chemistry, the availability of research, improved technology and falling prices—these have all come together to create an unusual, explosive, effect.
The Dish 