Pubdate: Tue, 29 Nov 2005
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2005 Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Peter Schwartz, Foreign Policy magazine
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

COCAINE IS SO YESTERDAY

To mark its 35th anniversary, the U.S. magazine Foreign Policy 
recently asked a group of leading thinkers to identify which ideas, 
values, and institutions will disappear in the next 35 years. The 
Post has been printing the most intriguing responses. In today's 
seventh installment, Peter Schwartz says goodbye to the war on drugs.

- - - -

The war on drugs will soon be over. It won't have been won or lost, 
and we certainly won't have wiped out illicit drug use. People will 
still pursue their personal pleasures and uncontrollable addictions. 
No, the war on drugs will end because drugs as we know them today will be gone.

The model drug of the future is already here in the form of crystal 
methamphetamine, a drug that is sweeping the United States and making 
inroads abroad. It's cheap and easy to make -- little more than 
Sudafed doctored up with plant fertilizer. One hundred percent of the 
profit goes to the manufacturer; no intermediary or army of couriers 
is required. Made of locally acquired materials in the garage or 
basement, the drug's production is nearly impossible to stop. Only 
the stupid and incompetent get caught.

Thirty-five years from now, the illicit professionals who remain in 
the business will be custom drug designers catering to the wealthy. 
Their concoctions will be fine-tuned to one's own body and neural 
chemistry. In time, the most destructive side effects will be 
designed out, perhaps even addiction itself. These custom drug 
dealers will design the perfect chemical experience for those who can 
afford it. The combination of cocaine with skiing, sex or other 
intense physical activities is common today; likewise for pot and 
making music. In the future, there will be custom drugs for meals, 
golf, gardening and more. Like crystal meth today, some drugs will 
reach the point of home manufacturing. And they will all be designed 
to make their use invisible to others -- no red eyes, nervous tics or lethargy.

The shift to custom drugs that are locally produced will have some 
positive effects. Opium fields in Afghanistan and coca plantations in 
the mountains of Colombia will wither, creating new economic 
realities for those countries. The loss of cash crops will sting at 
first, but farmers and traders producing legal goods that are taxable 
and transparent will ultimately facilitate the building of healthy 
societies. Cocaine couriers won't sweat their way through customs, 
and human mules will stop smuggling bags of heroin in their guts. 
Drug lords will not need to launder billions of dollars or pay for 
private armies, and street corners won't have drug dealers waging 
gunfights for turf. The prison population in Western countries, and 
particularly the United States, will shrink.

But as the violence of the drug trade dies down and as drugs become 
safer, drug use will blossom. The boundary between legal performance 
enhancement (Viagra) and the illegal drugs of pleasure and creativity 
will blur. The political and social pressure against drug use will 
remain, but it will increasingly resemble the campaigns against 
performance-enhancing drugs for athletes. Widespread use will spark 
debates about fairness and authenticity: Is a drug-using musician 
better than one who composes and performs naturally? Is it fair for 
only the wealthy to have the richest sexual or culinary experiences?

Just as the legal system is struggling with new realities of 
intellectual property in a digital age, it will struggle to control 
innovation in the chemistry of pleasure. We may even wistfully look 
back at a time when there were smugglers to be chased and coca fields 
to be burned. The bad guys were brutes, largely foreign or inner-city 
hoodlums. The new drug sellers will be chemists. Users, too, will be 
harder to hate. They'll look a lot like you and me.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman