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7/7 Scheduling - The future of drugs?

  • Benjamin-Alexandre Jeanroy
  • May 7, 2016
  • 7 min read

What can we foresee for the future of drugs? Aside from the already existing rise of designer drugs, several researchers argue that we need to look towards developing new technologies. According to Rohit Talwar, founder of Fast Future Research, administering drugs through brain stimulation could become one of the next big thing.

Talwar was tasked by the U.K. government to look out for the potential drug landscape in the next twenty years, further than the traditional pre-existing scenario of criminal organizations drug producing and shipping. In a conference, he described how “the world of genomic sequencing and services such as 23 and Me (Rowan, 2011) open up possibilities for tailoring drugs to the individual, delivering effects based on your physiology — which could apply just as effectively to narcotics as it could medicines.” (Wired, 2011)

Quoting research from the University of California Berkeley (Geere, 2011), the analyst explained how neuroscientists are now capable to replicate images that people see, based on the activity of their brain patterns. This technology, combined with transcranial magnetic stimulation (UCLICN, 2011) - which allows certain brain functions such as the ability to remember or to speak to be inhibited - could open up “the possibility of electronically delivering targeted highs.” (Wired, 2011) In other words, you would not even have to consciously ingest, inhale, or inject any substances anymore to feel desired effects. Such scenario, could potentially use “biological proteins manufactured with information-processing technology to deliver effects that could be triggered by electromagnetic stimulation.” (Wired, 2011)

Pause a second, and imagine a night club, where a DJ could release nanoparticles ingested by the audience. These to the eyes invisible substances could trigger any desired state during an artistic performance, using an electric stimulus, such as a headset, which would directly impact the crowd’s neuronal activities. Potentially artistically amazing, this could be proven to be a disastrous combination if handled improperly.

Talwar's conference was presented in 2011, merely five years before the writing of this present work; needless to say that in this field, it represents an eternity. Who is to say what could come next? Certainly not U.N policy makers which are already struggling in intending to regulate an already decade long existing drug market that has now overcame them for quite some time. We have argued in past articles that the principle of scheduling as we currently understating it, is not only outdated, but also dangerous and counter-productive.

These new drug situations could mean that “regulation” and “scheduling” institutions should move from trying to stop people from taking these substances and instead try to control the quality and harms attached to them. At least if they intend to remain relevant. Theoretically this scenario could actually help eliminate illegal drug organizations, while allowing the pharmaceutical companies to be able to corner these new markets by guarantying the quality of drug experiments.

Today, cranial implant technology could even render the need for a headset described by Talwar quite insignificant. By getting an implant, - which could be programmed to give neural stimuli that affects our mood, perspective, vision and behavior - drug creation could become a new frontier in the hands of coders and engineers. Currently, more than half a million people worldwide already have chips connected to their brains (1).

Future upgrades could include EEG technology, which allow more control through the use of an computer interface. In this case, people could be able to distribute brain waves over certain, specific portion of their brains, such as the amygdala which mostly determine our mood. Fundamentally, what potentially makes these evolutions significant and could also supplant any other plant or chemical substances will be the ability to perfectly control the desired effect.

One could program a chip so it becomes impossible to overdose by controlling the quality of the substance, or render a drug impossible to take in order to counteract addiction potentials. One major challenge will therefore become hacking. Foolproof programs will need to be designed as for a chip never to be able to harm its user. Naturally, “illegal drug suppliers will be interested in this coming transhumanist field of implants and direct brain stimuli—and may play a big part in it, especially if government outlaws it as dangerous (which they probably will, at least at first).” (Istvan, 2015)

Finally, another topic remains completely off radars and may, at first, seem far-fetched but its application is in reality, much closer than we may realize. Namely, brain enhancing cognitive drugs. For example, there is today a substance called Modafinil, usually prescribed to treat sleep conditions such as narcolepsy. In practice many consume the substance, not to treat such disorder but to get supposedly perceived brain enhancing cognitive effects. A paper published in the European Neuropsychopharmacology Journal and written by Ruairidh Battleday and Anna-Katharine Brem from the University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School, examined the studies that analyzed the effects of patients taking the product for such reasons and declared that Modafinil “may well deserve the title of the first well-validated pharmaceutical ‘nootropic agent’.” (2) (EurekAlert, 2015)

Dr Guy Goodwin, President of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, suggested in a press statement that such findings highlight the potential short-sided views on the matter of drugs: “Previous ethical discussion of such agents has tended to assume extravagant effects before it was clear that there were any,” he said. “If correct, the present update means the ethical debate is real: how should we classify, condone or condemn a drug that improves human performance in the absence of pre-existing cognitive impairment?” (Vice News, 2015a)

 

As we may have observed in this set of articles, the scheduling system upon which is based the current IDCR often differs significantly from what could be expected from a health-oriented and scientifically based perspective. Additionally, another point remains crucial to comprehend the “drug phenomenon”: most users are not addicts, and casual and controlled drug consumption is as much of a reality, perhaps more, than problematic consumption can be. Indeed, in practice, ”“there is a broad universe of substances used to manage moods and experiences" (Points, 2011), and there are as much consumers as there are reasons to use. “Drug use” calls for many situations with a broad category of products, some of which are not controlled substances. The reality is that most of us consume drugs, for many different reasons, one way or another. We need to be able to recognize this in order to move forward.

As noted by the TNI (2014a), the problems currently analyzed in regard to drug scheduling are to some degree inherent to the U.N. drug conventions. In this regard, and as noted by Rolles and Measham (2011), “It is important that the evolving discourse around drug harms can escape these rigid structures that have constrained it for over half a century.” The overemphasis of the scheduling models, indeed “reflects the historical alignment of individual drug harm estimates with the hierarchy of punitive sanctions implicit in the prohibitionist paradigm.” (Ibid.)

Because the concept of scheduling remains part of reproductive actions, it will be inherently limited by the prohibitive framework that shaped it in the first place. But if the principle of scheduling is to be maintained, it could be argued first that the responsibility to categorize a substance should revert clearly and exclusively to the WHO (3). And second that it should take into account scientific evaluation of multiple potential harms that a substance may create. Ideally, “a model needs to distinguish between the harms resulting directly from drug use and those resulting from the control system for that drug.” (Nutt & al., 2010)

The principle of scheduling also pushes forward other questions that need to be adressed, such as: Does governments, and even more so, international organizations, both gradually lacking and loosing legitimacy, have the right to dictate personal conduct (including the possibility for oneself to alter her or his consciousness) if harm remains circunvened to one self? Or is this justification enough? If so, we should consider, other potentially and personally harmful practices to be more strictly regulated, including base-jumping, skydiving and probably driving a motorcycle and a car. This might sound a bit much, but then where does the line between personal rights and public safety is drawn?

 

(1) Most of these implants are cochlear implants to aid against deafness, but some are also deep brain stimulation (DBS) types, sometimes used for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and epilepsy. Generally speaking, DBS cranial implants work by firing electrical impulses via electrodes into certain regions of the brain. In the case of epileptic patients, they help control seizures.

(2) Nootropic also called smart drugs and cognitive enhancers—are drugs, supplements, or other substances that improve cognitive function, particularly executive functions, memory, creativity, or motivation, in healthy individuals (See: Frati & al., 2015)

(3) As noted by the TNI (2014a), the discretion of the CND to bluntly reject the WHO’s recommendations, “should either be removed, or the CND should have to justify its decision under explicit and transparent criteria.”


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