The Synthetic Drug Business Explained

At the present time, when synthetic drugs are claiming so many victims in so many parts of the world, I find this episode of Planet Money a necessary listen. “Synthetic Reefer Madness” (“reefer” being a “slang term for marijuana that comes from the early 1900s movie Reefer Madness where a man smokes bud and it makes him go insane and kill his whole family. A lot of people believe that this movie played a key role in making marijuana illegal by scaring the public”, as per the definition entered by username ‘stoner kid’ on Urban Dictionary *insert granny emoji*) breaks down for us how a sort of industrial revolution in the drug trade happened and what its aftermath is.

Scientists play a key role in the chain of events, as they were the ones who started synthesizing chemicals to see what it does to people’s cannabinoid receptor, which is also connected to our sleep, appetite, pain receptors and so on. The purpose they had in mind while tinkering in the lab was to discover new medicines. What actually happened is that, upon publishing their findings, with the names of the compounds that trigger the receptor, the kinds of effects they have, and directions of how to replicate the process, the “recipes” were simply copied by those interested in drug dealing.

And this was just the beginning. Next came outsourcing to China, the legal gray area of the synthetic drug business, the black market, and the solutions scientists are trying to find to a problem that they involuntarily helped develop.