SPECIAL REPORT - Twenty-First Century Illicit Drugs and Their Discontents:

Psychonauts might keep up to speed on the potential highs from NPSs, but the market cannot prevent the spread of those drugs to people who do not surf the Web for news about the adverse effects of NPSs, particularly the ones that are sold locally. [...] On the contrary, the versions of NPSs available today are not the end of the line as far as development goes.122 An increasingly large number of dangerous drugs can be synthesized in laboratories, and the people who succumb to “the lure of easy money” will not be put off by the risks noted above as long as they can continue to reap a steady stream of profits.123 NPSs offer several attractions that. [...] The emergence of NPSs over the past few decades, however, gives us reason to be concerned that the illicit drug business might have branched out into a new path that makes it increasingly more difficult to protect the public against improvident deci- sions.132 Or some of the same factors that increase the risk of the spread of NPSs—such as 21st century communications technologies and continued sci. [...] Congress created the FDA in 1938 to require an expert agency to review new drugs to be sure that they were safe before being publicly distributed.142 Prompted by the Thalidomide disaster in Europe in the 1950s, Congress augmented the FDA’s authority by passing the Drug Amendments of 1962, which vested the agency with the power and responsibility to refuse to approve any new drug until its sponsor. [...] One hurdle is that the CSA requires the government to prove that a compound is “substan- tially similar to the chemical structure of a” highly dangerous controlled substance and has a “substantially similar” effect on the human nervous system.165 Ideally, the government would use a biochemist and physician to prove its case.