In chemistry, we do a lot of otherwise boring things: thermodynamics, reaction rates, and solubility are just a few of the topics. Of course, they're all allegedly essential and can be the difference between millions of dollars in reaction yield. The problem I'm having recently, however, is that overall, I've come to realize one thing: they're all useless.
Yes, that's right. Useless. They're a complete waste of time and money, because they're archaic techniques-- things that only old scientists in old, dark labs from the 1800s still practice. Today, we have a much better technique for increasing reaction yields that was invented in the 1970s. Even better, it's spurred creative development on multiple fronts, exceeding some of the greatest developments in the fields of neuroscience. It's a more practical alternative to antiquated scientific methods that instead involves a remarkably non-scientific approach. It's so ingenious, I think it should be published in Nature or Science right on the front page. You might even be able to patent it.
So what, exactly, is this new method? It's actually rather simple: the War on Drugs.
(continued)That's right-- our country has it down pat. That's why we're the best in the world. Through the miracle of simple legislation, our American ingenuity has given us a method for turning
a common plant with only around 0.3%
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content into far
higher-yielding sub-species of that same plant-- boasting 20-30% THC content.
That's an average
8,233.33% percent increase in THC content! Amazing!
But is that all? Are astronomical gains in yield the
only thing America is good at? Nay.
Given our knack at following the
economies of scale, both before and after adjusting for
inflation, cannabis has gotten significantly cheaper. So, not only do you get more for what you pay for, you get more bang for your buck. Man, I love this country. We're so good at making things efficient and profitable.
Of course, this discovery, like many critical discoveries in our past, is a result of
serendipity-- pure happenstance. You see, when it became apparent that
President Richard Nixon was actually psychotic, we put undoing a lot of
the things he did at the top of our list. But, when we got to the Controlled Substances Act, we made a startling discovery as a country: the bill was having a positive effect.
Believe it or not, where
economic theory would suggest that decreasing supply (through arrests) would increase price and decrease demand, another thing happened instead: the supply actually increased, and the price actually dropped. Sure, the sheer amount of plants might have decreased, but the THC content increased over 8 thousand percent. It's the chemical equivalent of collecting the millions of tons of explosives in use by the armed forces today and instead issuing thermonuclear weapons to soldiers-- all for the same price.
So, we learned from this. Instead, we as a country simply let drugs stay outlawed. In our wildest dreams we could not have gotten better yields, and it showed when we found ways of refining the manufacturing processes of the popular '80s drugs
cocaine and
ecstacy. In the '90s, we got better at making methylated
amphetamines-- also known as crystal meth and speed. After all, without strict prohibition, it is clear that such ancient substances as amphetamine, which was originally discovered in 1887, would be relegated to obscurity, since the manufacturing processes of creating such drugs has historically been expensive, arduous, and fraught with problems of impurities.
Yet, through the miracle of
early drug prohibition, we found ways of jumpstarting the purification and revitalization of these arcane substances. It's clear that even when we created drugs
that were completely synthetic, they never really caught on until we
made them illegal.
It's a good thing, too. Had it not been for outlawing them in the first place, we wouldn't be able to give our kids prescription drugs like
meth- dextro- amphetamine (
Adderall) and
THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana (
Marinol) as completely legal alternatives that only require a prescription.
Phew. Thank God for the War on Drugs. This is the exact reason why we should keep drugs illegal. If we were to suddenly legalize them, imagine the chaos: quality would plummet and the great, hard-working drug dealers and suppliers of the nation would be out of jobs practically overnight. The news would be boring since the amount of violent crime due to turf wars would drop, too. We wouldn't get to experience the thrill, awe, shock, and excitement of seeing
big buildings exploding, either, because terrorists wouldn't have enough money to coordinate such endeavours should their
primary source of income be taken away. Even worse, all of the
new and innovative ways of getting high that beat the prohibition versus time curve would become redundant, silly, and useless.
Arguably the gravest injustice of them all, however, is the fact that all of the great accomplishments that we've made over the last 30 years in purifying and refining illegal substances would be lost to the coldly lackluster centralized review processes that would require precise labels affixed to all drugs, much in the same way all legal drugs do now. I, for one, don't want to know what I'm getting, and it sucks all of the personalization of the process, because in order to avoid lawsuits, active ingredient concentrations would be reduced to depressingly safe and consistent levels. Sad, isn't it?
So I, for one, am glad drugs are still illegal. We don't have to worry about bullshit lawsuits like the ones the tobacco companies and McDonald's had to endure, and instead we'll have premium-- practically heartstopping-- purities for the drugs we want the most. Best of all, they'll be cheaper and easier to obtain as time progresses. You really can't ask for much better than that.
Cheers.
