I'm not an organic chemist, but "structurally derived from tryptamine" sounds to me like you have to start with tryptamine. If you fabricate your new molecule another way, it's not banned. This highlights the problems of lawyers telling chemists what to do....

In any event, banning groups of drugs with similar structures is a stop-gap solution; there does not appear to be a simple relation between structure and effect. It we could predict the effect that a compound will have on the human brain, then we may be able to formulate a reasonable approach to banning.

I imagine the pharmaceutical companies would just love the idea of having to get each new drug they manufacture unbanned and removing it from the whitelist.

Until we can predict the effect that a new compound will have on the brain, we may have to consider some form of regulation of new substances which are designed for human consumption, but whose effects are not known or understood.

It's only because drugs are all banned that the problems exist. If someone wishing to get high could take a drug which has been regulated, they would be less interested in taking any old crap their mate recommends, in what could be a completely incorrect dose.

Surely, as technology improves the number of drugs will increase? Just banning every single drug is barely feasible now, as the article makes clear, and the problem is just going to get worse. If society is going to tolerate the consumption of any kind of mind-altering substance, we will have to learn to investigate and regulate them.

PeerWat