Solving the War on Drugs Part 3: A Tech-Based Strategy to End the Drug Crisis
Now that Elon Musk is back at work as a CEO and will try to stop activists from igniting Tesla’s to save the world, I have a new challenge that should be right up his alley—solve the illegal drug problem.
Why Drugs Work—and Why We Keep Using Them
Drugs work on our brains to make us feel better, high, focused, relaxed, pleasure or even euphoria. In normal life, intense pleasure is a rare experience which may explain the appeal. So far in the first two chapters, we talked about addiction (the wanting side of drugs) and supply and how America has tried to find a way to stop each.
One thing we know is that the wanting side of drugs and the pleasure of doing them are in different areas of the brain.
One way of handling the illegal drug problem is to make them legal.
Experiences in the now-failed experiment in Oregon and other parts of the country suggest this only leads to more addiction and misery. Nevertheless, we have decriminalized and even encouraged more marijuana production and consumption—even helping to ensure that minority suppliers are equitably part of the problem.
We also still devote massive resources trying to persuade people to stop using drugs, particularly focused on the “wanting” centers in the brain by affecting habit forming; providing medication for withdrawal; using diet drugs to impact both the wanting and liking sides of addiction; and forcing addicts into treatment.
What If We Could Out-Innovate Drugs?
My suggestion is one that utilizes what economists call “creative destruction”—using innovation and technological change to out compete existing drugs. What we need is something that does not have all the negative aspects of existing drug abuse, i.e., not addictive (suppress the wanting side of the brain), control over time spent being high, no recovery issues and, hopefully, positive effects on creativity or productivity. It should also be cheap enough to compete with existing drugs.
Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick wrote about a device that allows people to choose how they feel in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” almost 60 years ago. The question is, can we now make that a reality?
I would start with something like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA. This is a very flat organization that courts out-of-the-box ideas and recognizes that multiple failures may be necessary to give life to truly novel inventions. We appreciate their creations including GPS, stealth aircraft, and the internet.
The most likely place to start will be neural engineering, a multidisciplinary field that tries to restore and augment human function through directly interacting with the nervous system. It goes back to 1803 when Giovanni Aldini used a newly created batter to jolt his head giving him a field of elation and euphoria. The other half is brainwaves, fluctuations in voltages that can trigger neurons to fire whose frequency, amplitude and phases are information that can be decoded. By decoding brainwaves, we can learn to control them.
Turning Sci-Fi Into Reality
In 1960, Robert Heath treated a suicidal patient by planting a simulator in the man’s brain pleasure center which resulted in the patient stimulating himself to overwhelming euphoria and elation that he had to be pulled off of the machine.
Currently, neurofeedback has been used to treat numerous diseases like ADHD, Parkinson’s autism, migraines, traumatic brain injury, stoke, blood pressure and reducing stress. It has also been used for impulse control, addiction, IQ enhancement, sports, sleep and altering mood.
There are multiple existing devices that decode and manipulate neural activity including Utah arrays (FDA approved), transcranial magnetic stimulation, EEGs, and fMRIs. In addition, scientists are working on micro-sized dust or pixels that could be scattered throughout the brain for controlling ion channels (channels that regulate neurotransmitters that affect emotions).
The question becomes, can brain-computer interfaces (BCI), such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink or Paradromics that currently are used to control other functions be purposed to produce “highs;” like the one Robert Heath produced 65 years ago. It would most likely have to be non-invasive, i.e., not planting a device inside the brain. Because we don’t want it to be addictive, it might make sense to have the basic research done by DARPA or a similar agency on the civilian side of government. Later on, it could be passed on to the private sector with rules.
In addition to non-invasive BCIs, we might also find augmented reality to enhance the experience. This creates either a three-dimensional virtual reality (VR) environment or fully immersive reality which includes all the senses. In one study, a VR experience called Isness-D could not be distinguished by users from medium-dose psychedelics, including 20 milligrams of psilocybin or 200 micrograms of LSD.
As a friend pointed out, it may not do away with current illegal drugs, or it may be difficult to beat the addiction (wanting) side, but I think it is worth trying. Of course, some may just want the “natural” highs from marijuana, but I think this could go a long way to helping end the drug carnage.
What do you think? Would you try a “high-tech high” if it were safe, legal, and non-addictive?