I watched a National Geographic video the other night in which a frog swallowed a poisonous newt: after a minute or two the frog died and the newt crawled out of the corpse and went about its business.

I also just finished re-reading Brave New World after thirtysomething years.

I read as much as I can of the frenzied froth in the media about the psychedelic renaissance, investment opportunities therein, valuations in the billions, pairing of psychedelics (new molecules, of course, that can be patented) with medical devices in order to target mental conditions precisely, and so on.

Both the psychedelic capitalists banking on federal drug approval and the anti-commodification activists and their allies in state and local governments racing to get out ahead of them contemplate a significant increase in access to psychedelics on a scale that has never been seen in the history of our species.

Are psychedelics a poisonous newt that will kill a for-profit economy that attempts to ingest them?
Is the capitalist economy a frog that can repurpose psychedelics into branded consumer products and go on about its business?

I’m open to the possibility that the future may be a combination of those two scenarios, but I’m not seeing yet how it’s possible because it looks more like a zero-sum game to me.

The legal system, as the control panel of human society, must account for all scenarios.

We know, more or less, what a psychedelic pharmaceutical market will look like, at least at the beginning.
I don’t think anyone is projecting how weird it could get.

If psychedelics are a poisonous newt, market design is much more complicated.
I’m working on it.