I think we won't get past the cultural issues in our lifetime.
Many cultures have 0 tolerance for anything outside of alcohol (and I totally get it when it comes to China for instance), and prohibition of drugs like marihuana was long used to target specific communities.
I'm not even sure if western cultures are still on the path to open to low harm drugs, do we have any research on synthetic drugs that have a change to become fully legal alternatives ?
There are very few cultures with 0 tolerance for e.g. nicotine or especially caffeine.
I'm not sure new drugs are even needed. There are plenty of existing drugs, and the vast majority are less harmful than alcohol. They would of course need legal and cultural regulation. There are also some ideas for new recreational substances like David Nutt's "synthetic alcohol".
I think we won't get past the cultural issues in our lifetime.
Many cultures have 0 tolerance for anything outside of alcohol (and I totally get it when it comes to China for instance), and prohibition of drugs like marihuana was long used to target specific communities.
I'm not even sure if western cultures are still on the path to open to low harm drugs, do we have any research on synthetic drugs that have a change to become fully legal alternatives ?