The DEA Took My Future Drugs Away

In the cyberpunk comic book Transmetropolitan it is many years in the future and the DEA is forbidden from banning drugs that don't yet exist, but new substances are being created and distributed constantly by machines called Makers that intelligently reorganize matter. Though it takes the DEA only 20 minutes to ban a drug after its creation, there are always new drugs on the market. Anything that is more than a few hours old is considered archaic and inferior.

Though this comic was written in the 90s, it does seem to have predicted our current drug trends. I just hope that the DEA never has the ability to outlaw non-existent chemicals based on molecular association. Perhaps the worst thing would be for them make it illegal to merely develop a compound based on its similarity in chemical structure to something that was already needlessly banned. At that point, the mere intention to bring various arrangements of atoms into being becomes a thought crime and they have far, far too much power.

Now that we've fully committed the crime of outlawing nature as we know it, the next step is to outlaw all these alien forms of gnosis before they even have a name. Not only are we at war with known elements of the world that bring us to terms with the unknown, we are now at war with the unknown itself. This is a logical, albeit twisted and very unfortunate, progression for those in power of collective fear. Because anything in the realm of the unmanifest can be a catalyst for the kind of social upheaval that could usurp those in power, they are trying to build their walls closer and closer to the source of all possibility, to isolate and eventually eradicate chaos.

When will we learn that the goddess can not be chained? Our laws are merely creating a ritual, and not a particularly enjoyable one at that, by which we sacrifice ourselves to chaos.