Open Source Recreational Drugs

Several readers, like Brian Herman, have wondered if the notion of "open source drugs" as mentioned in NYC2123 (here and here) is really tenable. Brian writes:

In theory all drugs are now open source after their patents expire. Some people at home even cook illegal drugs like ... meth, etc. So saying they're open source is sort of crazy. Open source means it's put under a license that is like the GPL. [Quoted with permission -ed.]

First of all, I should point out the obvious, which is that when I say "open source drugs" in NYC2123 I'm talking about recreational drugs. It's true that present day pharmaceuticals belong to the public domain once their patents expire, but the term "open source" generally refers to a methodology for product development and licensing, and that methodology has not been widely applied in the pharma industry. The same goes for illegal drugs--although users and manufacturers often share "recipes" for illicit substances, there is no evidence that they collaborate in a structured way to develop new products, and they certainly don't "release" their recipes to the public domain under any kind of open source license.

Nonetheless, the notion of open source pharma development is gaining momentum, and I've drawn on these ideas in my writing about recreational drugs in NYC2123. There have been several excellent proposals for open source pharma development, like this one, which led to the establishment of the Tropical Disease Initiative. There are also a number of not-for-profit "virtual pharmas" such as the Institute for One World Health and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative. All of these projects attempt to address the fact that for-profit pharma companies have little incentive to develop drugs to treat diseases like Malaria, which by and large affect poor people. At the risk of oversimplifying the issues at hand, the bottom line is that Cialis generates orders of magnitude more revenue than an effective anti-Malaria drug ever would.

Virtual pharmas and open source pharma initiatives attempt to solve this problem by transferring the cost-intensive R&D phase to a collaborative community of researchers who design drugs for free (in the open source model) or at well below market rates (in the not-for-profit model). In theory this then allows for-profit pharmas to manufacture and distribute drugs thus developed, because there is no R&D cost to recoup. In the open source model, drugs developed in this manner would be covered by something similar to the GPL, which would allow pharmas to manufacture and sell the drug, but prevent them from claiming any intellectual property rights (i.e. they could sell the drug, but not the recipe, which belongs in the public domain).

This is all to emphasize the fact that I'm not the first one to propose an open source model for the development of drugs (duh). Of course, recreational drugs are not the same as pharmaceuticals, but there are some important similarities between the two in the world of NYC2123. First, in 2123 corporations (like Marlboro) compete in a legalized recreational drug market. As with today's pharmaceuticals, recreational drug manufacturers of the future will concentrate R&D money on drugs with the most commercial viability. Most users will be satisfied with Marlboro hash cigarettes and Nabisco cocaine, and that's where the R&D and marketing dollars will be spent. Second, the recreational drug market of the future will be regulated by the government, just as the pharma market is today. These two factors combined will ensure that the most potent recreational drugs will be ignored by the large corporations because they lack a large potential consumer base, and because government regulation will impose some limitations on the harmfulness of commercial drugs.

But there will always be hardcore users who demand a harsher high, a faster burn or a stronger hallucinogen than what the average consumer desires or what government regulations would allow. In some ways it's the inverse of the problem faced by today's pharmas: an anti-Malarial has a huge potential user base with very little capital, while high-grade meth has a small user base with plenty of capital.

So how do you get your fix in 2123 if you're a serious user and the retail smack doesn't do it for you? It's unlikely that a single individual working alone could create a satisfactory drug in her garage. Drug design in the 22nd century will have progressed far beyond the "cook-it-up-in-the-motel-bathroom" methodologies of the early 21st century. Making a better meth will take a committed team of knowledgeable chemists, molecular biologists and computer scientists. Open source is the obvious answer: small teams collaborate over the net to design substances that surpass the potency of commercial drugs. Each of these individual "labs" can then manufacture and distribute the new-and-improved drug as-is, or make their own modifications to the code to create a custom build. The source code for these drugs would be covered by a license like the GPL (read the fine print on the derm patch here), which would allow anyone to manufacture and distribute the substances or modified versions thereof. But no one would actually "own" the original recipe. Enforcement of these restrictions is obviously a separate issue, since it couldn't take place in the courts--in all likelihood the community would be self-policing with regards to open-source IP (as in: try to sell the code for an open source drug and someone will break your kneecaps).

The economics of this make sense because no single drug lab could match the financial resources of a multinational corporation. But by working together they can produce a better drug, and then they all get a slice of the pie when it comes to distribution. Labs that can make the best improvements on the core recipe will fare even better (even though they will be bound by the license to release the source code for their improved recipes, it will take other labs some time to gear up to manufacture these derivative products).

The parallels to open source software are obvious. Most computer users are satisfied with the commercial software developed by companies like Microsoft and Apple. But a large minority of "power users" demand something that is more stable and better suited to their specific needs. Some of these power users work collaboratively to develop non-commercial software (like Linux). Such software is open source, and anyone is free to modify it and even sell it, as long as it is distributed along with the source code. So companies like Red Hat and Suse distribute versions of Linux for which the source code is freely available, but they also make money by selling ancillary products and services such as documentation and technical support.

In 2123, hardcore drug users are the equivalent of today's Linux geeks--those who demand a better product more tailored to their specific interests. Drug labs are the equivalent of companies like Red Hat--contributors to the open source development of better drugs who then make money by manufacturing and distributing the drugs, or by making improvements to the original recipe which in turn attract more users.

Because the open source movement was so successful at undermining commercial software enterprises in the 21st century, open source development of anything is illegal in the 22nd century. This is simply a dystopian extrapolation from present-day circumstances. Microsoft and friends would be happy to see open source software criminalized, and if they had sufficient legislative influence they would certainly pursue this aim. In the world of NYC2123 (as in many imagined dystopian futures), multinational corporations have become an increasingly dominant force in the political realm, to the point where they all but control the legislative process. Since the open source movement has spread to many market sectors beyond the software industry by the mid-21st century, there is correspondingly greater pressure to outlaw open source practices. By the late-21st century, multinationals from the software, pharma, agriculture and food industries have joined forces to outlaw the open source development of all products.

So get your meth on the street corner while you can--soon enough you'll be making trips to outlaw barge cities full of cyborg street-fighters in order to score.