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To combat new drugs, such as “Bath Salts”, specific new laws are being passed that contain catalogs of molecular compounds that are now banned in the US. As soon as a new law is passed, chemist are able to change the compounds to be a different on a molecular level, but still have the same psychopharmaceutical role. The assumption is that this new compound will eventually get added to the banned list, however the scope of these derivative compounds are huge, from the hundreds to the thousands depending on the compound.

Ignoring their effectiveness at preventing drug use, as a organizing system these laws seem to suffer from using the wrong level of classification. The article points out that the granularity is partially due to scientists not agreeing on a how to compare if a molecule is similar enough to be included in the ban before they are shown to be used as a drug.

At any level of classification, the drugs are being searched for from a nearly infinite collection of compounds specifically so that they don’t fall with in the narrow scope of what has been previously defined within the bound of the law. To me, it seems like making a list of all books with forbidden words in the Library of Babel. It’s never going prevent new books from being discovered and just like with banning a book, banning a compound only serves to highlight it forbidden qualities.