That is true; but it’s why I hypothesized that oldies-but-goodies and ‘clearly those people are risking arrest to get a hit because that molecule has something going on’ would be valued not directly, slap it in a pill and blow a bunch of money on clinical trials; but as starting points in the incomprehensibly vast ocean of potentially interesting molecules that you could theoretically sift through looking for drugs.
The final product (for both political and financial reasons) would be neither the same compound nor the same name as the ‘street’ stuff; but ‘explore all novel molecules for theraputic application’ is absurdly difficult compared to ‘LSD clearly has some fascinating hooks into human neurochemistry, a subject that is poorly understood; but which has enough psych sufferers of assorted severity that it would pay like crazy if we got something. Start with LSD and traverse every similar compound you can graft another methyl group onto until we find something that doesn’t cause hippie-panic in conservatives and seems to do something for some kind of psych case.’ is a much more manageable scope of work.
