Speculations on a miracle drug with certain side effects

[Swatopluk]

This is a thread to speculate about the likely consequences of the introduction of a (ficticious) drug to society.

Let's assume a new drug would be discovered that would significantly enhance mental and maybe bodily capabilities but with the side effect of reducing life expectancy. Let's say for every year the drug is taken life would get shortend by a year.
Maybe the effects would even be accumulative, i.e. the drug's effect would increase with time (let's say 10% per year) but so would the life-shortening effect.
Initially the drug is very costly to produce and can only be sold at 10K $ per month (or at a discount 100K $ per year) but after some time the production costs drop so it could be sold at $10 per month while still breaking even.

How would the producing company react? Would it lower the price to broaden the customer base or keep the prices at levels that only the very rich could afford?
How would the public react? Would people not take the drug because of the side effect or would the advantages essentially force them to take it in order to stay competitive (provided they can somehow get the money, should the price stay high)?
How would government react? Would it try to suppress it, monopolize* it, enforce its use? Would it try to control the price?
What would the elites try to achieve? Would they try to keep it to themselves in order to stay on top? Or would they do the exact opposite, forcefeeding it to low-level employees, so they would be more productive but die so young that no pensions or other benefits would have to be payed?
So, how would the real world consequences look like in your opinion? This is all under the assumption that the positive and negative effects of the drug are inseparable, i.e. the capability gains could not be had without the shortened lifespan.

*an export ban would imo be a secure bet because less scrupulous competitors like China would not care for the side effects and grow a population of short-lived superhumans which would be seen as a real threat to the US.

[Griffin NoName]

I feel I don't know about this drug. What sort of superhuman powers would it give and what sorts of death could one expect ?  Would it, for example, make any difference to my current illness such that I would be well again?

[Sibling DavidH]

It's a scientific version of selling one's soul to Satan.  Goethe and Marlow did some good exploration of the topic.

As far as I can tell, I'd have done it aged 20 and been increasingly sorry as the end drew near.

O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!
The devil will come...

Of course, this way you don't get any further trouble after you die.

[Aggie]

We have good historical data on a similar drug already, although I don't believe the costs of tobacco have been such that only the elite could afford it under normal conditions (barring periods of disturbance, where it would have been a luxury good).  Perhaps in its early history.

I personally find cigarettes to be an inefficient and unpleasant nicotine delivery system, but I'm actually quite surprised that the pharmaceutical companies haven't focused on off-label use of "tobacco cessation" products (i.e. nicotine gum) by making the packaging more appealing and ambiguous marketing campaigns. I've started to see this, possibly, in recent changes to make pocket-size packs easier to carry.  Nicotine is a fairly effective nootropic if you strip out the carbon monoxide poisoning and MAOI effects of the tobacco (I suspect said effects plus the tactile habit of smoking are more addictive than nicotine, which seems about equivalent to caffeine when both are used in low doses).

We've known for years that cigarette use is taking years off one's life. People continue to smoke.

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Addictive potential would factor largely into the use of the hypothetical drug, as would the reversibility of the effects.  If one could use it at a distinct developmental stage to permanently boost brain function...  say, take it from 18 - 23, get a permanent 20% boost to IQ, but lose 5 years of life expectancy?  I'm pretty sure in that case it'd be marketed at university-class people, the price would remain high, and use within that class would be quite prevalent, provided the price could be kept under $1000 per month.  At under $10 per day, I'd wager almost any top-level university student who didn't have ethical objections would be taking it.   Keeping the price high has one additional benefit - they people who can afford it can probably find doctors willing to prescribe it off-label, so Big Pharma doesn't need to get it approved as a nootropic.  The drug could be approved for a specific condition (say, Alzheimer's) where longevity is not the primary objective of treatment, and it could be disseminated from there.

Where the effects are not permanent - i.e. you need to keep dosing with it - I'd expect use to be more prevalent in lower income populations struggling to keep unstable jobs or to work additional shifts, but also to some degree in high-stress, high-income and highly competitive careers (CEOs and the like).  Caffeine and nicotine serve as good models for use here, but I think one could look also at usage patterns for illegal stimulant drugs such as amphetamines and cocaine.  These are far too dangerous to be used as productivity enhancers, but nevertheless are used as such both by the overworked underclass and people who need to hyper-perform (a prevalent example is cocaine addiction in performers such as comedians and children's authors).

I could see a major usage demographic also in middle-class, lower-ranking corporate serfs who would be willing to use any means necessary to climb the corporate ladder and/or not get laid off, although this demographic would be less likely to accept major long-term health consequences.

[Swatopluk]

The idea is that the stuff is
1. non-addictive, i.e. one could cease taking it at any time
2. the bill for the negative effect would be delivered instantly, i.e. you take a dose, your life will be a certain amount of time shorter
3. The earlier death would not be accompanied by additional negative symptoms, one would simply age faster
4. The positive effects would disappear when getting off the drug, i.e. if one does not take it regularly, one will return to normal more or less instantly (resp. the normal interval between doses). The accumulative advantage of long term use would still rely on the individual dose taken and would wear off if there is a longer gap in consumption. Let's say, if one does not take it for a month, it would be like never to have taken it at all (the effect of a new dose would be like it was when first taken).

As for tobacco and coffee, historically those posed a different problem for the state since it usually had to be imported. That meant paying a foreign entity (=potential enemy) with hard money in order to get what was considered a pure luxury good.
Consequently high tariffs were put on the import and high taxes on consumers. mayn countries tried to make both a state monopoly. In Prussia there was even the job of coffee smellers/sniffers who would walk around trying to find illegal consumption by means of their noses (looking/sniffing for the pot*, so to speak). Tobacco got marketed at a certain time as a medical herb. One main proponent of that was a certain monsieur Nicot => nicotine.

*yes, the choice of word is deliberate


Edit: Hey, what about a drug with the opposite effect? It would prolong life but at the cost of diminished mental capacity. You may live several decades longer but will be reduced to the level of cretin.

Hm, that would be something for low-level jobbers. They would take that stuff while employed and switch to the other or simply get off this one once they retire or lose the job. Politicians (in securely gerrymandered districts) would love to put that stuff into the water supply.

[Griffin NoName]

A friend of mine had a plan to put contraceptives into the oil used to cook chips in places like MacDonalds....................

[Swatopluk]

A friend of mine had a plan to put contraceptives into the oil used to cook chips in places like MacDonalds....................

Some third world countries (esp. Muslim and/or African ones) are worried that the West would do that with food donations.
The plan to eradicate polio once and for all failed in Africa because of a propaganda campaign that told people that the vaccination was just a cover for a drug that would make women infertile. The purpose  of the 'vaccination' was (according to that campaign) not to eradicate polio but to commit genocide against Africans. As a result many refused the vaccination and the window of opportunity closed (i.e. polio spread from the residual pockets it had been confined to nullifying the efforts of many years).
This particular propaganda campaign had, I believe, a lot of bad faith (literally and metaphorically) in it but the suspicion was not 100% unfounded. The idea to lace food exports to 3rd world countries with certain drugs even without consent or knowledge of the receivers has indeed been discussed in the past. And white supremacists indeed still dream of a way to selectively kill off coloured people by means of 'racist bacteria/viruses'. If legends are true the US government at some point in time even looked for an anti-communist disease as if political views were genetically fixed (caveat: a predilection for conservatism or liberalism may be influenced by genes to a degree. But there is (to our knowledge) no specific Leninist or Manchester-capitalist gene).

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I had a full set of commentaries on the subject on the other computer... 

In any case, even in a thought experiment, chances are that any drug will have different effects in different people, the same way some people don't develop emphysema, and also, it is foreseeable that any negative effects will be researched out or ameliorated in time. Even if we assume that the drug taxes the brain in a way that the use by definition kills brain cells or a similar side effect, it isn't absurd to imagine that an effort be made to have as many good effects with the least bad effects even if that reduces the power of the drug.

Also consider the effects of anabolic steroids in sports, the use has very clear negative side effects and the users know the risks but consider that the payout is worth the damage.

Lastly have you seen this?

[pieces o nine]

^ The internet imitates life imitates the internets...

[Aggie]

With the requirements for horrific warning labels on cigarette packages (in Canada), I'm surprised that no tobacco company has started a black-boxed Death Sticks brand flaunting the deadly image.  It'd be a niche market, but would sell well with certain counterculture types.