The DIY drug prize: the federal government should offer prize money for the creation of a safer, better high.

• Author: Beato, Greg

"Dream with me for a moment," psychopharmacologist Ronald K. Siegel wrote in his 1989 magnum opus, Intoxication. "What would be wrong if we had perfectly safe intoxicants?" In Siegel's estimation, the desire to alter one's consciousness is a "fourth drive," a "natural part of our biology" that influences human behavior as much as hunger, thirst, and sex.

And if we can't suppress our desire to get high any more effectively than we can suppress our desire for breakfast, the University of California, Los Angeles, researcher reasoned, we should be trying to develop the safest intoxicants possible. A "perfumed mist that is as enjoyable as marijuana or tobacco but as harmless as clean air" is one variant Siegel imagined. A mood enhancer that is "more appealing than cocaine and less harmful than caffeine" is another.

Pipe dream? Certainly innovation has never been a part of the federal government's drug policy mandate. In 1986, in response to "designer drugs" intended to mimic the effects of heroin and other illegal drugs, Congress passed legislation making it illegal to produce substances that are "substantially similar," or chemical "analogues," to Schedule I and Schedule II drugs. Two years ago, in response to the growing popularity of widely available "legal highs" like Spice and K2, Congress got more specific, categorizing 26 synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinones as Schedule I substances. (Cathinone is an amphetamine-like alkaloid that is found in the Khat shrub.)

Even in times of low innovation, federal efforts to discourage the use of intoxicants have been an unmitigated disaster, costing billions, imprisoning millions, and doing little to diminish humanity's fundamental desire to alter its consciousness. And now that clandestine chemists are introducing new products nearly as fast as the craft-brewing industry--the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) says it identified 158 "new synthetic substances" in 2012 alone--the government's traditional suppress-and-control mind-set is beginning to look increasingly ineffective, wasteful, obsolete, and misguided.

But what if the federal government embraced Dr. Siegel's utopian vision? Imagine if, instead of trying to thwart the entrepreneurs behind products like "Bomb Marley Jungle Juice" and "AK-47 Cherry Popper," the ONDCP tried to actively incentivize them, by offering a billion-dollar prize to the first manufacturer who successfully produces the kind of safely...