Drug question

The other day a fellow I know had a life-threatening psychotic episode when what he thought was simple marijuana turned out to have been souped up with PCP, which interacted very badly with the meds he was taking. His family restrained him and got him to ER, and he recovered OK. You might build that into a case for legalization, on the grounds that it would allow quality control regulation, but I have an ugly suspicion that there'd still be a black market in the "wild" stuff.

A friend called the police about Tony Robinson because he was worried about Tony; another said he wasn't acting like himself.

I haven't heard any toxicology reports yet, but I wonder.

I gather the "bath salts" are designer drugs, though I've no good idea who designed them. I presume they were designed to create a powerful or long-lasting "high." If I were the chemist I'd be pretty nervous about using trial and error on myself with such things, so probably the alpha testers are unsuspecting addicts.

There've been some odd deaths popping up in the news, some suicides, some unexpectedly crazy behavior, and a convenient murder now and then.

I started wondering if somebody had designed drugs to induce overwhelming depression.

There will always be hidden suicidal problems in some percentage of the population, and it is possible--arguably likely--that the semi-prominent include a higher percentage. And, to complicate matters, cultural pressures aren't the same now as 30 years ago, so it isn't easy to compare statistics from different eras. I conclude that it wouldn't be easy to figure out if someone was weaponizing such drugs.

Where would you look to find out? Russia might be a good place to start. They've the resources to develop the tools, and an adequate supply of ruthlessness. I don't know if the extra level of deniability outweighs the salutary terrorizing effect for Putin, though, so maybe for domestic dissidents he'd still use thugs. But overseas would be a different matter. If Russian opponents overseas started killing themselves at a surprising rate that might be a clue. Or high suicide rates in Chechnya.