“"Designer drugs" are a word bag, just like "drugs", by the way. But after the word "drugs" is the word: "illegal". And after the "designer drugs" there is something much worse: lack of knowledge.”

which is understandable given today's noxious street drugs and their uninspiring medical counterparts. Yet even academics and intellectuals in our society typically take the prototypical dumb drug, ethyl alcohol. If it's socially acceptable to take a drug that makes you temporarily happy and stupid, then why not rationally design drugs to make people perpetually happier and smarter? Presumably, in order to limit abuse-potential, one would want any ideal pleasure drug to be akin - in one limited but important sense - to nicotine, where the smoker's brain finely calibrates its optimal level: there is no uncontrolled dose-escalation.

" The Abolitionist Project https://www.abolitionist.com/", Talks given at the FHI (Oxford University) and the Charity International Happiness Conference, 2007

Deadbeat Hero (2004)

Speech, quoted in The Times (February 15, 1923).
Other works
Variant: Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

The War On Drugs Is Lost (1995)

A Big, Steaming Pile Of Me

The War On Drugs Is Lost (1995)

“Transcript of Judge James P. Gray's Visit to the Drug Policy Forum,” The New York Times, (June 14, 2001)

"Science Fiction and a World in Crisis" in Science Fiction: Today and Tomorrow (1974) edited by Reginald Bretnor
General sources
Context: The current utopian ideal being touted by people as politically diverse (on the surface, but not underneath) as President Richard M. Nixon and Senator Edward M. Kennedy goes as follows — no deeds of passion allowed, no geniuses, no criminals, no imaginative creators of the new. Satisfaction may be gained only in carefully limited social interactions, in living off the great works of the past. There must be limits to any excitement. Drug yourself into a placid "norm." Moderation is the key word…