Absolutely not my point. In fact, properly administered IV opiates have less long term damages of administered in than alcohol. (Pill-form opiates of the non-paracemetol fashion have no chance of liver cirrhosis, and the withdrawal has no potential to kill you, unlike sucking down two quarts of plastic vodka a day for 2 weeks then stopping cold.)
There were political benefits to scaremongering tons of drugs into illegality, economic benefits of keeping them illegal (should, say, 5mg generic Perocets enter into CVS tomorrow as over-the-counter and/or on-the-shelf drugs, petty theft might go up [much like I'm sure Robotussin is stolen frequently by high-schoolers who can't find someone to buy them booze]) would put tons of people out of work. There goes a significant part of the DEA (from those out in the field to those who push papers) along with the politicians who made their name during the Reagan-just-say-no-years, the extra police who were hired in more-or-less crimeless-suburbia to deal with some 16 year olds half-gram of weed, the attorneys who prosecute them, the defense contractors who make an excess of tanks in order to give those suburban law enforcers tanks[1].
My overall point was that opioids are a magnitude safer than DIY brain-hacking, if only due to the well-explored terrain of the analgesic properties of the narcotic (which, again, was the point of the article). "Even us neuroscientists/neurologists with extensive graduate school/residencies/fellowships and years of experience still don't know what the long-term effects are when we properly administer controlled dosages of current via well-placed electrodes on your skull. Please don't try to 'hack' your brain."
Sidebar, I'm not a medical doctor but every every grandfather, uncle (except one who went into mathematics as I did), and father all have been practicing MD's (including two neurologists), MD/PhDs, or PhDs in specifically drug design for evil-bigpharma). Drug design is basically 'throw a lot of junk at the wall and see what doesn't kill mice, oh god please make it to at least phase 1". Specifically, we're going to effectively look at our understanding of the brain and compare it to the crudity of surgery during the Civil War. The brain is an amazing thing - don't attach electrodes to it and try to modify its behavior until 'brain hacking' has been well-explored terrain.
