Drugs boosting concentration and memory will be in offices by 2030 – but only for rich people

Employers will offer substances which enhance cognitive abilities, while the have-nots will be left open to more health risks than ever

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The ambition and billions spent on trying to eradicate the use of drugs has proved pointless. Drugs are, and will continue to be popular. But what will change is the type of drugs we will use in the future, as well as how they will be taken, and why. The old staples heroin, cocaine and cannabis will continue to have their consumers, but amid widening inequalities in wealth, education and opportunity, drug use among the most deprived in society will increase.

This drug “ghettoisation” will grow as the harms of substances are felt most acutely by those who have the least, while those with social and material capital continue to be protected from the worst effects. We have already witnessed the way this plays out in the unequal distribution of and access to drugs used to manage pain. America consumes the largest share of the world’s opioid supply with a rate of use 2000 times higher than India, figures that are alarming for either country.

Alcohol and tobacco consumption adopted by developed countries in the west and passed onto developing nations in Africa and Asia over past decades will now be the template for various populations’ relationship with cocaine, opiates and benzodiazepines. And with it, will come more problems, such as blood-borne viruses and infections like Hepatitis C that the west has been tackling for years. Such risks aren’t far off. The expansion of drug use in developing countries has already been accelerated by easier modes of distribution and supply facilitated by the use of mobile phones and banking, providing equal access to drugs between both rural and urban areas. Unless the health infrastructure and investment match the rapid uptake of drug use in these populations, we could witness the same devastation witnessed with HIV in these countries.

An added issue in developing countries is the way land is prioritised for growing drugs, rather than food crops. As populations grow, such use of land at the expense of food production will inevitably amplify drug-related deaths in these populations. But even as the impact of drug production on the environment grows, minor expressions of concern in the west – such as we’ve seen in recent years – will do little to reverse the effects.

For western countries, an Uber-like disrupter will emerge. Price and availability have historically shaped changes in drug use. But this time disruption will be initiated by music and the pharmaceutical industry (think rap music and Xanax, or the influential role pharmaceuticals had in the prescribing habits of medics who began dishing out copious amounts of opiates in America and the ensuing havoc it wreaked). Money is seductive in shaping drug use, but in the near future, the way music influences its audiences to replicate the lifestyles and identity of those they loyally follow, will also have a much bigger impact.

Musicians and pharmaceuticals will be adept at recognising the needs of their respective markets. While the old staples of heroin, cocaine and benzodiazepines continue to provide self-medication to treat all manners of social disadvantages, those who aren’t struggling to survive will be serviced by these industries. Subtle but profound altered states will be sought, an example of this new high has started already with micro-dosing, which sees people use small amounts of a psychedelic drug to enhance psychological performance or to tune into a spiritual zone. The rising popularity of the tingling euphoria and relaxation sensations provided by Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) will be enhanced or produced by a range of psychoactive chemicals developed by pharmaceuticals and marketed by music.

Leisure work, for example, will be served by drugs known as nootropics, smart drugs which enhance cognitive abilities such as concentration, problem solving and memory. Employers will only consider people willing to use nootropics to increase their productivity, paradoxically employees will be penalised for a negative rather than a positive result. Nootropics will prove to be popular with older people, a rapidly growing segment of the population, who want to halt their cognitive decline and who need to keep working into their 70s and 80s as they won’t be able to afford to retire.

The search for new health treatments based on old drugs has already started with research exploring the use of psychedelics like LSD and Ketamine for depression, cannabis to treat psychosis and deep brain stimulation for alcohol addiction. Although the results of this early research look promising, if they do prove to be successful, they will only be made available to the haves, rather than the have nots.

One cast-iron guarantee is that we will continue the popular past time of panicking about drugs, think flesh-eating chemicals or monkey dust inducing superhuman strength. Predictably, these anxieties will distract from new records for drug-related deaths. And there is nothing to suggest that by 2030 we will be any more interested in or empathic about such tragedies in the future as we already struggle to be now.