Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists promote weight loss, suppressing appetite among other effects. Recent evidence suggests they may similarly placate desire when it comes to alcoholism and even problem gambling. This paper adds to the ethical consideration already given to the weight loss debates, by asking whether we are ready for such wider impacts, where such drugs and their descendants might be increasingly tuned to induce personal temperance and even societal docility. Aside from the money to be made by mass medicating, a more biddable populace could become a realisable dream, for authoritarians or degrowth environmental activists alike.
Edwin Jesudason (Wed,) studied this question.