Drugs are neither good nor evil

Psychoactive drugs are agents with significant potential, intriguing in their complexity and powerful in their effects. However, the moral valence often attributed to these effects – whether positive or negative – is not an intrinsic property of the drugs themselves. Instead, it is attributed by humans, for whom it is shaped by the surrounding context, including socio-cultural factors, specific circumstances, and the intentions of those administering or experimenting with them. The present study uses natural language processing to perform sentiment mining across research paper abstracts indexed by PubMed. The retrieved articles were published in English after the drug prohibition instantiated by the Controlled Substances Act, between 1970-2023, in relation to either psychedelics, cannabis, cocaine, MDMA, heroin, and ketamine. The results suggest that discussions in scientific literature related to drugs tend to be toned in a neutral fashion. This neutrality underscores the notion that our perceptions and attitudes towards drugs are more a reflection of societal norms, changing times and potentially interpretations of scientific findings rather than a product of scientific discourse per se. This perspective opens up a philosophical inquiry: Is it feasible or even meaningful to classify drugs as inherently good or bad? In contemplating this question, it becomes apparent that the moral framing of drugs is largely a human construct, influenced by various external factors. The challenge, then, is to disentangle these subjective interpretations from the objective properties of the drugs, fostering a more nuanced understanding that acknowledges both the complexity of drug effects as well as the powerful role of context in shaping our perceptions and experiences.