[gowld]

That's not quite right. Legislators certainly can keep up; all they need to do pass a broad ban on chemicals with the undesired empirical properties.

[rhizome]

You can't legislate a state of mind, and people have different reactions to different substances, so I'm a little confused as to what form this "broad ban" would take.

[soundwave106]

The United States has a "broad ban" in place called the Federal Analogue Act -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analogue_Act

The definition is "not 100% exact" in its nature, but dealers have been prosecuted and sent to prison for violating this.

It's also possible to apply broad bans to Markush structures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_scheduling_of_synth...), which is how I understand some places attempt to regulate synthetic cannabinoids and other broad classes of chemicals.

(Keep in mind these laws do not apply to fentanyl -- in the United States, fentanyl is schedule II and is available as prescription medicine. Illicit fentanyl is more "illegal drug market" than "research chemicals"; cocaine is in the same boat in the US as well, a schedule II drug that's available on the illicit market. The above might apply to any fentanyl analogues though.)

[DanBC]

Here: The Psychoactive Substances Act 2016.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/2/contents/enacted

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_Substances_Act_20...

But also the UK has rapid powers to add a substance to the schedule in the Misuse of Drugs Act. Here's a recent list: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/controlled-drugs-...

Here's schedule 2. I don't know how often this gets updated: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/38/schedule/2

> You can't legislate a state of mind,

You can legislate "intoxication", although the methods for doing so are pretty crude at the moment.

[toomanybeersies]

Well here's one: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2013/0053/latest/D...

The Psychoactive Substances Act 2013 was introduced in NZ after its failed experiment with legalising synthetic highs. I don't necessarily agree with the act, but it basically is a "broad ban" of new recreational drugs.

[maxerickson]

Just ban chemicals that interact with certain receptors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin_receptor_agonist#5-H...

[sannee]

That's extremely non-selective - for instance [1] is a random paper discussing ethanol interacting with the 5-HT2A receptors (at least if you are a male rat that is).

It would likely also lead to unforeseen consequences. For example, the Czech government attempted to ban growing Phalaris, but had to backpedal as it's a common unassuming weed.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9347073

[chris_va]

You could always ban the chemical scaffold.