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Perhaps changing our perspectives of culture/counterculture can be a push towards a greater acceptance of neurodiversity, and with which could be a push to drop the negative connotations associated with cultures that actively accept drugs deemed by certain elites as taboo.  I agree completely that we cannot discount the contributions made by "drug culture" and with this I am including not only the musical contributions but also the literary contributions of writers whose works have been accepted by the mainstream culture.  I'm sure Kerouac, Huxley, Carroll, and Coleridge would have been deemed counter-culture by our standards today, but we still accept their products as literary genius.  I'm not saying that every tenth grader trying to write a short story for class should go "dragon chasing" but am rather simply agreeing with Ian's point that these great works, products of illicit drug use, are immutably important to our culture.  We should shift our definitions of illicit, as well as automatically making any drug used recreationally illegal, though I suppose this doesn't happen if the drug is already being produced by company turning a profit (example: Robatussin).  I am also not saying that some drugs should not be considered illegal; (pcp should not be allowed for recreational use) however, the deliberation to decide which drugs should be illegal should be less knee-jerk and more deliberate.  Societies have valued mind altering substances for millennia, but why is alcohol the only drug that is acceptable currently?  How did this happen?

 I also think it should be much easier for researchers to conduct research on drugs, as some might not only hold insight into the drugs themselves but also into the brain itself.  It seems quite unreasonable that we can make something illegal to research before it has been thoroughly researched.