The prospect of printing drugs and pharmacological
chemicals is considered to be of prodigious importance
[10]. Countries around the world are still struggling to
deal with the prescription drug abuse epidemic, along
with the designer drugs phenomenon. Things are only
going to get worse with the advances in 3D designer
drug printing. The most common designer drugs are
derivatives of an existing drug’s chemical structure. With
3D designer drug printing, these will typically become
available and sold online. The 3D printing variation uses
techniques such as Dr. Lee Cronin’s “Chemputer” which
can create medicine by assembling chemical compounds
at a molecular level. This technique could allow for the
creation of drugs that have similar effects as illicit drugs,
but which legally go under the radar, and are described
as “legal highs.” In the future, access to an illicit drug file
could be as simple as accessing an illegal movie or music
file from Bit Torrent. There will be no easy fix to this
foreseeable problem. For example, a digital rights management
approach could be applied to prevent printers
from recognizing 3D files for illicit drugs but in reality that
mechanism has not worked well for the entertainment
industry today.