[muawiyah]

Still, your typical cartel manager is the type of guy who's going to go out and hire junkie scientists because he can get them for a pile of coke a week.

There's nothing cool about a narcotrafficante.

[somniferum]

Oh, no doubt about that. However, if faced with extinction by a 'silver bullet' technology such as you are describing, the multi-billion dollar industry (the people at the top of it anyway) would probably commit significant resources to overcoming the technology.