In the Shadowrun games toxic magicians were the worst of the enemies especially when your player character was a Shaman with an animal totem. So, a Shaman with an Eagle totem was someone that had a magical talent and was able to connect through the astral space to birds and best to eagles. He or she was basically in trance and actively dreaming, but interacting with the physical world. The Character would act and think a lot like an eagle, he would be able to connect to birds to see through their eyes and be stronger in the presence of a forest that was home to some eagles than in a City Sprawl with hardly any birds at all. A toxic magician did the same magic, did healing or killing magic, but used drugs. The latter was most often on the rather junky side of behaviour and you faced loosing control of the Character when being to intoxicated.
The dark future worlds are full of synthetic drugs and most of them don’t do any good, at least in the long run. These drugs are super potent, super addictive and rule major parts of a world in darkness pretending to be shiny and bright.
Drug market runs were the most violent, but also most lucrative of all I created. Strip or ripp off runs (take it all including shoes or just credit and gear), protection runs, retaliation runs were all high payed, but the team was in business with an unreliable customer. The runner team usually was hired to take out a rivalling gang. Gangs were big. Huge in numbers. They controlled their turf and fought for it against other gangs that came in different attitudes and set ups, racist based on only one kind of human or meta human or on a city quarter they grew up in. They had deals and arrangements with Con Men that used them for their own interests. Another kind of run was a take out run to wipe an area of a gang being hired by a e.g. Con Men working for a Real Estate group that bought the territory and needed to get rid of the local gang, but did for undisclosed reasons not use their own Con forces, or a militia formed by residence trying to sleep in piece.
The difference between a gang and a runner team was that the runner team were hired guns, dark future mercenaries that operated in what was once the western civilised world and now pure constant changing militant chaos.
Most gangs quickly became victim of their own product and were most of the time busy with inner conflicts, while runners were professionals that struck in cold blood with military precisions using military scale equipment.
Today, U.S. bounty hunters are as close as it gets.
Today, there are basically two kind of drugs. Legal and illegal. Prescription drug abuse from a doc or patient is way more common than most realise and Corona is most dangerous for all those that kept hitting that doctor creating a long doctors medical record.
The illegal once are usually called recreational and narcotics. That does not quite hit it. Soft and Hard drugs is a lot more accurate.
Soft drugs are alcohol below distilled products and plants directly consumed, while all hard drugs are chemical extracts from plants or straight forward mixtures of chemical substances.
In the opposite way that a heard broken man kills his sorrows at a bar by whisky as a focus to get through the misery by getting deeper into it using the alcohol to feel the pain and cope with it, a heroin addict shoots himself away from feeling anything around him, but the drug. The first is a recreational drug the latter a narcotic and both turn leathel if used constantly. Instead: "Accept pain!" Tylor Durdan, founder of the Fight Club movement.
In this world the drug market is illegal and therefore controlled by law enforcement using punishment while in the dark future world it is pure anarchy, because there might be a militia using Police uniforms, but nations are gone and so they will miss back up at some point down the ammunition supply.
The bad today sell low quality drugs and drugs that will have negative impact on your health. MDMA is bad for you in the long run, while those cocktails are way easier to deal with for all major parts of your body.
And the good?
The scary part is that I have not heard about any good in the drug business and therefore this all might turn Cyberpunk widespread even here. In Mexico those Shadowrun scenarios I created are on the weapons used level already real, every day.
The media is full of even Weed dealers using major force and having a bad guy attitude, while due to the local intense police surveillance of teenagers during the techno movement creating massive problems with quite bad MDMA pills about 20 years ago here in hells kitchen weed business turned trusted deals and underground coffee shops.
Back than an underground coffee shop was usually based on direct Dutch supply having at least a small selection of the Dutch finest imported directly being sober on indirect routes or night rides on bikes, but pretty much all the time sticking to the speed limit keeping a low profile. To keep the neighbours off the phone, the atmosphere was quiet and the air accompanied by ideally food smell from the kitchen or smell sticks, having the guests stay for at least a few hours serving food for an approprate up payment or left overs, stressing the record collection enjoying good conversations, beside the latest gossip and self made air filters cutting down the smell mix further to neighberhood appropriate levels and some even had that Sega thing running constantly. Nobody left with more than a little pack beyond the 50 bugs value or they were referred to a delivery services which was run by an affiliated MOD cell. MODs were the opposite of Rockers in Great Britain of the 60ies that tried to blend into society instead of opponing society, but noone called himself a MOD really, I think, not even those on the Vespa PX80ies, all polished, I admired.
Most of these shops never got busted, but just got out of business when the future wife moved in and priorities changed. If any of the guests was busted they all were equipped with an official location they had bought it. The train station here in hells kitchen, where actually only the ripp offs were hanging out. So, yeah, importing using the train station was no good idea.
There was no space for hard drugs in pretty much all coffee shops that stayed active for more than six months in the area and that business was run by others. MDMA is not the Ecstasy from back in the 60ies, but a crystal meth comparable meta amphetamine, while in the 60ies an acid was sold. I believe it was MDA which was also used for therapeutic reasons as an anti-depressant.
There is a forgotten soft drug from back in the 60ies when the Hippies partied that makes you euphoric based on glucose like Dextro Energy mixed with concentrated Citrus juice pressed quite strongly using a garlic press to change the chemical formula, but it is a soft drug and only has an impact on rather healthy people while E junks and koke heads hardly feel an impact. Back in my days that was free of charge for the girls most of the time that considered the available high potent hash to strong already.
Of course that gram was hardly below 13 German Mark ever, but considering the risk taken only a stupid would buy bad quality.
A runner team in the Cyberpunk world might had to protect a cell system against intruders from the Sprawl trying to take over the market with force and bad quality drugs by counter attacking the aggressor straight at their home. Something the kids and youngsters of the Con Slaves were not able to do, but well able to finance.
That would be a kill spree run delivering a message, well payed 'caus save payed including a possible save harbour for the important resting time in between runs of the one or the other runner. Runners are actually loners that meet up with their team or keep swapping teams and many blend into their neighbourhood especially if they don’t like runs starting with “Knock. Knock”, but enjoed keeping the action focused especilly, if the well made plan based on the facts the Game Master hit the fan.
