Abstract
‘What can we expect in the future?’ considers changing attitudes to drugs in the 21st century, the current pharmaceutical industry, and the rise of personalized medicines as a result of a greater understanding of the genetic and molecular basis of diseases and lower costs of DNA sequencing. Public attitudes to both medicinal and recreational drugs are changing: the easy availability of information and misinformation on the Internet is affecting vaccination rates in children, patients are researching new drugs, and there is a growing movement towards legalizing cannabis. The escalating costs of new medicines often makes them too expensive for most European health services and out of reach of developing countries.
