Trope-a-Day: Government Drug Enforcement
No, the other kind….
Government Drug Enforcement: Well, it’s not unknown. The Equality Concord – you see what I meant under Generican Empire? – used to use a variety of interesting pharmaceutical cocktails before they figured out that the right kind of neuroprosthesis worked even better for enforcing the requisite egalitarianism, and it’s not like they’re the only obnoxious pharmacrats out there.
The Empire, of course, doesn’t touch this any more than it does anything else unpleasantly mandate-y. On subvariants of the trope, while it’s not Super Serum, it is true that the members of the Imperial Military Service use a variety of combat drugs [1]; but seriously, it’s not like every other profession doesn’t, quite voluntarily (nootropics, mnemotropins, a few hundred other specific combinations by way of neurochemistry, etc., management… mostly manufactured by technocytes right there in the brain and body, just like regular neurotransmitters and hormones), since after all, proper management of brain and body is important. Better living through chemistry, folks!
[1] While it doesn’t work nearly so well with citizen-soldiers when you don’t have, y’know, off-site immortality backups, when you do have those things, it is really awfully nice to be able to field legions who are functionally immune to pain, fear, fatigue, and combat stress – at least long enough to get the mission done.