If all the varieties of illicit drugs in the world were lined up for sale, they would easily outnumber the wines in your local supermarket. When it comes to choice, drug users have never had it so good.

New substances are rolling off secret production lines at an exponential rate.

American chemist Alexander Shulgin says Western scientists knew of only two psychedelic compounds 100 years ago: cannabis and mescaline. By the 1950s, the number was 20. Now there are well over 200, he told the New York Times this year.

Shulgin should know. Devotees call him Dr Ecstasy in honour of the drug MDMA he introduced to the world in the 1970s.

Throughout a remarkable career which has made him an idol to the dance culture and a villain to the law, the 79-year-old Californian figures that he has created about 200 psychedelic substances, assiduously cataloguing their chemical make-ups and effects.

Each of the drugs Shulgin has produced, he has tested on himself and his wife, Ann, a writer and researcher who was born in New Zealand.

His aim has been to discover tools to explore the human mind in psychotherapy. He has done nothing illegal because the substances he concocted did not exist until he produced them.

Inevitably, his compounds have been snapped up and exploited by drug dealers and manufacturers. His writings have become best-selling cookbooks in clandestine laboratories around the world.

Drugs are like any other commodity. They are subject to many of the same processes as the stock that lines the shelves at The Warehouse, Briscoes or on High St: product development, marketing strategies, pricing controls, the battle for market share. But for these products the anti-market forces are the law.

So when a new product is developed, those in the business look to exploit it. Why wouldn’t they, when there is an insatiable market?

Shulgin’s creations cross the New Zealand border regularly as others profit from his life’s work. Examples make their way to the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) where a team specialises in analysing the array of drugs on the New Zealand market and identifying any new ones.

About 1500 cases a year arrive at the ESR’s Auckland centre, two hospital block-like buildings. Substances seized by the police or Customs and sent for analysis can range from shipments several kilograms heavy to deals in small snaplock bags.

Each is treated in the same, careful manner: removed from the bag, described and weighed. Then the substance undergoes several tests designed to chemically identify it.

The most common tool is called GCMS, a two-step process which combines a separation technique and fragmentation of the molecule to produce a characteristic pattern for a specific drug.