In recent decades, humanity’s impact on the planet has been increasingly recognised as profound and the long story of the relationship between humans and nature on our ‘pale blue dot’ seems to have reached a new and deeply worrying chapter. Many believe we should understand ourselves as now living in a new epoch of geologic time, the Anthropocene. In the drug field, although some researchers have started to consider some of the environmental impacts of drug production, supply and consumption, there has been relatively little engagement with this broader notion of the Anthropocene and the vibrant critical debate it has generated across the social and natural sciences. Drawing on a new book project, this paper explores some analytical frames and focal questions to help us begin to set out a research agenda for this novel terrain of enquiry: what does the ‘drug question’ look like viewed through the lens of the Anthropocene? The paper concludes with some provocative thoughts about how this research agenda may require us to challenge and rethink some of the shibboleths in our field.