What is a "drug"?

Danilo Antón

Questions  of terminology

  Claiming that drugs kill is as foolish as saying 
that water drowns or drugs illuminate

One of the main problems in the drugs issues is the inadequate and arbitrary use of terminology. It shows the widespread ignorance that exists in this field.

In contemporary culture the word "hallucinogen" is used referring to all psychoactive plants. In fact, most of the compounds classified as illegal are not hallucinogens.

Another term frequently used is “narcotic". Paradoxically this expression applies to many substances whose effect is precisely the opposite, such as cocaine, which as we know is a central nervous system stimulant. Derived words as "narco" referred to smugglers or marketing of cocaine, are equally inadequate.

Another commonly used term, of rather vague meaning, is “stupefacients” (substances that cause stupor). The word "stupor" has two main meanings: a) astonishment b) numbness, insensitivity. From that point of view we can say that there are many drugs that produce "stupor" in either way, most of which can be legally used.

The very term "drug" is also quite general and inadequate to describe illegal compounds. Botanical drug pharmacology called “drug” simply the part of the plant used¹⁰. In a generic sense drug is a substance having biological effects on the body whose characteristics and intensity vary with the dose. In the first case it could also be called "medicine" and in the second case "poison". In fact, substances are not poison or medicines, only the dose are.

As for the quality of "addictive" attributed to certain banned substances, it is totally inappropriate. Many of the illegal "drugs" are not addictive, whereas there are a number of legal products that produce strong addictions.

In short, the vocabulary of prohibition is consistently vague and contradictory. The only reasons that determine the designation of a substance as an illicit drug are historical and cultural in nature and relate to irrational dogmatic qualifications promoted without any scientific basis.

In fact, to refer to this issue objectively, it is required to consider the relativity of the uses and effects of various psychoactive substances. Only in this way the conceptual precision required will be achieved in a reasonable manner.

Risk plants

With moderate consumption most psychoactive plants that are relatively harmless, but there are many others whose improper use may involve risks of negative side effects.

However, even the riskiest plants can be used safely if there is a traditional, usually ceremonial, harmonious and appropriate framework.

Unfortunately, prevailing prohibitionist societies have eliminated balanced ceremonial use of psychoactive plants and instead developed distorted consumption, both in terms of substance preparation and the social conditions in which they are used.

Paradoxically the most significant psychoactive plants, those whose use was a fundamental pillar of human societies were gradually eradicated from the global culture. Often they were banned and stigmatized..

In everyday reality, present humans, descendants of primates that fed on psychoactive substances, still need this type of food to nourish their minds, but they do not have them because the system has outlawed their consumption. Humans experience this absence as if they lack something that is difficult to identify, and individuals trying to fill that void tend to use substances that mimic the effects of the original principles, but that normally don't have the combination of elements and the social and natural environment necessary to ensure their ancestral effects.

The artificiality of nature is also expressed in the processes of industrialization and trivialization of the Master Plants: cocaine, morphine, heroin, LSD, distilled alcohol, are all substances arising from the individual need that is not met by the socially approved diets. The same system that represses the ancient substances is the same that create the new sinthetic ones. In a twisted logic, the global civilization generates its own demons, which then become its worst enemies.

While unsuccessfully pursuing these synthetic compounds, the global police system is raging in a relentless fight against the Master Plants, plant that dilute the ego and create a social and ethical environment of cooperation.

To better carry out their economic purposes industrial society promoted the substitution of banned substances for other products with properties more adjusted to the egocentric and aggressive nature of the dominant global society.

From the book "Drugs, Peoples and Serpents", Danilo Antón, ¨Piriguazú Ediciones.