The following is an excerpt from p. 1-4 of the Introduction, “What is Drugism?” from my book, Drugism (2022):
The word drug comes from the Dutch word droog. Droog means dry or dried. The earliest drugs were dried plants and mushrooms. It is significant that the etymology of the word is Dutch. The Dutch figure prominently in the history of nearly every drug trade, from opium and tobacco in the 15 century to cannabis and MDMA today (not to mention cocaine, sugar, coffee, and all the others). Often, Dutch merchants have stood at the vanguard of emerging trends in drug use and commerce.
Not coincidentally, the Dutch were also pioneers of stock markets as well as the business structure that today we call corporations.[i] The Dutch East India Company, which traded various drugs, was one of the first joint stock corporations. It was preceded, by two years, by the British East India Company, another drug-trading corporation[ii]. In both cases, merchants pooled their resources with the shared goal of reaping profit. Both companies used drugs as a primary means through which those profits were realized.
That the word and concept of “drug” was developed by the same populations who created corporations and stock markets should not go unnoticed. Later, we will explore another fundamental connection between modern understandings of drug use and the history of commerce. First, however, this notion of drug itself requires some further examination.
Merriam-Webster has several definitions for drug. Most of them revolve around themes of medicine and disease. The first definition offered for drug is “a substance used as a medication or in the preparation of medication.” This sounds great but it does not actually explain what a drug is unless we have already agreed what substance and medication mean.
Substance, like drug, has multiple definitions. Most of them (“essential nature,” “ultimate reality,” etc.) are not especially helpful. The only definition of substance that has any relevance to the subject at hand itself uses the word drug to explain what substance means. (I know, weird, right?) Merriam-Webster defines substance as “something (such as drugs or alcoholic beverages[1]) deemed harmful and usually subject to legal restriction.”
If we are willing to look past the circular logic of these definitions, what emerges is the notion that a drug is something which is used as medicine but which is also deemed harmful. While this concept is itself rather meaningless (all medicines are harmful in sufficient doses), it reveals a core truth hovering beneath most discussions of drugs: that they are “deemed harmful.”
The idea of harmfulness has become integral to our collective consensus of what drugs are. In this sense, a more accurate definition of drug as it is used in common conversation might be “something which is used as medicine and which simultaneously has a reputation for being harmful.” When most people refer to drugs in daily conversation, they tend to mean substances which they, or others, believe are fundamentally harmful.
Similar logic is employed in Merriam-Webster’s second definition of drug: “something and often an illegal substance that causes addiction, habituation, or a marked change in consciousness.” It offers heroin as an example. This might seem more or less correct to many readers. However, we will see shortly how the very notion of “addiction” is itself problematic and only complicates any effort to define (or, for that matter, live with) drugs.
If we leave this aside and focus on the other qualities offered, what emerges are three potential characteristics of drugs: 1) they are often illegal; 2) they can be the subject of habitual behavior; and 3) they can cause changes in consciousness. Judging by the use of “often” and “or” in Merriam-Webster’s definition, we are left with the impression that something which meets any one of these criteria qualifies as a drug.
Unfortunately, this does not get us any closer to understanding what drugs are. For example, homosexuality is often illegal. Does that mean homosexuality qualifies as a drug? Cell phones can inspire habitual behavior. Are they drugs? What about light? As psychopharmacologist Richard DeGrandpre points out, light itself causes changes in consciousness.[iii] Is light a drug? Of course, most people would not recognize any of these things as drugs in common conversation, nor would scholars in technical discussion. The reason being, none of these things are substances.[iv]
Some astute readers may notice, however, that none of these definitions have anything to do with dryness or dried things. Modern notions of what drugs are have become entirely removed from the etymological origin of the word. Heroin, the premier example of a drug according to Merriam-Webster, is not a dried substance, but a highly refined molecule produced with laboratory equipment. Although heroin is typically produced from morphine, which itself comes from the dried opium poppy, there are countless other substances which are entirely synthetic—no dried plants involved whatsoever—and are nonetheless considered drugs.
Let us look at just one more definition offered by Merriam-Webster for drug: “a substance other than food intended to affect the structure or function of the body.” At first glance, this may seem satisfactory. However, a thorough study of drugs and food reveals that the distinction between the two is almost entirely imaginary and changes constantly.
If this seems far-fetched, consider the work of Harvey Wiley, a scholar and bureaucrat who was the primary force behind the Pure Food and Drugs Act and who laid the political groundwork for the creation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In Foods and Their Adulteration: Origin, Manufacture, and Composition of Food Products, Wiley argued that food is, itself, fundamentally social in nature. “It must not be considered,” wrote Wiley, “that mere nutrition is the sole object of foods.”[v] Instead, the social function of food is equally important as its nutritive value, according to Wiley.
This principle explains why people eat so-called “junk food”—food that is not nourishing but which, by way of social custom, is still created, sold, and consumed. Arguably, according to many of the above definitions, “junk food” could qualify as drugs. What might disqualify it, according to Merriam-Webster, is the fact that junk food is generally not used as medicine.
However, what if we consider sugar, a common ingredient in “junk food” which is rarely, if ever, consumed on its own as food? Sugar, astonishingly, meets nearly every, single criteria put forth by Merriam-Webster to define drugs. For centuries, sugar was used as a medicine. And still to this day is used “in the preparation of medication,” as in pills and tinctures. Additionally, growing numbers of people are learning of the harmful effects that sugar can produce. While it is not universally considered harmful, significant numbers of people do (accurately) consider it such. In this sense, sugar has been “deemed harmful.”
Moving on to the three qualities of drugs which we deduced from another Merriam-Webster definition, sugar meets two of them: although it is not often illegal, it can be the subject of habituation and definitely causes changes in consciousness. A technical reading then, of the above definitions, indicates that sugar is indeed a drug.