Drug is any substance presented for treating, curing or preventing disease in human beings or in animals.It may also be used for making a medical diagnosis or for restoring, correcting, or modifying physiological functions.
In medicinal chemistry, the chemist attempts to design and synthesize a
pharmaceutical agent that has a desired biological effect on the human body or
some other living system. Such a compound could also be called a 'drug', but
this is a word that many scientists dislike because society views the term with
suspicion.
With media headlines such as 'Drugs Menace’ or 'Drug Addiction Sweeps City
Streets’ this is hardly surprising.
•However, it suggests that a distinction can be drawn between drugs that are
used in medicine and drugs that are abused.
• Is this really true? Can we draw a neat line between 'good drugs' like penicillin
and 'bad drugs' like heroin?
• If so, how do we define what is meant by a good drug or a bad drug in the first
place? Where would we place a so called social drug like cannabis in this divide?
What about nicotine, or alcohol?
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