Definition
Plural of drug. In legal contexts, the word "drugs" operates across at least three distinct and largely non-overlapping legal frameworks, each defining the term for its own purposes.
1. Controlled substances. In criminal law and drug enforcement, "drugs" typically refers to substances regulated under federal and state controlled substances acts — narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, anabolic steroids, and precursor chemicals classified into schedules based on abuse potential and accepted medical use. This is the dominant modern legal meaning and the sense most often intended when statutes, indictments, or law enforcement materials use the word without qualification.
2. Pharmaceutical and medicinal substances. In regulatory and commercial law, "drugs" encompasses articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or intended to affect the structure or function of the body. This is the definition used by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act framework and governs FDA jurisdiction over prescription and over-the-counter products.
3. Trade and commercial goods. In older mercantile, insurance, and contract law, "drugs" referred broadly to raw or processed substances used in medicine, dyeing, or chemical operations — a category that could include what modern law would classify as ordinary commodities, chemicals, or agricultural products.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of drug. In everyday speech, "drugs" most often means either pharmaceutical medications or illegal narcotic and psychoactive substances, depending on context.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Substances used in medicine, dyeing, or chemical operations; also loosely, any commodity that moves slowly in trade ("a drug on the market").
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant in two directions. First, historically, "drugs" in commercial and insurance contexts swept in substances — saltpeter, benzine, dyestuffs — that ordinary speakers today would never call drugs. Second, in modern criminal law, "drugs" is a term of art pointing to a specific statutory schedule; whether a particular substance qualifies as a controlled substance is a legal determination, not a popular one, and the answer has changed repeatedly as scheduling decisions are revised.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Controlled substances: Substances scheduled under the Controlled Substances Act or state analogs; possession, distribution, and manufacture are criminally regulated.
Prescription drugs: Pharmaceutical substances requiring physician authorization; subject to FDA approval and labeling requirements.
Over-the-counter drugs: Pharmaceutical substances approved for sale without prescription; separately regulated by FDA.
Drug analogs/designer drugs: Substances chemically similar to scheduled drugs; subject to analog provisions of federal law.
Precursor chemicals: Substances used in the manufacture of controlled substances; independently regulated even when not themselves controlled.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a trap for the historically careless researcher. Before the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — before the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act (1914), the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (1938), and the Controlled Substances Act (1970) — "drugs" in legal materials almost always meant commercial or medicinal substances in the broad Bouvier sense. An insurance case from 1879 asking whether saltpeter is a "drug" is not a criminal case; it is a coverage dispute about commodity classification. Researchers pulling historical sources on "drugs" who are actually seeking criminal law materials will find themselves reading pharmacopeia cases, Sunday trading prosecutions, and druggist licensing disputes.
Conversely, researchers using modern criminal law sources should be alert to the fact that the statutory definition of what qualifies as a controlled substance changes with each scheduling action. A substance that was unscheduled in 1995 may be a Schedule I controlled substance today, and vice versa. The corpus will reflect those changes unevenly.
Jurisdictional variation matters considerably. State controlled substances acts frequently diverge from the federal schedules — some states schedule substances the federal government does not, and state analog provisions vary widely. A research trail that works cleanly in federal criminal materials may be unreliable when applied to state prosecutions.
The three encyclopedia cross-references — drug conspiracy, drug manufacturing, and FDA regulation — occupy entirely different legal universes despite sharing the word "drugs." Do not treat them as continuous legal territory.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's entry is brief and firmly anchored in the commercial-medicinal meaning. It notes that "drugs and medicines" in insurance policies include saltpeter — a result that would surprise a modern reader who associates drugs exclusively with pharmaceuticals or controlled substances. The entry also flags that whether benzine qualifies as a drug was treated as a question of fact for the jury, illustrating that even in the nineteenth century the category's edges were contested.
What Bouvier does not address — and could not — is the criminal regulation of drugs, which had barely begun to develop at the time the major editions were compiled. The entire modern apparatus of controlled substances law, scheduling, and drug offense prosecution is absent from the historical dictionary record. Researchers should treat Bouvier and comparable historical sources as authoritative for commercial and medicinal meanings but as silent on the criminal and regulatory frameworks that now dominate the term's legal use.
Jurisdictional Note
Federal and state controlled substances schedules frequently differ. Several states have enacted scheduling statutes that include substances not federally scheduled, and state analog act provisions are not uniform. For pharmaceutical regulation, FDA jurisdiction is federal, but states independently license pharmacists and regulate dispensing practices.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Drug Conspiracy (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
Drug Manufacturing and Cultivation (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — Drug and Device Approval and Regulation (The Law Mind Administrative Law & Government Encyclopedia)