Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
drug(s) (n.)
Unless context automatically removes any doubt, make very sure that your reader knows whether you mean prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs, illegal drugs, or whatever. And note that prescription drugs can sometimes be obtained illegally. Note too that we have several compounds with the word drug: drugstore has been with us for generations, but drug culture and drug paraphernalia and the like have jumped up like weeds in the past three decades, bringing into the media and the entertainment world parts of an argot once limited to the underground world of drug users, drug addicts, drug sellers, drug pushers, and the like. Meantime the worlds of medicine and pharmacology are equally industrious at providing us with new words and meanings as they seek, through new drugs, to defeat disease and to make life better or longer or both.
