Not really. Some of our founding fathers were daily opium and laudanum users. They used to sell opium on grocery store shelves before being outlawed in the early 1900's. People weren't walking around in a zombie-like state in the streets of America, however.
The chinese have used opium since recorded history and some have attribute this to their general longevity.
The use of drugs such as opium and coca (cocaine derivitives) is older than literature. Not to mention the various psychedelics that Native Americans, Aborginals, Africans, etc have used for centuries.
"Drugs", of which can be defined as almost everything one eats, smokes or drinks ... is almost as old as the totality of history itself.
People weren't walking around in a zombie-like state in the streets of America, however. That was the point.
The chinese have used opium since recorded history and some have attribute this to their general longevity. This is why I was careful to refer not to mankind but to this culture. It well may be, and I too usually point that out as uou did, the equilibrium in Chinese culture is opposite.
Regardless of that matter, however, this does not apply to this culture.
"Drugs", of which can be defined as almost everything Surely. Bread can be (re)defined as anything as well. We can agree to refer to a particular kind of paper as "bread;" or to tanks; or to buildings.
The question is not of syntax here but of semantics. Drugs are substances used for medical intervention. Only recently was the other meaning added to the dictionaries.
"Unrestricted distribution by physicians and pharmacies created an enormous drug abuse problem; in 1924 federal narcotics officials estimated that there were 200,000 addicts in the United States, and the deputy police commissioner of New York reported that 94 percent of all drug addicts arrested for various crimes were heroin users. The growing dimensions of heroin addiction finally convinced authorities that heroin's liabilities outweighed its medical merits, and in 1924 both houses of Congress unanimously passed legislation outlawing the import or manufacture of heroin."
-- drugtext.org, Heroin: The History of a "Miracle Drug"