But what’s meant by drugs is a big umbrella and depends on context and nuance.
The way the media is using drugs here is along these lines.
drugs - something and often an illegal substance that causes addiction, habituation (see habituation sense 2b), or a marked change in consciousness
to be drugged - to affect (a person or animal) with a drug (see drug entry 1) especially : to stupefy (someone) by an intoxicating drug
They don’t mean Australia seized medicine or something that could be medicine. They mean the State seized drugs that drug people. Of those two drugs they seized, only one I ever watched first hand destroy lives and the other I mostly saw help people. One, in my opinion and within the context of the article is a ‘drug’. As in, something that drugs people or makes them stupid.
This imprecise language I believe to be intentional on the part of the State. Because the purpose of the drug war, at least in the U.S., is mostly about control and political violence and not based on the medical definition.
a substance used as a medication or in the preparation of medication
What I’m trying to turn you onto isn’t a semantic debate, but the propaganda I am seeing around this word. And how that propaganda shapes our narratives and the world around us.