The pharmacratic mentality favors generally more toxic substances: isolated elements in concentrated forms, whether derived from nature or synthetic, versus herbal compounds in dilute forms. It promotes a trend in general medical practice in much of the industrialized world since the early 1900s.
It’s not necessarily scientifically consistent, applying different standards to different substances with comparable and different uses. Coca leaf has comparable uses to that for Coffee and Tobacco leaf, with each containing small amounts of an alkaloid that for humans serves as a stimulant. Yet no one judges caffeine and nicotine by the standard used to condemn cocaine. Likewise those that would define any marijuana use as abuse would not do the same with the more toxic alternative of alcohol.
This encourages confusion and mis-information on the relative safety of these substances by distracting from the importance of the different forms of drugs:
- Dilute are the safest
- Concentrated the most dangerous.
It also distracts from the relative safety of the different substances.
- Coca
- Tea (caffeine-containing)
- Marijuana
- Opium
- Alcohol
- Tobacco- Bright Leaf (for cigarettes)
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