Re:Opium, Empire, and India
by chimeracoder on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @05:27PM
(#14045781)
> "Narcotic" means numbing
Just to be clear, for anyone else reading this, that's true in the etymological sense. But from a biological or pharmaceutical standpoint, 'narcotic' has a pretty narrower meaning, referring to a specific class of drugs (which tend to produce numbing effects, but not everything with numbing effects is a narcotic).
To make matters more confusing, law enforcement, on the other hand, uses 'narcotic' as synonymous with 'any illegal drug', whether or not it actually is a narcotic (in the biological sense) or has a narcotic effect (in the literal sense that you are referring to).
For example, the 'narcotics unit' will deal with cocaine, which is used as a topical anesthetic for numbing[0], but cocaine is very much not a narcotic from a medical standpoint.
[0] in theory, you could use cocaine for a root canal, but you're more likely to get Novocaine instead.
Just to be clear, for anyone else reading this, that's true in the etymological sense. But from a biological or pharmaceutical standpoint, 'narcotic' has a pretty narrower meaning, referring to a specific class of drugs (which tend to produce numbing effects, but not everything with numbing effects is a narcotic).
To make matters more confusing, law enforcement, on the other hand, uses 'narcotic' as synonymous with 'any illegal drug', whether or not it actually is a narcotic (in the biological sense) or has a narcotic effect (in the literal sense that you are referring to).
For example, the 'narcotics unit' will deal with cocaine, which is used as a topical anesthetic for numbing[0], but cocaine is very much not a narcotic from a medical standpoint.
[0] in theory, you could use cocaine for a root canal, but you're more likely to get Novocaine instead.