> During the 20th century, people generally knew that drugs meant illegal substances, purchased clandestinely with cash and clearly distinguished from medications, which might also be psychoactive, but required a doctor’s prescription. In today’s chaotic marketplace, the idea of drugs as a social evil and the belief that only doctors define what is medical is being challenged.<p>What's going on now seems to me less like some decline into hedonism and more like a reversion to pre-20th century norms. Drug use and drug regulation are not new phenomena, and have gone through many cycles of being lauded and being shunned in every culture to encounter them since prehistoric times. Now, we're seemingly going to come out of a restrictive phase for some drugs (marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, amphetamines), while others are entering a new one (tobacco/nicotine, opioids).