Difference Between Drug, Medicine, Hard And Soft Drugs

What is drug? What is medicine? What is hard or soft drug? What do they contain? This is the most confusing topic in pharmacy school behind the difference between pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics, side/adverse effects and pharmacists council of Nigeria/pharmaceutical society of Nigeria. There are several blogs that have come out to explain the later but few have touchdown on that of drugs and medicine. 

Drug and medicine

Drug And Medicine

Drug is derived from the Greek word 'pharmakon' which means drug. On the other hand, medicine is derived from a Latin word 'medicus' which means healing or physician. In pharmacy, the word drug is used for a substance that acts on the living body altering the physiological process and is used for prevention, diagnosis, control and treatment of disease.

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We see medicine as a formulated drug having a definite dosage and dose which is used for the prevention, diagnosis, control and treatment of diseases.

To understand these definitions better, let us look at life scenarios. Acetaminophen is a drug. It is used to treat high body temperature, body pains and headache. On the other hand, Tylenol or Panadol is a medicine containing acetaminophen as one of its numerous ingredients. From this, we can see that while acetaminophen is a simple compound, the Panadol or Tylenol is a combination of acetaminophen at a definite dosage and other compounds called excipients at definite quantity. The excipients play various roles to enhance other aspects of the acetaminophen.

The acetaminophen is called the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API). Drugs are API but medicine contains one or more API with other excipients. To summarize it better, all drugs are medicine but not all medicine are drugs. And as drug experts, we only prescribe medicines to patients. You can only see drugs in a pharmaceutical industry.

Hard And Soft Drugs

I know the definition above have altered what most people think about drug and medicine. I know Nigerians don't attribute that word to include cocaine and other illegal compounds.

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Yes, cocaine and it's family are called drugs in pharmacy. But since they are not medicine, they cannot be prescribed to patients. They are illegal. And there is no medicine containing cocaine as an API yet.

Some people who want to talk about it in public use the term hard or soft drug to help differentiate it from drug or medicine. They say hard and soft drugs are compounds that are dangerous and cause compulsive cravings . To them, cocaine is hard drug and compounds like cannabis are soft drug. To them, a little dose of hard drug have more euphoria effect to same quantity of a soft drug. That term when applied to drugs have no legal or pharmaceutical validity.

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