Pharmacological Determinism
The flawed assumption that a substance's legal status is directly proportional to its biological toxicity or addictive liability.
From Greek 'pharmakon' (drug, poison) + 'logos' (study) + Latin 'determinare' (to enclose, limit).
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Dual Nuance AnalysisUsed in drug policy critiques to dismantle the fiction that scheduled controlled substances are strictly categorized by medical harm.
“Sociologists challenge pharmacological determinism by noting alcohol causes more systemic organ damage than many Schedule I compounds.”
Deconstructing drug enforcement history: demonstrating how racial, economic, and moral panics dictated drug scheduling far more than receptor pharmacology.
“A rigorous taxonomy of intoxicants rejects pharmacological determinism, treating vice scheduling as political theater rather than clinical science.”
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Historical Taxonomy of American Intoxicants: Native Roots, Synthetics, and Regulatory Drift
...dels lag behind novel synthetic analogs by several decades; pharmacological determinism refutes the moralized narrative of prohibition by revealing economic and labor motivation...
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