Over the last century and a half, the term ‘drug’ has been assigned an insupportable burden of classificatory and moral labour, defining – in public, legal and health discourses – certain substances and products in relation to the intended purposes and effects of their consumption. As pharmacologist and medicines policy consultant Andy Gray has observed, formal attempts to establish binary categories of classification have been ongoing. For example, identifying one pivotal date:

中文翻译：

---

召集人的特刊序言：“南部非洲的毒品制度”

在过去的一个半世纪里，“药物”一词被赋予了难以承受的分类和道德劳动的负担，在公共、法律和健康话语中定义了与预期目的和消费效果相关的某些物质和产品. 正如药理学家和药物政策顾问 Andy Gray 所观察到的，建立二元分类的正式尝试一直在进行中。例如，确定一个关键日期：