When I use a word . . . The languages of medicines—defining a street drug operationally

Defining street drugsI have previously discussed the difficulties in coining a dictionary-type definition of the term “street drug,”1 largely because there are two problems with the term: one is the word “street” and the other is the word “drug.”On the streetStreet names are colloquial names that some drugs are given. The definition that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives for the street name of a street drug is “the (slang or colloquial) name under which a drug is known or sold on the street.” This implies that if a drug has a colloquial name it must be a street drug. But street drugs need not be sold at all, and even if sold the sale need not occur on or in the street. You might, for example, obtain a street drug in a park, or in a room in an apartment block, or in some other comparable place, or via…
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