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at least a dozen quite mundane flora species on hand that they can refine in the kitchens into potent drugs

As a keen gardener and botanist, yes indeed, including many still used in medicine.
But I suspect that you are the only person who classifies Almonds and Cloves as drugs in the normal usage of the word. Even in our current health and safety mad country neither is banned, regulated, nor carries a health warning, unlike tobacco and alcohol.
Almonds indeed are sold as health food and snacks with fruit and nuts.

Roy.

Digit wrote:Even in our current health and safety mad country neither is banned, regulated, nor carries a health warning, unlike tobacco and alcohol.
Almonds indeed are sold as health food and snacks with fruit and nuts.

Which clearly demonstrates how absurd, impossible, biased, random and fashionable our drug legislation is, doesn't it? It's based purely on culture. Not on reality. In contemporary lingo: it's driven by the hype du jour. So what else is new?

Digit, i actually have to support RS here. Yes, cloves are very powerful when smoked w/o tobacco. Even in "clove cigarettes" which are mostly tobacco the extra effect of the clove is readily apparent...at least to someone with a experienced palette for that sort of thing. Cloves can get you high.

Almonds are a different story. You wouldn't know by looking at today's recipe, but even 15-20 years ago there was one flavor in Dr. Pepper, not this 23 BS the commercials here rave about. That was benzaldehyde. Oil of Almonds. i miss the old Dr. Pepper. The only other way i've experienced anything from almonds was again through the oil. A company in the town i used to live in made a massage oil that had almond oil as an ingredient. In that form it had an effect similar to tea tree oil, but with a tastier aroma.

But, the biggest par of the drug trade for the DEIC should be pretty obvious, right? Didn't they import enormous amounts of caffeine into England? What were the sources of caffeine in England before tea? i don't know, but i bet they were not numerous. Please correct me if any of my assumptions about the DEIC company are wrong, but this is part of what we're taught here, from gradeschool through colloge, tea was the #1 crop for the DEIC and England.

Granted all that Dan, but they are not classified as drugs! As I pointed out, you can poison yourself by eating lots of Strawberries, some people even become addicted to water! The Brit East India Company very definitely traded drugs, as drugs!
If Cloves and coffee would get people as high as they wanted we wouldn't be swamped with Coke etc.
Nicotine is, IME, the most addictive of drugs, and that came from the other direction. Some people even extract a drug from Cane Toads!
The DEIC was no more responsible for people smoking Cloves than manufactures are for glue sniffers.

Roy.

dannan14 wrote:"clove cigarettes" which are mostly tobacco

There is no tobacco in kretek cigarettes. Only cloves.

Digit wrote:If Cloves and coffee would get people as high as they wanted we wouldn't be swamped with Coke etc.

Variation is the 'spice' of life...
And fashionability ('culture') has a lot to do with it too.

Digit wrote:The DEIC was no more responsible for people smoking Cloves than manufactures are for glue sniffers.

People used cloves (smoking is just one application) already centuries before the DEIC came to the 'spice islands' (Moluccancs). And they still do centuries after the DEIC left for good.

I accept all that RS, but as I pointed out, that does not make DEIC drug dealers.

http://www.google.co.uk/url?q=http://ne ... SzmvpYOTMw

Are we now to classify Standard Oil as a drug cartel?

Roy.

Digit wrote:I accept all that RS, but as I pointed out, that does not make DEIC drug dealers.

Afaik Shakespeare said "a rose would smell as sweet if called by any other name".
You can call the DEIC (or the BEIC, etc.) whatever you want. I'll do the same, OK?

Digit wrote:http://www.google.co.uk/url?q=http://ne ... SzmvpYOTMw

Are we now to classify Standard Oil as a drug cartel?

If millions of their users use it to get high, we should.

"a rose would smell as sweet if called by any other name".

Good! Then we can just call them a trading company like many others whose products are abused.

Roy.

Digit wrote:Good! Then we can just call them a trading company like many others whose products are abused.

Yeah, it's the customer's fault of course... The traders/trafickers are as innocent as a new-born babe...
Were it not that they make HUGE profits off of that 'misunderstanding'...

Rokcet Scientist wrote:

dannan14 wrote:"clove cigarettes" which are mostly tobacco

There is no tobacco in kretek cigarettes. Only cloves.

Yes there is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kretek

Digit wrote:

"a rose would smell as sweet if called by any other name".

Good! Then we can just call them a trading company like many others whose products are abused.

Roy.

So what are your criteria to classify something as a drug? In general, i only consider the poisons made by pharmaceutical companies, meth, crack, and a few other highly processed substances as drugs. For this discussion i guess i was giving the word a broader scope since my personal definition is more limited that what most people use.

If caffeine didn't give you a buzz, DEIC would not have invested so many resources in bringing as much of it as possible back to the West.

In general, i only consider the poisons made by pharmaceutical companies, meth, crack, and a few other highly processed substances as drugs.

I would agree with that.

Roy.

I use coffee to get my heart started in the morning.

Same idea, I guess.

dannan14 wrote:So what are your criteria to classify something as a drug?

Any substance that has a mood-altering effect (a.k.a. which is 'psycho active') when consumed. So that includes alcohol (obviously; it's a hard drug = physically addictive), but also coffee, tea, and chocolate. Even ice cream, if it makes you happy. But those are socalled 'soft' drugs: they do alter your mood, but they are not physically addictive.