I really only have a passing academic interest in drugs, and don't tend to take sides when it comes to legalization, but "unnatural/manufactured/hardcore" vs "n

I really only have a passing academic interest in drugs, and don't tend to take sides when it comes to legalization, but "unnatural/manufactured/hardcore" vs "natural/indigenous/mild" is a silly view of things. What is "natural" has been debated to death and back, but suffice it to say, I don't see an obvious line in the sand between coca leaves, cocaine (first extracted in the 1800's with ethanol and water), and crack cocaine (a little heat, a little baking soda, and you've got crack!). Heroin, alcohol, psilocybin, khat -- are these better because they're natural? What is "hardcore"? Does it require a needle to be hardcore? Because you can smoke heroin and inject ibuprofen just fine. Is it something about the addictive potential? Alcohol has just about everything beat, and I find it awfully hard to stop drinking coffee. There's about a million people in Eastern Africa who can't feed themselves or their family, but sit awake most hours of the day and night chewing khat. Is it about the concentration of the substance? Is it its effects? What? While it's tempting to entertain stereotypical notions of wise brown people sitting around enjoying "indigenous" drugs as part of a normal healthy life, you can get just as fucked up on things we discovered in plants a thousand years ago as you can with the amines discovered only in the past 150 years.