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The tag "medications" has been used 39 times on the site and has the following tag wiki:

Questions related to intake, use, safety, side effects of medications

The tag "drugs" has been used 27 times and has the following tag wiki (emphasis mine):

Questions related to medical drugs used by doctors for treatment of diseases

The tag has been applied to questions for everything from antibiotics and thyroid medication to marijuana and alcohol.

A few questions use both, but most have only one of them.

This seems confusing to me. I have a few ideas what to do, but there may be more that make sense:

  1. Create tag "recreational drugs" and retag the questions that are about alcohol/marijuana with that, then make "drugs" a synonym for "medications"
  2. Use" drugs" for questions about both medical and recreational drugs, change tag wiki to reflect that
  3. This site claims that "drugs" in the medical sense is only used for "stimulants, hallucinogens, and narcotics". I am not a native speaker, so I can't speak to how widespread that is. If so, the tag wiki could be changed to reflect that and questions about medications that aren't in these groups retagged
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  • Thanks for bringing this up! In the US at least, medication is prescribed or bought over the counter for illness, etc. When taken for non-prescribed purposes (usually recreational or self-medication for depression, etc.), we describe this as "illicit drug use" or "drug abuse". It's not hard and fast; context matters. But a doctor doesn't usually ask "Are you on any drugs?" unless, well... unless they suspect illicit drug use. Otherwise patients might take offense.
    – anongoodnurse
    Nov 18, 2015 at 5:29

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I totally think the tag "drugs" should be burned, as it is not likely to be used correctly. I think "recreational drugs" could be a good tag, and I also really want to stab the "s" on the end of "medications" so that it's "medication." That however might just be too much of a pet peeve.

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    Done and done. "Drugs" will be redirected to medication, and "medications" was repaired. There is also a "recreational drugs" tag.
    – anongoodnurse
    Nov 18, 2015 at 5:24
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    @anongoodnurse wonderful, thanks!
    – YviDe
    Nov 18, 2015 at 9:03

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