Cocaine, the chemical, is the active drug ingredient in coca leaves the same way caffeine, the chemical, is the active ingredient in coffee and ethanol, the chemical, is the active ingredient in beer. Powder and crack cocaine deliver much higher doses of cocaine than raw coca leaves, much like liquor is more potent than beer, but the chemical is the drug here. It’s not like it’s chemically transformed from one substance into another like with fermentation; it’s concentrated, like with distillation.
> It’s not like it’s chemically transformed from one substance into another like with fermentation
Banks, the financial institutions, are not transformed into banks, exposed riverbeds, when they're proximate to water. Cocaine, the drug, and cocaine, the chemical, are simply homonyms. Claiming the Inca did cocaine is a dad joke, not serious argument.
While I see sense in articulating that cocaine use was different in 17th c. compared to now, I don't believe that you'd argue the same against someone saying that a person drinking beer is drinking alcohol, because beer has less alcohol than vodka.
To make this analogous, the words for "alcohol" and "vodka" would have to be the same. The OP is arguing that when people say "doing cocaine" they are generally referring to the high-strength powdered form, not the underlying chemical in general.
And that if we interpret the sentence like that (which we should if that's how it's generally understood) then it is not true that people were doing cocaine in the 17th century.
Cocaine hydrochloride (i.e. powder) isn’t even the only purified form of cocaine. There’s also crack. Would you argue that people who smoke crack aren’t doing cocaine?
Furthermore, the most purified form of drinking ethanol actually is called “grain alcohol”; Everclear is a popular brand.
Random tangent: now I’m curious if there are any languages where the word for alcohol and vodka (or whatever is locally the most common spirit) is the same. Seems plausible that there would be.
The only unserious argument here is your absurd analogy to banks. A homonym is when two words have totally unrelated meanings. Cocaine is the psychoactive drug found in coca leaves; we refer to cocaine hydrochloride (i.e. powder cocaine) as “cocaine” for the same reason we refer to Everclear as “grain alcohol”.
Poppyseed bagels don’t have a psychoactive dose of opioids and cannabis contains multiple cannabinoids, so those examples are totally irrelevant.
When it comes to coffee, people are generally aware that caffeine is the active ingredient. If you ask someone, “have you had any caffeine today?”, they’re not going to say “no” if they’ve had six cups of coffee. They’re going to say, “yes, I’ve had six cups of coffee”. They’re not going to try and pick a tedious argument that they didn’t really have caffeine because they drank coffee instead of snorting crushed up caffeine pills.
