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Something I did not see in this article, and please excuse me if my thinking is errant on this, but would not pharmaceutical drugs be ones that can be patented? I understood that a drug can be anything which has a deliberate chemical interaction with the body, but so can smog in the air, bad water, etc.

An insightful article but raises more questions than answers.

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Example: Lithium is used to treat several mental health disorders. You can't patent a naturally occurring element, but lithium is often prescribed. Is lithium a drug?

Lithium (an active substance) is a drug, Priadel (a brand version of lithium carbonate) is a medicine.

Drug and medicine is specifically distinguished in medical science. But again, in many contexts this distinction doesn't matter and most people don't even know the difference. It doesn't mean that we have no idea what is a drug or what is a medicine.

Smog is air with drugs. Bad water is water with drugs.

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