it does mean sorcery which is dangerous…

Regardless of the substance, if one abuses it or becomes addicted to it, one has a severe problem.

I think it is refering to witchcraft, magic, sorcerer, not drugs. Obviously recreational drugs are also something that we should obstain from, but I dont think that they are referred to as witchcraft.

Galatia was located in what would today be considered northern Turkey. The population included Celtic people from Gaul (France). They often used drugs during pagan worship in order to commune with the gods. So i think it refers to using mind-altering or hallucinogenic drugs, not drugs (medicine) in general.

I’ve heard this discussed before. I think it refers specifically to drug abuse. Including using it on someone else for the purpose of harming or taking advantage of them.

“Drug abuse has a wide range of definitions related to taking a psychoactive drug or performance enhancing drug for a non-therapeutic or non-medical effect. All of these definitions imply a negative judgement of the drug use in question (compare with the term responsible drug use for alternative views). Some of the drugs most often associated with this term include alcohol, amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, cocaine, methaqualone, and opium alkaloids.”

Witchcraft –
“Practices to which the witchcraft label have historically been applied are those which influence another person’s mind, body or property against his or her will, or which are believed, by the person doing the labelling, to undermine the social or religious order.”

To those who are witches, please don’t assume that I think all witches do this or are bad people. A small percentage, maybe.

And we have also heard many stories about the date-rape drugs.
Here’s a new one I heard about just today.

http://earthops.org/scopalamine1.html

So, yes I think there are people out there who use drugs to not only harm themselves, but harm others. And not just those we thought possibly before, but those who use them to commit crimes.

The Bible condemns drug abuse, not the proper healing use of drugs; and while “pharmacy” in modern use means drugs put to proper use, the older meaning was drug abuse—for harm, not healing. In the Bible such pharmacy is put in very bad company—“the works of the flesh,” whose practicers “will not inherit God’s kingdom.” (Galatians 5:19-21) Says The International Standard Bible Encyclopædia: “Paul in Gal 5 20 classes with uncleanness, idolatry, etc, what he calls pharmakeía . . . drugs used in exercising the magical art.” Note, then, the great spiritual harm of addictive substances used for pleasure: They cut one off from God’s favor—and from God’s people.

Due to the magical use of drugs in Bible times, Galatians 5:20, 21 translates phar·ma·ki′a as “practice of spiritism.” But the Kingdom Interlinear translation shows “druggery” as the literal meaning, and Ferrar Fenton’s translation uses “poisoning.” Bible scholar Adam Clarke specified that “drugs” and “fumigations” (smoke) were employed “to produce supernatural effects.”

Emphasizing this unsavory side of pharmacy, Word Pictures in the New Testament says: “If one is puzzled over the connection between medicine and sorcery . . . by this word (our pharmacy), he has only to recall quackery today in medicine . . . witch-doctors, professional faith-healers, medicine-men in Africa.” Yes, and we might also recall “the very cornerstone of Amerindian religion”—the shaman, or priest, smoking tobacco in his “peace pipe.”

Therefore, it is no wonder that Revelation 22:15 says that “outside” God’s Paradise Kingdom are “the druggers [phar·ma·koi′] and the fornicators and the murderers.”—Int.