drug on the market

Idioms and Phrases

A commodity whose supply greatly exceeds the demand for it. For example, Now that asbestos is considered dangerous, asbestos tile is a drug on the market . The use of the noun drug in the sense of “something overabundant” (as opposed to a medicine or narcotic) dates from the mid-1600s, but the first record of the full expression, put as drug in the market , dates only from the 1830s.