For most of my career with the Feds, heroin was considered (to borrow an ancient FBI label) Public Enemy #1. In this century, it has lost the title to fentanyl, but for most of my time with DEA, its major focus was on heroin. The drug’s effect on humans is actually quite similar to fentanyl. Both are classified as narcotic analgesics (pain killers); the major difference lies in their potency. While a 10 milligram dose of uncut heroin is a fairly good sized hit, a similar dose of fentanyl would be fatal numerous times over.
While fentanyl is purely synthetic, heroin originates in a species of poppy known by its botannical name Papaver somniferum L. By a centuries old, highly labor intensive process, a liquid sap-like substance is painstakingly collected from each poppy, and the stuff is gathered into a solid mass (maple syrup, anybody?) known as opium. In a manner similar to marihuana, numerous drug substances exist in opium, which is, itself, a legal, controlled substance, unlike marihuana. The most prevalent of the drugs in opium is morphine, roughly 10% by mass. Morphine is an important, powerful analgesic in its own right.
During the late 19th century, Farbriken Bayer, a German pharmaceutical firm, developed a more powerful drug by reacting morphine with acetic anhydride to form diacetyl morphine (sorry about the chemistry) and in the finest traditions of Big Pharma a catchy name was given to this new drug: Heroin (because of its heroic properties). I kid you not!
One of the new drug’s initial uses was to alleviate drug addiction suffered by Civil War veterans who had become addicted to morphine (the Soldier’s Disease). Obviously, this did not work as intended. Unfortunately, the government’s response was draconian –synthesis of heroin was banned for any reason (it remains so to this day). Heroin does have properties which render it clinically superior to morphine. For example, Brompton’s Mixture, consisting of morphine, cocaine, alcohol and other substances, was often given to advanced cancer patients to alleviate severe pain. Developed in the U.K., the formulation used heroin in lieu of morphine, but this was prohibited in the USA.
As an instrument of death, heroin is nowhere near as dangerous as fentanyl. However, it is not, by any means, a safe substance. Heroin can be injected, smoked, snorted, or taken in pill form,
During my time with DEA, opium poppies were cultivated in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Mexico. We devoted considerable effort to learn how they were processed to heroin in various parts of the world. By the time I retired in 1994, we had identified three distinct types of heroin, sorted by processing method: French Connection, Southeast Asian and Mexican. Nowadays, Colombia has emerged as a source country, largely at the expense of Southeast Asia (there are no longer US military folk there in large numbers to provide a local customer base). Let’s take a short walk in the wild side:
French Connection. Some of the best finished product I ever saw. Morphine base from poppies grown in Turkey was furnished to a small group of “chemists” operating mostly in the south of France. In the best traditions of French quisine these well trained chefs painstakingly followed procedures to produce the very best. The product was distributed in heavily diluted (stepped on) form mainly in Eastern cities, such as New York, Boston and Washington, DC.
Southeast Asian. Poppies grown in Thailand, Laos and neighboring countries were processed in six steps: #1, morphine; #2, heroin as the base; #3, heroin as the (water soluble) hydrochloride salt mixed with caffeine and a small amount of strychnine; #4, heroin as the hydrochloride (suitable for injection), with purity and whiteness rivalling the French stuff. Distributed mainly to US servicemen. The #3 product was intended for smoking.
Mexican (and later Colombian): Best described as “quick and dirty”, the stuff is brown in color, smells of vinegar, and often looks, in the uncut form, like tar. In fact, “black tar heroin” is quite desirable to consumers (probably because it’s hard to cut).
Today, Afghanistan is believed to account for 80% of opium worldwide, which is processed to heroin in Western Europe after transhipment through Iran and Pakistan. According to recent reporting in The Washington Post, the Taliban officially prohibits this activity, but enforcement consists largely of jawboning.
Sadly, we will never solve “the drug problem” until the idle rich no longer provide a customer base for drugs produced by desperately poor people, for little fun and profit. If ever.
Rogernarc 