Heroin - What Is It Made Of?

What Is It Made Of?

Heroin is simply an organic, or plant-derived, compound that combines morphine with acetic acid (vinegar) or acetic anhydride (an acid). It is processed from the same raw gum opium that can produce morphine, codeine, or thebaine. Farmers drain the sap from ripening opium poppies and boil it down into a sticky gum. The gum is treated in a water base with chemicals such as lime, ammonium chloride, activated charcoal, and hydrochloric acid. This causes the morphine to leach out of the gum.

When this product is dry, it is shaped into bricks. The bricks are then sent to other secret laboratories that mix the morphine with acetic anhydride, more activated charcoal, and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). Once again the particles are allowed to settle in water. When the particles have dried, they are treated with hydrochloric acid, producing the heroin hydrochloride that is sold on the streets as a white powder.

Most of the white powder heroin sold in the United States comes from Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The product sold to users is never pure heroin. Instead the heroin is "cut" with a number of other water-soluble substances, including sugar, over-the-counter painkillers like acetaminophen (Tylenol), tranquilizersDrugs such as Valium and Librium that treat anxiety; also called benzodiazepines (pronounced ben-zoh-die-AZ-uhpeens)., baking soda, powdered milk, starch, and talcum powder. Some batches of heroin reportedly have been cut with rat poison or laundry detergent. cuttingAdding other ingredients to a powdered drug to stretch the drug for more sales. reduces the purity of the product and allows the dealer to stretch the supply. It also provides the user with an uncertain dosage that can range from 70 percent heroin to 20 percent heroin.

In Mexico, Central America, and South America, underground growers and chemists produce "tar heroin" that comes to the American black marketThe illegal sale or trade of goods; drug dealers are said to carry out their business on the 'black market.' as a sticky black or brown substance with an odor of vinegar.

Heroin is smuggled into the United States in various ways. One method is to have drug couriers swallow small pouches of the powder and carry the drug into the country in their bodies. Here, a customs official shows an X ray of the drug pouches
Heroin is smuggled into the United States in various ways. One method is to have drug couriers swallow small pouches of the powder and carry the drug into the country in their bodies. Here, a customs official shows an X ray of the drug pouches concealed in a smuggler's stomach and those same pouches in a plastic evidence bag after they were retrieved. © Jacques M. Chenet/Corbis.