Morphine - What Is It Made Of?

What Is It Made Of?

Morphine is an alkaloid, the chemical class to which many drugs belong. It is also an organic product, meaning that it is derived from a plant. The process of extracting morphine from opium is so simple that farmers can do it alongside their fields, with few other tools than cooking pots, lime (an ingredient in fertilizers), and ammonium chloride (also found in fertilizers). In its basic form, the morphine alkaloid is not soluble in water. Once it has been treated with lime and ammonium chloride, however, it becomes the water-soluble compound calcium morphenate. Further treatments produce morphine sulfate, morphine hydrochloride, and morphine. All of these are used in medicines.

After having gone through chemical processing, morphine salts appear as a bitter white powder. Some people take this powder by mouth, while others snort it or dissolve it in water and inject it. Morphine products are not as fat soluble as heroin. A highly fatsoluble drug like heroin enters the bloodstream quicker and moves to the brain faster, no matter how it is taken. As such, morphine products do not work as quickly to produce the intense high that is experienced with heroin use. Injected morphine does work quickly, in about five to ten minutes, whereas heroin works almost immediately.

The vast majority of legal morphine is converted to codeine, a milder painkiller and cough suppressant used in great quantities worldwide. The remainder of legal morphine is processed as a painkiller. More than 1,000 tons of morphine are produced legally every year, from poppies grown on government-regulated farms in India, Turkey, and the Australian province of Tasmania. Illegal opium production is widespread in the highlands of Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Colombia, Mexico, and Lebanon.