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Heroin was created in 1874 and was originally marketed as a safe, non-addictive substitute for morphine. However it was quickly noted that heroin also produced dependency very quickly in some individuals. Heroin and Opiates were made illegal in 1920 with the Dangerous Drugs Act. Discovered by a British chemist in 1874 , diacetylmorphine is a bonding of opium's active ingredient, morphine, with a common industrial acid, acetic anhydride. Twenty years later, in 1898, when the Bayer Company of Elberfeld, Germany began mass producing the drug as a broad-spectrum painkiller, it coined the trade name "heroin" for this new drug. Approved by the American Medical Association in 1906, physicians administered heroin widely with hypodermic syringe as a non-addictive substitute for morphine, a pain killer in common use since the 1860s. Simultaneously, pharmaceutical manufacturers marketed heroin in patent medicines as a cure for many diseases, including infantile respiratory ailments. Under the US Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, all narcotics use henceforth required a doctor's prescription. In 1923, the Narcotics Division of the Treasury Department began active enforcement of the law, a responsibility that was transferred in 1930 to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), the ancestor of the modern Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The net effect of these changes was to criminalize the personal use of heroin and cocaine. In 1925, the League of Nations passed strict regulations on the international export of heroin and six years later stipulated that manufacturers could produce just enough for legitimate medical and scientific needs.
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Cultivation and Manufacture.
Smack, china white, horse, black tar . . . all slang names for heroin. We are often told what happens to our bodies and our minds if we use this drug, but less commonly discussed is how the byproduct of a simple flower is converted into one of the most addictive drugs known to man.
