Introduction

Heroin was always being widespread in sense of drug addiction and several media coverage. As we know the whole world is in panic situation and lockdown occur all over the world due to COVID-19, the distribution of heroin is being restricted, which heroin trafficking people are taking advantage of by selling heroin in double prices. So many questions related to this come to mind, such as where does it come from? Where does it made up of? What is it looking like? Heroin comes under opioid family. It was first manufactured in 1898 by the Bayer pharmaceutical company of Germany and marketed for the treatment for tuberculosis and for morphine addiction treatment. The main source of heroin is opium poppy plant which grows in temperate, low humidity and warm areas. Types of soil requires to grow poppy plants are clay and sandy. The major legal areas for growing opium poppy plants in the world are India, Turkey, Australia, and Tasmania while the illegal areas are Burma, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Pakistan, Mexico, Afghanistan, Colombia, Iran, Lebanon, and Laos.

Heroin production starts with the farmers who cultivate Papaver Somniferum L. (opium poppy) seeds, in August and September, at the end of the rainy season. The seeds may vary in colors; they may be yellow, white, gray, blue, or black. A seed color does not define the flower colors. After a month, when opium poppy attains a height of one foot, some of the plants are removed to allow the other plant to grow more and this process is known as thinning. Around after 3 to 4 months poppies flowers fully bloom. If the pod’s crowns are standing or are in an upwardly curved position, then it's mean we can score the pod. If the pod’s crown is downward then it is not yet matured. With the help of a blade, cut the green pods of the poppy flowers to release milky latex, which is the source of raw opium (this process is called scoring). About one millimeter depth is best for the incision because if the cuts are too superficial, then the flow of latex will be too sluggish that the opium will solidify on the pods while if the cuts are too deep then the flow of latex will be too rapidly and will drop to the ground (Negrusz and Jickells, 49).

The scoring of the pods (also called lancing, incising, or tapping) begins in the late afternoon so that the milky latex can exude and slowly solidify on the surface of pod overnight. If the scoring begins early in the afternoon, the Sun will cause the milky latex to solidify over the cut and block the flow. This milky latex dries overnight and turns into a sticky black gum. Now this gum is collected and bulked as raw opium. Now the raw opium is boiled and removed all impurities. The clear brown color liquid is called “liquid opium”. This liquid is reheated until the water evaporates and residue remains is a thick paste. This paste is known as “prepared opium”, cooked opium”, or “smoking opium”.

Cooked opium has more than 35 alkaloids in it. Before converting the morphine to heroin we have to extract the morphine from the opium. Extraction of morphine from opium is done in clandestine laboratories. In the process of extraction of morphine, we dissolved opium in hot water, adding lime to precipitate of non-morphine alkaloids, and in last, to precipitate morphine from the solution we added ammonium chloride in it. Now, these morphine blocks are then packed and transferred to heroin laboratories. Heroin manufacture process from morphine is a two-step process. Firstly, we added acetic anhydride which reacts with morphine to form diacetylmorphine (impure heroin). Secondly, activated charcoal is added and the mixture is then filtered to remove colored impurities. The heroin base is now dried, packed, and transported to heroin refining laboratories or it may be purified or converted to heroin hydrochloride. (https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdf). Heroin is morphine derived alkaloid therefore it is morphine bearing two acetyl substituents on the O-3 and O-6. It has the molecular formula: C₁₂H₂₃NO₅ and molecular weight of 369.4g/mol. (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)