How Heroin turned hero

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How Heroin turned hero

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A hundred years ago Heinrich Dreser made a
fortune from the discovery of heroin and aspirin
- but he may have ended his days as an addict.

• Here we reports on a chemist who prescribed
  heroin for coughs

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Professor Heinrich Dreser(1860 - 1924)
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• Between 1897 and 1914, Dreser worked for Bayer,
  Germany.
• Head of Bayer's pharmacological laboratory,
  responsible for the launch of two drugs
  aspirin, the world's most successful legal drug
  and heroin, the most successful illegal one.
• Heroin was launched in November 1898 but was
  registered as a trademark in various countries
  from June that year, most lucratively in the US
  in August.

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• Born in 1860, in Darmstadt, the son of a physics
  professor
• Received doctorate from Heidelberg University
• Became professor at Bonn University in 1893.
• Four years later he joined the Bayer Company,
  where he was in charge of testing the efficacy
  and safety of new drugs.

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• In 1897 the Bayer chemist Felix Hoffmann,
  discovered a new process for modifying salicyclic
  acid to produce acetylsalicyclic acid (ASA).
• This compound, later to be named Aspirin, had
  been isolated before and the healing powers of
  salicylates (derived from willow bark) had been
  known for centuries.

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• Eichengruen recommended ASA to Dreser in 1898.
• Dreser rejected it. His objection was that ASA
  would have an "enfeebling" action on the heart.
• But the real problem was almost certainly that he
  had another product on his mind whose impending
  success he was anxious not to jeopardise. This
  was heroin.

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D i a c e t y l m o r p h i n e

• The drug that Bayer launched under the trademark
  Heroin in 1898 was not an original discovery.
• Diacetylmorphine, a white, odourless, bitter,
  crystalline powder deriving from morphine, had
  been invented in 1874 by an English chemist, C R
  Wright.
• But Dreser was the first to see its commercial
  potential.
• Scientists had been looking for some time for a
  non-addictive substitute for morphine, then
  widely used as a painkiller and in the treatment
  of respiratory diseases. If diacetylmorphine
  could be shown to be such a product, Bayer - and
  Dreser - would hit the jackpot

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The Opium Poppy
According to one tradition, opium poppies sprung
from the tearsof Aphrodite when she mourned for
her beloved Adonis.
Aphrodite
Adonis
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The Opium Poppy Papaver Somniferum

• Common names White Poppy, Opium Poppy, Mawseed,
  Herb of Joy, Mohn, Klapper-Rosen, Mago,
  Magesamen, Weismagen, wilder Magen, Magensaph,
  Rosule, Adormidero, Hashas, Kheshkhash Abu Al
  Noum, O Fang, O Fu Jung, O P'Ien, Tengkoh, Ya
  P'Ien, Yu Mi.
• "If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I
  am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to
  an excess, not yet recorded of any other man, it
  is no less true, that I have struggled against
  this fascinating enthralment with a religious
  zeal, and have, at length, accomplished what I
  never yet heard attributed to any other man -
  have untwisted, almost to its final links the
  accursed chain which fettered me." (from
  Confessions of an English Opium Eater)
• English essayist and critic, best-known for his
  autobiography CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM
  EATER, which appeared first in 1821 in London
  Magazine. De Quincey was addicted to opium from
  his youth for the rest of his life.

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Papaver Somniferum
"Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty
Godto give to man to relieve his sufferings,
none isso universal and so efficacious as
opium."Thomas Sydenham(1624 - 1689)
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• By early 1898, Dreser was testing it on
  sticklebacks, frogs and rabbits.
• He also tested it on some of Bayer's workers, and
  on himself. The workers loved it, some saying it
  made them feel "heroic" (heroisch).
• This was also the term used by chemists to
  describe any strong drug (and diacetylmorphine is
  four times stronger than morphine).

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• In November 1898, Dreser presented the drug to
  the Congress of German Naturalists and
  Physicians, claiming it was 10 times more
  effective as a cough medicine than codeine, but
  had only a tenth of its toxic effects.
• It was also more effective than morphine as a
  painkiller. It was safe. It wasn't habit-forming.
  In short, it was a wonder drug - the Viagra of
  its day.

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HEROIN A powerful remedy for coughs
Advertisement from 1903 medical journal "To our
surprise we have not been able to locate even
one scientific study on the proved harmful
effects of addiction"Dr George H
StephensonUniversity of British Columbia, 1956
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Heroin seemed a godsend

• Tuberculosis and pneumonia were the leading
  causes of death at that time, and even routine
  coughs and colds could be severely
  incapacitating.
• Heroin, depresses respiration and, as a sedative,
  gives a restorative night's sleep, seemed a
  godsend
• Dreser wrote about the drug in medical journals,
  and studies had endorsed his view that heroin
  could be effective in treating asthma,
  bronchitis, phthisis and tuberculosis.
• Mailshots and free samples were sent out by the
  thousand to physicians in Europe and the US.

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Heroin the cure for asthma?
Medical fashions come and go "Opium teaches only
one thing, which is thataside from physical
sufffering, there is nothing real"André
Malraux(1901-1976)MAN'S FATE
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• By 1899, Bayer was producing about a ton of
  heroin a year, and exporting the drug to 23
  countries.
• The country where it really took off was the US,
  where there was already a large population of
  morphine addicts, a craze for patent medicines,
  and a relatively lax regulatory framework.
  Manufacturers of cough syrup were soon lacing
  their products with Bayer heroin.
• There were heroin pastilles, heroin cough
  lozenges, heroin tablets, water-soluble heroin
  salts and a heroin elixir in a glycerine
  solution.
• Bayer never advertised heroin to the public but
  the publicity material it sent to physicians was
  unambiguous. One flyer described the product
  thus "Heroin the Sedative for Coughs . . .
  order a supply from your jobber."

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Ayer's Cherry Pectoral
Just what the doctor ordered? AYER'S CHERRY
PECTORAL"Cures Colds, Coughs and allDiseases of
the Throat and Lungs"
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Prons and Cons

• "It possesses many advantages over morphine,"
  wrote the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in
  1900. "It's not hypnotic, and there's no danger
  of acquiring a habit.

• 1899, researchers began to report patients
  developing "tolerance" to the drug,
• A German researcher denounced it as "an extremely
  dangerous poison".
• By 1902 - French and American researchers were
  reporting cases of "heroinism" and addiction.

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• Between 1899 and 1905, at least 180 clinical
  works on heroin were published around the world,
  and most were favourable, if cautious.
• In 1906, the American Medical Association
  approved heroin for medical use, though with
  strong reservations about a "habit" that was
  "readily formed".
• But with the accumulation of negative reports and
  the steady encroachment on the market by other
  manufacturers, it was clear heroin would never
  deliver the riches that Dreser had yearned for.

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H IS FOR HEROIN
"That individuals may take morphine or some other
opiate for20 years or more without showing
intellectual or moraldeterioration is a common
experience of physicians"Dr Lawrence Kolb, US
Assistant Surgeon General, 1925
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• In 1913, Bayer decided to stop making heroin.
  There had been an explosion of heroin related
  admissions at New York and Philadelphia
  hospitals, and in East Coast cities a substantial
  population of recreational users was reported
  (some supported their habits by collecting and
  selling scrap metal, hence the name "junkie").
• Prohibition seemed inevitable and, sure enough,
  the next year the use of heroin without
  prescription was outlawed in the US. (A court
  ruling in 1919 also determined it illegal for
  doctors to prescribe it to addicts.)

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"All penalties for drug users should be
dropped...Making drug abuse a crime is useless
and even dangerous...Every year we seize more and
more drugs but the quantity available still
increases...Police are losing the drug battle
worldwide"Raymond KendallSecretary General of
Interpol 1994
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• When war broke out Dreser moved to Dusseldorf as
  honorary, unsalaried professor of his own
  pharmacological institute at the new Medical
  Academy.
• Thereafter, the record becomes indistinct.
• There were rumours that he was addicted to heroin
  himself.

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• In 1924, the US banned the use and manufacture of
  heroin altogether, even for medical purposes.
• In Britain, the medical use of heroin continues
  to this day, accounting for 95 percent of the
  world's legal heroin consumption.
• The same year, four days before Christmas, Dreser
  died.
• The cause of death was given as a cerebral
  apoplexy, or stroke. If the rumours of addiction
  were true, the irony is doubled Dreser,
  incorrigible in his misjudgment, had spent his
  twilight years taking a daily dose of the wrong
  wonder drug.

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• In 1898, there were an estimated 250 000 morphine
  addicts in the US - a per capita rate roughly
  twice as high as today's.
• In Britain, opium use was widespread, especially
  in East Anglia, where it was a more or less
  necessary antidote to the malaria endemic in the
  Fens. It was also used as a sedative for babies.

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Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup
"For children teething. Greatly facilitates the
process of Teething, by softening the gums,
reducing all inflammation will allay ALL PAIN
and spasmodic action, and is SURE TO REGULATE THE
BOWELS. Depend on it, Mothers, it will give rest
to yourselves and RELIEF AND HEALTH TO YOUR
INFANTS. Sold by all chemists, at 1s 1/2d per
bottle." "Oh, jab me with your needle a hundred
timesAnd a hundred times I will bless you, Saint
Morphine"Jules Verne(1828 - 1905)
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• Pharmacologically, heroin has the same effect as
  morphine. But you need only about a quarter as
  much to get the same effect.
• It is also cheaper, quicker and easier to use. As
  national and international legislation against
  opiates gathered force after 1914, addicts who
  wished to continue their habit inevitably
  switched to heroin.
• By 1924, 98 percent of New York's drug addicts
  were thought to be heroin addicts.
• With legal channels of supply closed, criminal
  gangs - first Jewish, then Italian - began to
  monopolise the trade. By the end of the 30s, the
  Mafia was inextricably involved.

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A New York Opium Den
"Nobody will laugh long who deals much with
opium its pleasures even are of a grave and
solemn complexion." Thomas de Quincey(1785 -
1859)Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
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Manila Opium Den
"I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a
somewhat calm and objective judgement in all
human affairs." Albert Einstein(1879-1955)
"There were opium dens where one could buy
oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old
sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins
that were new"Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian
Gray (1891)
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"Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated
and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs
and escape a horrible fate is an anathema to
these idiots. I predict that in the near future
right-wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext
to set up an international police apparatus."
William S. Burroughs(1914 - 1997)
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• Heroin use in Britain and the US is increasing
  faster than at any time since the 60s heroin
  seizures rose by 135 percent between 1996 and
  1997.
• There are thought to be between 160 000 and 200
  000 heroin addicts in the UK, who spend almost
  R30-billion a year on heroin. And the British
  government spends R14-billion a year on
  drug-related policies.
• In 1898, the typical morphine addict in Britain
  or the US was a middle-class woman in her
  forties, whereas today's typical addict is an
  18-year-old male.

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Opium-Pipe Smoking
THE OPIUM-SMOKER "I am engulfed, and drown
deliciouslySoft music like a perfume, and sweet
lightGolden with audible colours
exquisite,Swathe me with cerements for eternity.
Times is no more. I pause and yet I flee.A
million ages wrap me round with night.I drain a
milion ages of delight.I hold the future in my
memory. Also, I have this garret which I rent,
This bed of straw, and this that was a
chair,This worn-out body like a tattered
tent,This crust, of which the rats have eaten
part,This pipe of opium rage, remorse,
despairThis soul at pawn and this delirious
heart." Arthur Symons(1865-1945)
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"There is always a need for intoxication China
hasopium, Islam has hashish, the West has
woman."André Malraux(1901-1976)MAN'S FATE
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References

• http//opioids.com/index.html
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• GLOBAL ILLICITDRUG TRENDS2003