Expert: John Locke - 5/22/2007

Question
In Alberta, Canada we have a team of business and academics who are requesting permission to grow the heroin poppy and produce medical morphine. This proposal concerns me.

Question: Are both heroin and medical morphine derived from the same poppy juice or gum?
Question: We know where heroin comes from but where do the U.S and Canadian manufacturers of medical morphine get their raw material to produce this medication. Specifically is the poppy widely grown in the States?

Thank you

Answer
Thanks for using AllExperts, Edwyn. In virtually all countries with strong controls on the production and distribution of narcotics, there are exceptions to these for research purposes. That said, researchers who wish to use these compounds must submit to heavy controls to ensure that they are not using these substances for illicit purposes. This also helps to ensure that the substances used are of high purity (which is quite important: the "heroin" bought on the street likely contains a whole slew of other chemicals besides the actual heroin).

Now, let me address your questions:

As to the first one, yes, heroin and morphine are both ultimately derived from the opium poppy. They both have the same fundamental structure with a very slight difference that allows heroin to enter the central nervous system more quickly than morphine. Morphine is actually present in the juice of the opium poppy, while heroin only comes into existence via manufacture from morphine in the laboratory. In short, morphine is used to make heroin.

To be precise about it, morphine and heroin are ultimately both opium products, though heroin is a derivative of morphine. If you are interested, a brief discussion of the process used to produce heroin is found on this website:

http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.Content&nnodeid=25483&sL...  

As to your second question, the poppy is not widely grown in the United States or Canada; by far the largest areas of legal poppy cultivation are India and Turkey. Keep in mind that poppy cultivation is still necessary for the manufacture of medical opiates (most morphine and codeine, for instance, are extracted from the poppy rather than manufactured because of the time and expense required for their manufacture).

So far as I am aware, it is illegal to cultivate the opium poppy in the United States, though that may be incorrect, and I am unsure of the law in Canada. Regardless, manufacturers of medical opiates obtain their poppy plants from regulated, legally-compliant farmers in other countries; in the United States, for instance, 80% of that poppy must be obtained from India and Turkey by statute. There is a push to allow more than the remaining 20% to be bought from Afghanistan, which for some time now has had a terrible problem with the illegal cultivation of poppy plants.

Nations that allow the legal cultivation of the poppy have strict regulations for the farmers who grow the crop, to keep them from selling their crop to illegal heroin and morphine producers. To be in compliance with local laws, poppy farmers are expected to sell their crop only to recognized buyers--pharmaceutical companies, for instance. In turn, the countries that allow opium production must submit annual reports to the United Nations so that trends in manufacture and consumption may be monitored.

I hope this helps inform you regarding the proposal in Alberta. Thanks for using AllExperts.