Heroin and morphine belong to a group of drugs called opiates. Opiates are derived from the opium poppy. Morphine was first identified as a painkiller in 1806. The problem with morphine was that people who took it often became addicted to it. They also experienced other undesirable side effects, such as nausea. At the end of the nineteenth century, a German scientist changed the molecules of morphine, hoping to produce a new drug that, like morphine, would relieve pain but that, unlike morphine, would not be addictive. This new drug was heroin. Within a year or two of its introduction, most of the medical community knew that heroin was not only stronger than morphine but that people who used it were even more likely to become addicted. By the 1920s, heroin had become the most widely abused of the opiates.

Medical Uses for Heroin

Heroin and morphine act in...