What Do Poppies Have To Do With Morphine

Morphine is an alkaloid that is found in the opium poppy known as Papaver somnifrum, it is made after extracting alkaloids from the poppy pod. Turning the opium alkaloids into morphine is done in the farmer's fields a makeshift lab. In doing this conversion from opium these labs have cooking pots, lime and ammonium chloride, both of which can be found in fertilizers. After the process that is done in the field what is known as morphine salt is the final product and it is a bitter white powder. The morphine powder when made using lime and ammonium chloride becomes a water-soluble compound were in its natural form morphing is not water-soluble.

Legal morphine is converted into codeine which is a milder pain killer and it is also used as cough suppressant. There is approximately 1000 tons of morphine that is produced legally on government regulated farms in India which grow the opium poppy.

Diacetylmophine is a compound that could be made for morphine and is better known as heroin, in 1874 was when it was first found and by 1898 Bayer product to the public as a way to relieve pain and coughs. At this time it was not known of morphine was as highly addictive as it is and it was not known that heroin is 1 to 2 times more potent than morphine and even more addicting.