IMPURITIES RELATED TO NARCOTICS

Narcotics are valuable commodities. Their price rises exponentially with the addition of each intermediate hand on its journey from the producer to the consumer. At the same time, they are illegal to the point where possession and trafficking are punishable by death in some countries, including Pakistan. A gold ornament purchased from a perfectly legal business outlet always contains some copper, nickel, or silver. At the same time, when sold as part of the ornament, these inexpensive metals fetch the same price as gold. Heroin costs more than gold, and the entire industry is illegal.

Because there is no exchange and no return, adulteration, and dilution with other substances are extremely profitable. Pakistan direly needs the conduction of the solid study.  It is to establish the street-level purity of narcotics and commonly found impurities. Moreover, even internationally, the primary focus is on heroin.

Types of Impurities:

We can categorize the impurities in narcotics into two categories: one is impurities that remained unremoved during the manufacturing process. The second one is- impurities that the retailer introduced. We call the latter “adulteration”, and it can occur shortly after manufacturing.

Manufacturing narcotic drugs(1)  White heroin (number four heroin) is the end result of a four-stage chemical process. It involves opium, with morphine and heroin base as intermediate products. The following are examples of common manufacturing-phase impurities:

• Acetylcodeine: Quantitatively, it ranges from 0.6% to 12.0%. (mean 5.3 percent). Acetylcholine remains in the user’s urine for several hours. It helps users to detect a heroin user through a urine test.
• 06-Acetylinorphine: The ratio of 06-Acetylinorphine ranges from 0.8 to 20.9 percent.
• Papaverine: Although papaverine is a natural impurity, its concentration is always low. It explicitly belongs to the class of drugs known as vasodilators. Vasodilators cause blood vessels to dilate, increasing blood flow. Its side effects include blurred or double vision, drowsiness, weakness, deep breathing, dizziness, rapid heartbeat, flushing of the face, and, in rare cases, yellowing of the eyes or skin. When there is the injection of heroin containing Papavertne, it can cause redness, swelling, and pain at the injection site.
• Narcotine and Thebaine: These are a few other natural impurities that one can detect in trace amounts in some cases.
• Noscapine: An alkaloid derivative found in some of the samples is noscapine.

Pure Heroin Samples Extraction

(2) Even a sample of ‘pure’ heroin with no intentional mixing may be less than 65 percent pure. From a set of ‘pure heroin samples, the extraction was done from the impurities of the above-mentioned substances. These pure heroin samples are actual heroin contents range from 65 to 90 percent

(3) In Pakistan, chemical analysis of samples taken from some of the seizures revealed that they were only 10% pure or less. They had however a high concentration of Papaverine and Noscapine. This could be due to one of the following factors:

• Afghanistan’s crude heroin laboratories are unable to properly process the opium.
• Using an unconfirmed chemical process, extraction was performed upon Pure heroin. Significantly, the narcotics seized were a waste/byproduct of that process.

(4) Dilution/adulteration in heroin smuggling, the substance is handled in the most concentrated form possible. It is often with a purity of more than 90%. There is several times dilution before selling it. The substances used to adulterate beverages vary greatly. Consequently, one sees a significant reduction of the heroin content of the mixture c. The dilution of the Heroin exceeds a net content of 2 to 3% before it becomes ineffective for intoxication. The table below clearly shows that heroin at retail sale points is 30 to 50% adulterated.

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