Heroin profitability

Notably 85 percent of all opium cultivation is directed toward illicit commerce. Most opium is converted into heroin before it is put on the market. This is the result of several factors. First, to produce the same effect, it requires approximately 30 times more opium than heroin. Also, heroin takes up less space and is thus easier and safer to smuggle. Finally, heroin, because of its more powerful and concentrated effect, can be sold at greater prices, earning the dealer higher profits than with opium. 

By the turn of the twentieth century, however, it was too late. Even with heroin in disrepute, it had already gained a strong foothold as a profitable worldwide commodity, and its production and trade could not be stopped. Heroin, even more so than opium, was an ideal drug for trade. Heroin, as a white powder, was lighter than opium, much more potent, and much... 

The creation of tougher national and international laws in the late twentieth century has resulted in a slight transformation of the opium trade. Laws have become stricter and limited success has been made in raising public awareness concerning the dangerous nature of opium and its constituents. The trade has not stopped, however it has only changed hands. In the past, the demand for opium created a large and complex distribution chain, complete with opium producers, suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and consumers. Today, that trade, while now primarily in the form of nonmedical pharmaceutical use and heroin, is equally complex and perhaps even more profitable than ever. 

Opium has been known and used for 4000 years or more. In recent times, attempts have been made at governmental and international levels to control the cultivation of the opium poppy, but with only limited success. In endeavours to reduce drug problems involving opium-derived materials, especially heroin, where extremely large profits can be made from smuggling relatively small amounts of opium, much pharmaceutical production has been replaced by the processing of the bulkier poppy straw . The entire plant tops are harvested and dried, then extracted for their alkaloid content in the pharmaceutical industry. Poppy straw now accounts for most of the medicinal opium alkaloid production, but there is still... 

By the time opium was banned by the U.S. Congress in 1905, the abuse of black market heroin had already taken hold. In 1910, Britain signed an agreement with China to dismantle the opium trade. But the profits made from its cultivation, manufacture, and sale were so enormous that no serious interruption would be felt until World War II closed supply routes throughout Asia. And although Bayer ended the manufacture of heroin for medicinal use in 1913, illicit importation and distribution networks in New York and San Francisco were already well established. 

In that same year, drug enforcement agencies seized only 23 metric tons of heroin worldwide.5 Heroin, formed by simple acetylation of natural morphine,6 was synthesized in an attempt to alleviate morphine addiction, but ironically, it proved to be many times more addictive, and therefore, more profitable on the illicit market. Controlling illicit... 

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