Heroin is produced for the black market through processes of opium refinement. While the production of drugs like
LSD requires considerable expertise in
chemistry and access to constituents which are now tightly controlled, the refinement of the first three grades of heroin from opium is a relatively simple process requiring only moderate technical expertise and common chemicals. The final grade of heroin favoured in the
West is more difficult to produce and involves a potentially dangerous chemical procedure.
First, morphine is isolated from crude opium by being dissolved in water, reacted with
lime fertilizer such that the morphine precipitates out, and then reacted again with
ammonia. What remains is then mechanically filtered to yield a final product of morphine weighing about 90% less than the original quantity of opium. The morphine is reacted with
acetic anhydride — a chemical also used in the production of aspirin — in a five-step process used by most refineries in the
Golden Triangle. The first step is to cook the morphine at 85 °C (185 °F) for six hours with an equivalent weight of acetic anhydride. In the second, a treatment of water and hydrochloric acid then purifies the product moderately. When the chemists add
sodium carbonate, the particulates settle. Step four involves heating the heroin in a mixture of
alcohol and
activated charcoal until the alcohol evaporates. The fifth step is optional, as it only changes the heroin into a finer white powder, more easily injectable; this so-called "no. 4 heroin" is principally exported to the Western markets. In this last, most dangerous step, the heroin (after being dissolved in alcohol), precipitates out in tiny white flakes when a mixture of
ether and
hydrochloric acid is injected; this step is dangerous because the ether may explode, leveling or severely damaging the refinery (as has happened to a number of such facilities).
The purity of the extracted morphine determines in large part the quality of the resulting heroin.
Heroin is also rarely made from
codeine by first demethylating with
pyridine followed by acetylation with acetic anhydride. The resulting product is an impure mixture of heroin and
monoacetylmorphine known as
Home Bake.
