Talk:Black tar heroin

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Contents 1 Factual accuracy 2 Cheap/Expensive 3 Factual Accuracy and Cost 4 Prevalence 5 Ground into power..? 6 Necrotizing Fasciitis

[edit] Factual accuracy

What exactly is 'black tar heroin', then, if it is not heroin? Peoplesunionpro 23:00, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Heroin indeed di-acetyl-morphine, it smells like vinagar, actic acid. it comes from mexico, and is usally cut with coffee and sugar, it is a gummy black or dark brown substance.

I feel I should mention that it's quite unlikely that this heroin is less processed than other kinds; it's probably just cut more heavily. Why? Because treating unprocessed opium with acetic anhydride will result in highly toxic acetyl-codeine and -thebaine compounds. Either they are present and aren't as bad as I've been told (unlikely), or in reality this is simply cut heavily. PianoSpleen 02:05, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not that it's totally raw opium they're treating with AA, it's just that they don't refine the morphine as much as they could. It's a lot of work to get totally pure morphine from opium. Who's telling you about incredibly toxic acetylated codeine and thebaine derivatives? Acetylcodeine shows up regularly in illicit heroin samples and there's more of it in Mexican black tar than in other types. It's less toxic than codeine itself, as far as I know, and only present in trace amounts. What acetylated thebaine derviatives are you talking about? Thebacon? What gives tar the characteristic gummy-to-hard consistency is the residual latex from the opium that other source region chemists remove, to varying extents. Compare a slab of raw opium to prepared opium to Mexican tar to a piece of Afghan brown to southeast Asian No. 3 to South American to SE Asian No. 4 and you'll see less and less residual opium constituents sticking around, and a whiter and whiter color, closer to pure heroin. Mexican tar simply has less of the residual opium latex removed than other types before it's reacted with acetic anhydride, and that's that. If anything, it's more difficult to cut tar than powder heroin (which isn't to say it's not done, instant coffee is a popular cut), and given the lower purity of tar to begin with, there's less space for cut. What kind of diluent are Mexican drug trafficking groups adding to turn powder heroin into goop that none of the other producers have? There's tar out there that'll knock your socks off, and powder that's mostly lactose and quinine (if you're lucky) with just enough heroin left over after being cut a dozen times that it's not found in homeopathic concentrations. Porkchopmcmoose 04:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: After a little poking around I found this tidbit on an article on heroin impurities from 1986:

"That heroin containing these additional by-products and alkaloids may have an enhanced or different pharmacological profile than that attributable to diacetylmorphine and 6-MAM is suggested when comparing "street" heroin potency and deaths in different regions of the United States.45 In cities along the East Coast, where, primarily, a white and relatively pure form of heroin is sold, there is observed a statistically significant correlation between the number of heroin-related fatalities and the purity of the heroin available.

However, in a comparable study in San Antonio, Texas, where a dark brown Mexican heroin prepared by direct acetylation of opium is prevalent, a non-significant correlation (r = +0.13) was found between potency of street heroin and frequency of heroin overdose." [1]

So it would appear that there is, or was, at some point, Mexican heroin being made by the direct acetylation of opium, with no purification involved. The rest of the article gets in to more detail about the various decomposition products of opium alkaloids under the reaction conditions required to turn morphine into heroin. Porkchopmcmoose 21:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cheap/Expensive

Bit of a fight going on about whether it's cheap or expensive. Please resolve this here. ta The Land

it's cheap to get high if you aren't addicted to it (about $10-$20), but profoundly expensive to maintain a habit...

also, it is cheap compared to "china white" heroin, which is considered a kind of caviar variant of it.

so... it is both inexpensive and expensive. gruelin1 12 14 05 7:45 am.

It's inexpensive compared to other drugs, but still a very expensive habit. So, both. PianoSpleen 02:05, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Factual Accuracy and Cost

(I accidentally put this under the "Cheap/Expensive header. Oops!) Black tar's not significantly more or less expensive than any other type of heroin out there. There's cheap tar and expensive tar, just as there's cheap powder and expensive powder. It can be extremely potent or extremely impotent. It's got a bad reputation (the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article ("`Black Tar' Grimly Covers S.F. Streets") in 1999 that drew an analogy between powder heroin and tar heroin and powder cocaine and crack. This is little more than the hysteria that accompanies the media's discovery of some big new drug danger. "China white" used to refer to either high-quality southeast Asian heroin or later to a batch of an extremely potent synthetic opioid. The term is now obsolete. The difference between black tar and powder heroin has to do with the process used to make the heroin. Powder heroin is produced in South America, and Southwest and Southeast Asia; black tar is produced in Mexico. Porkchopmcmoose 22:07, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Addendum: I am going to completely rewrite the article. It's a PoV mess, full of unsubstantiated statements, and just generally not up to the standards of Wikipedia.

Porkchopmcmoose 22:11, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Prevalence

How can black tar be "the prevalent form" and "white" the most common? Doesn't jive.--SVTCobra 23:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Because, if you read more closely, black tar is more common in some places, and powder (of southeast or southwest asian, or south american origin) in others. It all depends on the trade routes + where someplace happens to be along them. Chicago, IL, for example, gets heroin from all 4 source regions in significant quantities, whereas LA gets almost entirely black tar and B'more or Philly get almost entirely Colombian powder.Porkchopmcmoose 01:17, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ground into power..?

From article: "It can also be ground into powder (see below)"

It seems this information has since been removed. Either explain or remove this reference. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.180.134.185 (talk) 08:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC).

This information appears to have been removed in an edit by Rachamim| on 12 August 2007.

The edit summary given is: "I have clarified a few points, as well as correcting two factually incorrect assertions: :Tar synth rxn and Brown heroin's rxn".

I have no idea if this is correct, becuase I know absolutely nothing about the synthesis of heroin. In any case, I've removed the "see below" part because it doesn't make sense in the current version of the article. I've left in the part about it being able to be ground into powder, because the aforementioned edit doesn't preclude this possibility. I don't want to remove something that might be true. --BennyD 04:00, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Necrotizing Fasciitis

On the Necrotizing Fasciitis page of Wikipedia the treated mortality is stated at 20%, and the untreated mortality at nearly 100%, neither of which accord with the figure given in this article. Wilhelm Ritter 21:59, 21 June 2007 (UTC)