On the history of opium / Z dziejów opium.

Most likely, opium was the first narcotic substance discovered at the dawn of humankind. The history of drug addiction is immensely rich and allows for tracing the long way humankind had to travel to reach the contemporary level of consciousness with respect to narcotic substances. A retrospective view of drug addiction that takes into consideration the historical context, while extending our knowledge, also allows for a better understanding of today's problems. The report presents elements of a retrospective view of problems associated with addiction to opium, morphine and heroin over the centuries, what is a subject of scientific interest in contemporary toxicology.

In the hunt for the "sultans of smack:" dope, gangsters and the construction of the Turkish deep state.

This article traces the development and evolution of the Turkish heroin trade against the backdrop of the Republic of Turkey's long transition from imperial core to nation-state. In taking up heroin's relationship to modern Turkey, I would like to specifically explore the meaning and manifestations of what many inside and outside of academia have called the "deep state." Heroin, I argue, was and is one of the most vital enablers of the factional "deep state" rivalries that compete for power in Ankara, adding a steady violent dimension to local and national politics.

Neurolathyrism in vapniarka: medical heroism in a concentration Camp.

Stories abound about the medical abuses that have come to define medicine and the "pseudo"-neurosciences in the Third Reich. Well known are the Nazi program of euthanasia and the neuroscientific publications that arose from it. Nevertheless, during this widespread perversion of medical practice and science, true medical heroics persisted, even in the concentration camps. In December 1942, inmates of Camp Vapniarka began experiencing painful lower extremity muscle cramps, spastic paraparesis, and urinary incontinence. In order to reduce the cost of feeding the 1200, mostly Jewish, inmates of Camp Vapniarka and surreptitiously hasten their deaths, the Nazi-affiliated Romanian officers of the camp had begun feeding them a diet high in Lathyrus sativus. L. sativus is the neurotoxin implicated in neurolathyrism, a degenerative disease of the upper motor neurons. Dr. Arthur Kessler, one of the camp's prisoners, eventually identified the source of the epidemic. Armed with this knowledge, the inmates collectively organized to halt its spread.

"The Attila the Hun law": New York's Rockefeller drug laws and the making of a punitive state.

In 1973, New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller responded to panic about soaring heroin use by renouncing his aggressive treatment programs and enacting the most punitive drug policy in the United States. His "Rockefeller Drug Laws" mandated sentences up to life in prison for selling any narcotics. These punishments, comparable to the penalties for murder, served as models for subsequent "War on Drugs" policies enacted across the nation.This article explores the ideological and political work accomplished by this high profile legislation­for policy makers, for members of the general public who clamored for "get tough" strategies, and for the drug users targeted by the statutes. The laws were a repudiation of liberal treatment programs and specialists' expertise, and provided a forum to remake the much-maligned welfare state into a stern, macho vehicle for establishing order in society. Increasingly punitive policies constricted the rights of drug users by rhetorically constructing "addicts" and "pushers" as outside of the polity and as the antithesis of full citizens. Therefore, the Rockefeller Drug Laws not only had devastating effects on drug offenders, but also were instrumental in the profound renegotiation of the state's role and responsibilities.

Heroin in brown, black and white: structural factors and medical consequences in the US heroin market.

BACKGROUND: Heroin coming into the United States historically comes from three widely dispersed geographical regions: Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia and Mexico. A fourth source of US-bound heroin, from Colombia, originated in the early 1990s. The fact that the four heroin sources produce differing morphologies and qualities of heroin has not been critically examined. In addition, it is not well established how the contemporary competing dynamics of interdiction, or restriction of heroin flows across international boundaries, and neoliberal, e.g., global expansion of free trade, policies are affecting heroin markets. This paper will highlight changes in the US heroin market, including source trends, the political economy of the now dominant source and the resultant effects on the heroin risk environment by US region. METHODS: Using a structural and historical framework this paper examines two decades of secondary data sources, including government and drug control agency documents, on heroin flows together with published work on the political and economic dynamics in Latin America. RESULTS: Co-occurring neoliberal economic reforms may have contributed to paradoxical effects of US/Colombian interdiction efforts. Since entering the US market, heroin from Colombia has been distributed at a much higher quality and lower retail price. An increasingly exclusive market has developed with Mexican and Colombian heroin gaining market share and displacing Asian heroin. These trends have had dramatic effects on the risk environment for heroin consumers. An intriguing factor is that different global sources of heroin produce substantially different products. Plausible associations exist between heroin source/form and drug use behaviours and harms. For example, cold water-soluble powdered heroin (sources: Asia, Colombia) may be associated with higher HIV prevalence in the US, while low-solubility "black tar" heroin (BTH; source: Mexico) is historically used in areas with reduced HIV prevalence. BTH is associated with soft tissue infections caused by Clostridium bacteria. CONCLUSION: Source and type of heroin are structural factors in the risk environment of heroin users: source dictates distribution and type predicts practice. How specific types of heroin are used and with what risk is therefore distributed geographically. Continued flux in the heroin market and its effects on the risk environment for drug users deserves further attention.

Drug consumption in London and Western Berlin during the 1960s and 1970s: local and transnational perspectives.

Between about 1964 and 1969, drug consumption was embedded into the transnational networks of a countercultural youth underground. In London, the high mobility of the underground members was evoking a deep-rooted fear of a casual way of life. The West Berlin underground was much more politicized than its London counterpart. In West Berlin, until the last third of the 1970s, there was no coordinated anti-drug policy. This changed when the situation of heroin users deteriorated. Politicians as well as the members of the self-help organizations began to realize that a close cooperation and an improved communication were imperative. The situation for heroin users in 1970s London was not that bad when compared to Berlin because a relatively well-functioning civil society already existed, and there were special clinics, the Drug Treatment Centers, and a relatively well-working network of voluntary organizations.

Methadone: six effects in search of a substance.

What is the difference between heroin and methadone? Is this difference one of interpretation, where an 'opiate-like' substance is 'labelled' differently through social processes that arbitrarily describe methadone as 'legal' and 'therapeutic', and heroin as 'illegal' and 'harmful'? To study the nature of this difference, I follow two experiments in the United States and in France of methadone substitution, where medical practices attempt to replace heroin by methadone, and thereby to reduce the user's (illegal) drug use. In these trials, the experimenters ask precisely this question. The question of the nature of the difference between the substance's actions is further illustrated by the comparison between the substitution trials: when the experimenters describe methadone differently in different places and times, do they 'interpret' the drug differently, or is the drug itself different? I show that far too many elements vary from trial to trial to say that the 'interpretation' of the substance is all that varies. In order to explore the variation in detail, then, I draw on works about 'performance', and on the actor-network 'theory of action': what heroin and methadone do, but also also the very way in which they 'pass into action', is what varies in each trial. In the end, this question about difference is a question about action. In each trial, there is not from the start one substance with fixed or vague properties which one can then interpret in various manners. 'Substance' does not contain inherent actions from the start ('properties'). Rather, following the experimenters, it is possible to say that 'effects' are primary and that only at the end of the trial do the experimenters laboriously 'find substance' to effects.

A tale of two policies: the French connection, methadone, and heroin epidemics.

The law enforcement and treatment policies of the Nixon administration are often credited with ending the epidemic of heroin addiction that rose in America's cities in the 1960s. In this article it is argued that although the interventions did in fact cause a major change in heroin distribution and use, the epidemic did not end in any simple way. The decline in heroin and increase in methadone that resulted from the Nixon policies lead to a shift for many addicts in both clinical and street settings from one narcotic to another. The temporary shortage of heroin that resulted from law enforcement was quickly compensated for with methadone, as well as with new distribution systems from Southeast Asia and Mexico. In the end, the interventions caused a change in an enduring "heroin system," a change that left that system in a stronger form in terms of supply and in a situation of continuing growth in terms of the number of addicts.

[The indication for heroin prescription - considerations with the historical example of the opiate addicted Swiss author Friedrich Glauser (1896 - 1938)]. / Die Indikation zur ärztlichen Heroinverschreibung - Uberlegungen anhand der Biografie des opiatabhängigen Schriftstellers Friedrich Glauser (1896 - 1938).

Traditional indications for the prescription of opioids to addicts are continuous opioid abuse despite qualified addiction treatment or temporary substitution treatment, if temporarily detoxification is not possible due to external circumstances. These criteria are demonstrated by an historical example, the treatment of the opioid addicted Swiss author Friedrich Glauser (1896-1938). From a modern public health perspective, however, opioid abuse is mainly conceptualised as risk behaviour with aversive consequences for the individual abuser and the public. These consequences should be reduced by prescription of hygienically safe heroin. In this concept, the failure of former addiction treatment is not a necessary condition for heroin prescription. Difficulties in reaching an agreement about indications for heroin prescription are partially results of inherent contradictions between an individual centered traditional medical concept and a public health concept about the goals of opioid addiction treatment.

[The history of heroin]. / A heroin története.

The discovery of heroin and the development of heroin abuse are introduced. Heroin, the hydrochloride of diacetylmorphine, was discovered by acetylation of morphine. Heroin, in pharmacological studies, proved to be more effective than morphine or codeine. The Bayer Company started the production of heroin in 1898 on a commercial scale. The first clinical results were so promising that heroin was considered a wonder drug. Indeed, heroin was more effective than codeine in respiratory diseases. It has turned out, however, that repeated administration of heroin results in the development of tolerance and the patients become heroin-addicts soon. In the early 1910s morphine addicts "discovered" the euphorising properties of heroin and this effect was enhanced by intravenous administration. Heroin became a narcotic drug and its abuse began to spread quickly. Restrictions on its production, use and distribution were regulated by international treties. The total ban on heroin production was also proposed. As a result of the strict regulations the production and cosumption of heroin showed a significant decrease after 1931. At the same time the underworld recognized the shortage of heroin and started the illicit production and trafficking. The quantity of heroin seized by law enforcement agencies in the past decades rose gradually. As an indicator of the worldwide heroin market, the quantity of confiscated heroin underwent a tenfold increase since 1970. The paper surveys the most important heroin-producing and trafficking countries. Heroin, prepared in clandestine ("kitchen" or "jungle") laboratories, is diluted ("cut") by every member of the illegal heroin distributing chain, i.e. smugglers, traffickers, dealers and vendors.

Heroin smoking by 'chasing the dragon': origins and history.

The history of heroin smoking and the subsequent development and spread of 'chasing the dragon' are examined. The first heroin smoking originated in Shanghai in the 1920s and involved use of porcelain bowls and bamboo tubes, thereafter spreading across much of Eastern Asia and to the United States over the next decade. 'Chasing the dragon' was a later refinement of this form of heroin smoking, originating in or near Hong Kong in the 1950s, and refers to the ingestion of heroin by inhaling the vapours which result when the drug is heated-typically on tin-foil above a flame. Subsequent spread of 'chasing the dragon' included spread to other parts of South East Asia during the 1960s and 1970s, to some parts of Europe during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and to much of the Indian sub-continent during the 1980s. At the time of writing, 'chasing the dragon' has now been reliably reported from many parts of the world but not from others with an established heroin problem-such as the United States and Australia. The significance of this new form of heroin use is examined, including consideration of the role of the different effect with this new form of use, the different types of heroin, and changing public attitudes to injecting.