Summary CuesNotes Opium Information Sheet Opium is an addictive, narcotic drug It is made from the white liquid of the poppy plant It gets you calmed down and can cause euphoria Street names are Big O, block, and Black Stuff Opium is smoked slows your breathing to a point that it can even cause death Opium is a narcotic drug that is smoked. It is made from the white liquid of the poppy plant and it can have effects like euphoria.

Summary CuesNotes Transforming Opium Poppies into Heroin Poppy plants are mainly grown in warm dry places The first step to turn opium into heroin is to extract it from the poppy leaf Second, the opium will have to be wrapped in plastic or leaves so that it is then sold in the black market Third it is turned into morphine base which can be smoked Last, the morphine base is mixed with some other chemicals and boiled After that process, it is now purified heroin and is exported to other countries and sold in the streets. The opium is extracted with a special knife from the poppy plant Raw opium is looks like a black gum in its crudest form The Sumerians called the poppy plant Hul Gil, the flower of joy The first person to make heroin was an English researcher called C.R. Wright in 1874 Heroin is sold in small bags in the streets for $5-$100 It is estimated that 10 tons of raw opium is reduced to 1 ton of heroin From the black gum of the raw opium, comes the white dust of the heroin A big majority of the poppy plants are grown in a 4,500 mile area of mountains from southern Asia to Turkey through Pakistan and Laos It is a long process to transform Opium into Heroin. First you have to extract raw opium from the poppy plant. Then it is sold in the black market. After someone buys it, that person will have to take it to a morphine refinery so that it is turned into morphine base. After that, they have to mix that morphine with some other chemicals and boil it. Now it is purified and is sold in the streets and exported to other countries.

Summary CuesNotes Heroin and the Brain Some scientists discovered that the brain had special receptors for opiate drugs Then they figured out that these receptors should have a different function and that the brain has some of the chemicals that these drugs have in them, only that they are there naturally After a few times of injecting it and having very unpleasant feelings, it will finally start to be very pleasuring; some describe it as “rush” and “high” Rush is described as a two minute lasting effect where you can feel a relief of tension and an intensified sexual orgasm After rush comes high, which lasts about 5 hours more while you feel very warm and cozy Heroin was actually 2 to 3 times more powerful than morphine, since it had a much more direct path to the brain Scientists figured out that morphine had a similar chemical in them to endorphins, a natural chemical of the brain; this chemical and some others are called the natural opiates of the body It is said that the first times you inject heroin it can be very displeasing, but social or psychological pressure can make the person keep on consuming it When you are addicted so something it means that you are dependent on that substance and are unable to stop consuming it without having effects like nausea, diarrhea, anxiety, etc. The opiate drugs are the drugs that have the most classical side effects, for example after 8-12 hours of consuming the drug the person starts to have diarrhea, vomit, nausea, sneezing, etc., and after a week to 10 days the sickness is overIn an effort to take away the addictiveness to morphine, some German pharmacists investigated their molecular structure and invented the diacetylmorphine, which they later sold in the market as less addictive and toxic than morphine This article talked about heroin, its origin and its effects on the brain and body. It also talked about what it felt like after consuming heroin and how addiction worked. Last, it talked about other drugs and some of their effects

Summary CuesNotes Drug Trends (Youth) Illicit drug consuming by teenagers has continued at high percentages, mostly due to the popularity of marijuana A big part of the teen drug problem is that many of these adolescents are consuming pharmaceutical and prescription drugs for non- medical reasons Positive changes in the past few years include the reduced use of inhalants like cocaine and less ecstasy consumed by teens from 8 th to 12 th grade More teens smoke marijuana than smoke cigarettes Marijuana consuming by teens went down from the late 1990s to the mid-to-late 2000s, but has been going up since then The perception of marijuana being a safe drug is growing among teens, which reflects the recent public talk about medical marijuana and its legalization Teens are thinking that synthetic marijuana is safe, but they are wrong because it has many of the dangerous chemicals that the real marijuana has Percentages of alcohol drinking among teens have also gone down to “historically low levels.” Besides cigarettes, other ways of smoked tobacco, like hookah water pipes and small cigars continue being popular This article talked about the illicit drug use of teenagers, mostly 12 th graders. It said that the percentage of teens smoking marijuana has gone up and got worse. But it also said that the percentage of teens consuming inhalant drugs, alcohol, tobacco and other illicit and pharmaceutical drugs have gone down.