WHAT IS HEROIN USED FOR?
Opium has been used to alleviate pain and reduce stress for hundreds of years. In the 1800s morphine was extracted from the opium poppy. The hypodermic syringe was invented shortly thereafter to provide a means of delivering relief quickly to wounded soldiers during the Crimean War. (The wife of the inventor went on to become the world’s first dependent person to use needles.) Heroin was synthesised in the 1870s, shelved, and then mass marketed from the 1890s through until the ’20s.
