What is heroin?

Heroin is an illegal, highly addictive drug. It is both the most abused and the most rapidly acting of the opiates. Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of certain varieties of poppy plants. It is typically sold as a white or brownish powder or as the black sticky substance known on the streets as "black tar heroin." Although purer heroin is becoming more common, most street heroin is "cut" with other drugs or with substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, or quinine. Street heroin can also be cut with strychnine or other poisons. Because heroin abusers do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at risk of overdose or death. Heroin also poses special problems because of the transmission of HIV and other diseases that can occur from sharing needles or other injection equipment.

Although heroin abuse has trended downward during the past couple of years, its prevalence is still higher than in the early 1990s. These relatively high rates of abuse, together with the significant heroin abuse we are now seeing among school-age youth, the glamorization of heroin in music and films, changing patterns of drug use, and heroin's increased purity and decreased prices, make it imperative that the public have the latest scientific information on this topic.