Black Tar Heroin

Black tar heroin is a type of illicit opiate narcotic drug formed from the incomplete acetylation of morphine. It is also called black or brown.

Black tar can contain a variable percentage of heroin, but despite the name, what makes Black Tar specific as a type is not actually its heroin (diacetylmorphine) content, but rather the greater mixture of lesser acetylated morphine derivatives—predominantly 6-MAM (6-monoacetylmorphine) and 3-MAM (3-monoacetylmorphine). This is caused by the use of the antiquated Wright-Beckett process (c. 1874), which produces a relatively crude and unrefined opiate product but does not require the complex lab equipment, high-purity acetylating chemicals or lengthy reflux steps necessary to produce pure heroin, making it attractive to clandestine drug producers.

Black tar heroin is produced in Latin America, and is most commonly found in the western and southern parts of the United States, while also being occasionally found in western Canada and Europe. It has a varying consistency depending on manufacturing methods, cutting agents, and moisture levels, ranging in quality from a black-brown, tarry goo in unrefined form to a uniform, light-brown powder when further processed and cut with lactose.

Read more about Black Tar Heroin:  History, Composition, Health Matters Specific To Injecting Black Tar Heroin, Terminology, Documentary

Famous quotes containing the words black, tar and/or heroin:

    Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting and attended similar schools as “not black enough.” ...Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting.
    bell hooks (b. c. 1955)

    The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,
    The gunner and his mate,
    Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian and Margery,
    But none of us cared for Kate;
    For she had a tongue with a tang,
    Would cry to a sailor, ‘Go hang!’
    She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch,
    Yet a tailor might scratch her where’er she did itch:
    Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Who lives longer: the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or the man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes till ninety-five? One passes his twenty-four months in eternity. All the years of the beef-eater are lived only in time.
    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)