Designer Drugs

 Designer Drugs, by Jack Shafer  is an article about "new herion", also called China White. China White a synthesised drug made to look exactly like and have the same effects of the poplular drug herion. But the designer was wrong.

Many deaths have been attributed to the new white powder, and no one knew why. Even though there was  a reported increase in overdoses, this did not stop herion users from trying the new drug. The major problem is the substance was completly legal when users started overdosing and dying. For a drug to be illegal it must be deemed so by the state or federal government. It was the first time anyone had produced and sold a legal heroin substitue. To make matters worse, it was amazingly cheap to synsthesize, only $500 in chemicals can produce up to 2 million dollars profit, which encouraged other chemists to try to make their own "batches".

A professor of pharmacology at University of California finally discovered the main ingredient as Fentanyl. It is believed there are about a thousand different forms of Fentanyl that could be used to make synthesised heroin. The Fentanyl in White China was 20 to 40 times stronger than heroin.

The most interesting thing about this new drug is that there is a large population of users who claim to be addicted to heroin but no trace of opiates are in their system. When their urine is tested for White China there is a large amount present, with no overdoses occurring. The large amount of users who overdose and die from the heroin substitute are users who have a lower opiate tolerance.

One major side effect of the drug, and the reason it gained so much attention, is Parkinsonian effects, such as stiffness, impaired speech, rigidity, tremors. When the heroin users symptoms were treated with Levadopa, a Parkinson's medication, the symptoms subside. Without it, the symptoms return, just like victims of Parkinson's disease. One case of a documented autopsy showed extensive brain damage from use of the drug. The effects of the brain damage caused dopamine levels to be altered, like Parkinson's. The effects this drug caused on these users brain is comparable to years and years of normal deterioration that occurs, in only a few uses of the drug. To me, that is amazing. People don't realize what they are doing to themselves.
 Underground chemists can modify the molecular architecture of almost every drug on the illicit market to create legal substitutes, and they do. However, they do not always know what the exact effects of the drug will be. The people who create these designer drugs are extremely intelligent, usually a graduate of a prestigious chemistry program. Too smart for their own good I think.