Heroin's on the rise in the Capital Region. And while it used to be a sort of glam drug associated with grungy junkies and gaunt rockstars, today it is increasingly the drug of choice for mainstream America.

"Heroin does not discriminate on race, gender, or any other diversity factor," says Dr. Dolores Cimini, a professor at the University of Albany with expertise in psychology and addiction. "It has infiltrated across all areas of life. Soccer moms are using heroine."

When did this all start? In the late 1800s, pharmaceutical chemists were trying to find a substitute for morphine, which was used in legitimate medicine but was addictive.

In 1874 C.R. Alder Wright, a chemist working for St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, experimented by mixing morphine with various acids. The result was a more potent type of morphine, not what Wright wanted, and his discovery lay largely dormant. Some 20 years later, another scientist, Felix Hoffman, working for a German pharmaceutical company now known as Bayer Corp., re-synthesized the same substance and thought he had found a safe substitute for morphine.

The resulting pharmaceutical was named Heroin, for the German word heroisch, or heroic, because of its effect on the users. Soldiers would reportedly charge directly at the enemy without fear after taking the drug, according to the website heroininfo.org. Beginning in 1898 and continuing until 1910, the new drug was marketed as a non-addictive substitute for morphine and as a cough suppressant. Bottles labeled with the brand name Heroin won customers across Europe and in the United States.

In reality, heroin more quickly metabolized into morphine, making it a faster, more powerful type of morphine. Bottles of cough syrup and other medicines containing heroin flew off the shelves as everyone from housewives to workers and even small children consumed it.

While the Bayer Company was ultimately distressed to learn of its medicine's addictive properties, many patent medicines and remedies of the time contained psychoactive drugs, according to the University at Buffalo's Department of Psychology's Addiction Research Unit.

Glyco-Heroin, produced by the Martin H. Smith Co. in New York, combined heroin with sugar syrup and was sold as a treatment for coughs, bronchitis, asthma, laryngitis, pneumonia and whooping cough. In the early 1900s, the Lloyd Manufacturing Co. of Albany produced Cocaine Toothache Drops promising an instantaneous cure for 15 cents a box. The era's popular Mrs. Winslow Soothing Syrup, marketed specifically for teething babies, contained 65 milligrams of morphine per ounce, a potent amount even for an adult.

These medicines were especially popular among the working classes as a cost-effective alternative to a visit to the doctor. At the turn of the century, some estimates place the number of Americans addicted to morphine, cocaine and heroin at a quarter of a million people, out of a total population of 76 million.

In 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Act sought to stem the proliferation of heroin in the United States by banning its distribution and sale, while allowing it to be prescribed and sold for medical reasons. Heroin remained a problem, however, and in 1924, the U.S. Congress banned the manufacture, importation and sale of heroin.

With medicines containing heroin gone from the shelves, criminal gangs were more than happy to provide the drug and reap the profits. Beyond working-class and low-class neighborhoods, heroin use developed a cachet among jazz musicians and later among some writers and creative groups.

Prohibition, which began in 1920, greased the wheels for illegal heroin. The distribution routes that brought alcohol to a dry nation worked equally well to import and distribute heroin.

Some sources say Albany's own gangster, Jack "Legs" Diamond, who made his fortune in bootlegged liquor, worked with New York City criminal kingpin Arnold Rothstein in the heroin trade. Author William Kennedy, Albany's authority on Legs Diamond, wonders how deeply Diamond was involved, although one story came to mind. Kennedy recalls that in 1925 or 1926, heroin was being smuggled into New York Harbor concealed inside bowling pins. Diamond was suspected of being one of a group who hijacked this shipment. This makes sense, Kennedy says, because Rothstein financed Diamond as a hijacker of bootleg liquor.

"Legs was working with Rothstein on all sorts of things; it wouldn't surprise me [that he was trafficking in heroin] but it doesn't show up on his rap sheet. He was not arrested for heroin," he says.

Kennedy says that heroin was for sale in the area. In the 1920s and '30s, Tommy Dyke operated a high-end Capital Region cigar store. Alongside the fine cigars were other cigars loaded with heroin or cocaine, customer's choice.

When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, there was no more money in illicit alcohol, but drugs were still profitable. New York City became a distribution hub for heroin imported from Asia.

Heroin addiction has been around since heroin was first discovered, but why has the drug's use exploded in recent years?

New York State Police Colonel Daniel Penny, Deputy Superintendent Internal Affairs, has worked in narcotic enforcement since 1984. Most recently he was detail commander for the Community Narcotics Enforcement Team (CNET) from 1996 to 2002.

In the 1980s Penny says that heroin was a "behind closed doors" type of drug that was not hawked on street corners and was used by a group of hardcore addicts, all of whom knew each other.Penny says that he suspects the increasing purity of heroin has a lot to do with the explosion in its use.

"In the 1980s you could not inhale or snort heroin; it just was not pure enough. You had to inject it and there is a real sigma to using a needle. That stopped a lot of people," he says. "Today's heroin is pure enough to snort or inhale and that makes it easier to take that first taste."

Dealers in recreational drugs started adding heroin to their offerings, Penny says. Countries such as Afghanistan and Columbia ramped up cultivation of the opium poppy — the raw ingredient for heroin — to meet the demand.

The heroin spike follows the crackdown on prescription opioid drugs, such as oxycodone and vicodin, whose abuse by teenagers and the general population reached a crisis in recent years. Once available by prescription from complicit doctors, from the family medicine cabinet or via the Internet, today's new laws make them harder to get. Users need a readily available drug with the same opioid "kick" and heroin fits the bill.

According to a March 2014 Federal Drug Enforcement Agency report, the average street cost for OxyContin, a form of oxycodone also known as hillbilly heroin, is $1 per milligram. A typical 40 mg tablet costs $40. This makes heroin a real bargain.

"There is a more strict process for prescribing pain killers now so people are turning to heroin. Heroin is not regulated," says UAlbany's Cimini. "It's cheap and it's dangerous because we don't know who made it or how they made it."

A bag of heroin that cost $10 in 1984 still costs $10 now, Penny says. "This makes it cheaper than the prescription drugs people had been abusing."

Heroin is also easy to adulterate, keeping costs down. Pure heroin can be cut with baking soda or lactose to something as hazardous as Fentanyl, a narcotic painkiller. Dealers cut heroin with cold medicine to make a less strong, so-called cheese heroin, which is marketed to children and teenagers.

Drugs have always been a business and it's always about the business, whether people want to make money, or fuel their own habit, Penny says. "The depth of the problem hits home once it grabs a close family member. It's their loved ones who suffer most."

— Katie Pratt contributed to this story.





How It's Made

Opium is a naturally occurring sap collected from the seedpod of the opium poppy. Raw opium is mixed with a calcium solution and hot water and allowed to settle for several hours. A binding chemical is added and the contents are filtered and then allowed to dry in the sun to create a brown morphine base. Another chemical is added to the base that it is heated and filtered. Finally, sodium carbonate is added to create a heroin base. The heroin base is mixed with several more chemicals and filtered. The resulting residue is dried. One last chemical is added and then filtered once more. The result is white heroin hydrochloride, or powdered white heroin.

No special equipment is needed. Metal or plastic barrels, plastic tubs and filtering cloths and tubing are sufficient. Fields of opium poppies are cultivated in Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Pakistan and in Mexico and Columbia. In 2010, Afghanistan produced 90 percent of the world's illicit opium.

Source: Federal Drug Enforcement Agency





Heroin By Any Other Name

Just as marijuana and other drugs have nicknames, so does heroin. Here are just a few over the years.

Big H, Chiva, Hell Dust, Horse, Negra, Smack, Thunder, Brown Sugar, Nose Drops, Skag, China White, Mr. Brownstone

Mexican Black Tar, a less refined form of heroin, sticky and dark

Cheese Heroin, a blend of Mexican heroin and over-the-counter cold medications, cheap and highly addictive, known to be marketed to children and teenagers





In the coming weeks, the Times Union will show you the lives of the people who sell heroin, the cops who try to catch those dealers, the addicts who struggle to beat the habit, and the families left to deal with the chaos when a loved one becomes junkie. Beginning Sunday, Sept. 7, in the Times Union, and online at timesunion.com.

