Found it, I dont know if I am allowed to link but some posts from another forum.
The numbering system was devised by the US DEA in the very early 1970s, in the DEA's first few baby steps and represents their ignorance.
The system is as follows:
Heroin #1: Morphine Freebase or Morphine HCL
Heroin #2: Heroin Acetate or Heroin Freebase
Heroin #3: #4 heroin but specifically altered at the POM (Point of Manufacture) to make it conducive for smoking. The technical definition is a 60:40 mix, with 60 representing heroin hcl. and 40 representing caffeine hcl.
Heroin #4: Heroin hcl made specifically for injection.
A couple of forms are not represented.
"Tar," made, as I said a week or so ago by using a different acetylating agent (other than Acetic Anhydride), heated much longer, and not heated in a reflux apparatus. The lack of reflux is what is responsible for its "tar" life form, and the acetylating agent and time are what is responsible for the ration of MAMs (MAM 3 and MAM 6 are usually only seen as by products of hydrolysation. As heroin degrades it turns first into MAMs and then into morphine although it is always a mixed ratio unless very old and decomposed.
"Homebaked" is made from either Rx morphine tabs or more often from OTC codeine preps that have had a CWE, and then subjected to O-Demetylation into morphine, . Eother way, when they have morphine they then acetylate usually using AA but any acetylating agent will work. Like "Tar," it is not heated in relux so it is a "tar" like consistency but the composition is much different than "Tar," in that it has very little MAM. When they used to use Diconal as the precuros it would be a pink or red tar, but more often black just like Mexican "Tar."
Both "Tar" and "Homebaked" are forms specifically made for injection so they meet the technical definition of Heroin #4, but because they were only disocvered AFTER the system was created, they really fall outside of it.
"Tar" is a form only made in parts of Mexico and only seen in Mexico and parts of the US, while "Homebaked" while very rare today is only found in NZ and Australia.
I will post this and then post the answer in a following post, things are a hectic now.
So how do you know what form you have? #2 is almost always freebase although it includes both freebase and aAcetate in the tech. definition. When you acetylate, you end up with Acetate, and it is a salt with very poor pH attributes so it is NEVER sold as is. All producers then convert the Acetate into freebase by suing simple sodium bicarb (most of the time). if sold at this stage it is #2. #2 is the form most often exported from SW Asia, meaning Paki/Afghan product , basically the only thing in Europe now and the UK of course is in Europe .
If they are exporting there in the US and from time to time a tiny bit gets in, it will be a finer product, almost always, meaning #4. they generally make both while 4 is much more expensive and hence it is not often going to Europe.
Why is #1 morphine some bright person MIFGT ask. Well, that is because when this sytem was devised morphine was an illicit commodity itself. Almost all SE producers were making #4 from already illicitly manufactured morphine. Today, only one group still makes it, "999 Brand," with 3 9s pressed into the block, always a very white brick. Made by the Wa Tribe in Mynammar/Burma it is sold only to one area in the world today, the Thai/Malaysian jungle straddling the border, to Muslim producers who are too lazy, etc to do the process themselves.
For all intensive purposes #1 is dead.
Those same Muslim producers are the only people alive today making #3, and only KL (Kuala Lampur) and one other Malaysian city has any #3.
#3 usually has aside from almost50% caffeine, strychine and quinine (both for flavour), and barbitone (for potentiation). In days past you would also see dyes like "Red Rooster" brand in HK, or "Grey Pearl" in Kowloon, and Macau, etc. Today, just white pieces about as big as a piece of uncooked white rice, looks just like rice in fact.
Today, #4 in the Us is almost always Colombian white to brown poweder, usually darker coloured because Colombians are sloppy cooks. By and by they are terrible but at least they make #4, right? Still, they adulterate it even before selling it down the first step of the ladder and that just shows their pure and utter contempt for their product. It would be one thing if they were whacking it with lactose, etc. but they pout all kinds of weird things in it and if I could ever help it I would never touch that crap without recooking it.
The best today? SE Asians and their #4. Even there it is a dying art, sad to say. Everyone wants that profit. Do you know what the Double O stamp says in Chinese? In Cantonese it means "Best Untouched Brand" and used to mean you had the best thing going. Now everyone is using whatever they want but wait, I sound like the old man I am becoming.
Anyway, the OP wishes to know what he/she has in Chicago. Chicago is the one area in the US where they have ALL forms. To see if you have #2, take 1/4th od a dose, put it in a cooker, add 2 to 4 CC water, stir. Observe it, is it cloudy? Heat it. If you have #2 it will not cook it will just begin to gel like a "blob" in the cooker. It needs an acidic catalyst, citric works wonders. If you want to see how good it is, put the same amount on a piece of foil, heat under neat the foil, not directly but apply the flame about an inch under the foil. Watch it cook. Does it run? Let it harden if so. If it runs it is #2, and when it hardens take a good look. the clearer it is the better your product. The darker the worse, ie.e less pure the product really is.
With #4, do the cooker test again and observe it. Good #4 needs only half the water of any form and NO heat at all. You drop it in the body of the syringe, etc. already filled with water, and do not even need to shake it as the solubility is excellent.
If you want to do a bit more accurate assay do a MP test, etc. These are just to find which form you have.
Finally, #2 should always be fine for insufflating as long as it is very fine consistency. Make sure it is finely pwodered. Your nasal mucous will adjust the pH naturally. You only need the acid for injection. It also smokes perfectly without caffeine so that it is another benefit.
Duck: Those #5 viials are standard in Bangkok ever since those days. I was getting them for , last time, about 45 US in Baht, with 1.2 grams per vial #4 no adulteration. Great stuff. Red Top is better though!
"Colour of Heroin"
The analogy I like to use is the following...
If I had a 6 pack of beer and then urinated into a bottle it would be clear as the best water iin the world. If I took the best water in the world anf filled a 2nd bottle with it, and then dropped in 2 drops of yellow food colouring and then left on a table for thirst workers which bottle would they choose? They would choose Bottle #1, the "beer bottle."
Think about it, that is what "colour" means. It means nothing.
"Why do people prefer brown or darker coloured heroin?": They did not until the mid 90s and only then in some places. The reason THEN was because they ignorantly believed/believe that because the purer product was brown (i.e. dark) it could not be effectively adulterated without making it much lighter. I.E. anything "Dark" meant that it was closer to the source.
However, all one has to do is put lactose in a stove for a good 45 to 120 seconds on the lowest setting to have it turn brown and stay powder. Take it out, regrind, mix, and voila, VERY dark powdered product even with the whitest heroin. It is a fool's game. Edcuate yourselves.
As we talked about in the "East Coast Stamp" thread in "Scene" forum, heroin and morphine are naturally chocolate brown and are lightened through a simple chemical process. The problem though is that Colombians rarely if ever care to take the 2 hours needed to make it white as driven snow. All it is is Activated Carbon (i.e. charcoal).
Opiyum: If you reread the East Coast Stamp thread carefully, or maybe a bit more slowly you will see where I have debunked that misconception. Morphine, when you first extract it is choclate brown. Looks like cocoa pwder. It is usually whitened in the heroin stage, except by the afore mentioned Wa tribesmen who sell it as an illicit commodity to other producers, they take the time and effort to decolourise (I know, I know, black is an absence of colour while white is a combo of all colours but I am talking in real life terms not science per se) their morphine.
Morphine is the , in my mind, the simplest chemical process in the world. It is a very dark though, naturally. It does not 'pick up contaminants" unless you leave it lying around in a dirty place or apply those contaminants yourself.
As for "Colombians' work ethic," you do not ever have to meet a single one. Just look at their crap. Study data on seizure reports to find out what they are putting in right at POM. It is not a heavy consideration. People that take pride in what they do do it right. It takes all of 2 hours to make it as white as anyone would ever want it. They cannot be bothered to do that in almost most cases despite the fact that it commands much more money in most of the US (brown is only thought better in a very few places where they have been inundated with Colombian, like Florida, Gergia, etc). As i said though, it is oh so simple to carmelise your lactose and make snowwhite heroin into cocoa brown , and it is also just a spossible to whiten your chocolate brown.
In purely chemical terms, absolutely pure would be purely white. The brown colorung in raw (in this case "raw" does not mean the slang defintion of "raw" but rather POM heroin) is related to impurities reulsting from the extraction. You gain 8 to 12 perntage points in purity if you whiten your product.
However, as I said earlier, people in areas where Colombian has flooded the market believe brown to be purper because of their ignorance in believing it is next to impossible to adulterate it and keep it dark. They see whiter product and they believe it has been adulterated but in reality that is very counter-intuitive.
Bodymore: "Photo.": That is not Heroin #1, i.e. morphine. That is SW Asian #4 from the village of Azad in Afghanistan and is a very popular brand for both #2 and #4.It is white by the way, not brown as in the picture. If I had to guess, I would say the brown was a wrapping or some kind of contamination from storage. SW 999 is famous as being one of the rare Afgan brands that is always more than 95% pure, which you cannot get unless you decolourise heroin.
The other piece, "Flying Kobra," I have never heard of but probably from the same (Golden Crescent) if in the same photo, at least that would be my wild guess. In fact I it is almost certainly the case since it is efinitely not SE Asian, and Colmbians do not put imprints in heroin , as they do with cocaine.
Heroin #1 is made just like #4 now, in either 350 or 700 gram packages. The 700 gram packages come in bricks, the 350s in wheels that look alot like cheese. In days gone by, 999 Brand #1 was packaged as a 3 lb brick (1.6 kilo), what they call a "viss," but nowadays even opium is being packaged as kilograms so the entire market has changed.
Papa: Well you could always purify your own if you wanted to really bother but you are probablly better off just doing as you are.
On the poorly mixed heroin/adulterant...When I was in Tampa in the mid 90s there were only a few people selling grams and above. One source was these 2 brothers, "Latin Kings" like alot of the people were, transpplants from Conneticut. I do not know if the Hartford Chapter had a meeting and decided to move en masse but it sure seemed that way. Anyway, one day I am doing a favour for a freind of mine, before I got back into the swing so to speak. I go to the guys house, we talk in Spanish, he brings me out a nice piece, real nice but then he says, hold on a second. Most Colombiasn is chocolate brown to tan, but at that point virtually all of it was choclate brown. When he comes back in the room I am looking at chocolate specs in a sea of white. I was buying for another person but it just pissed me off oan a very basic level.
I told him that he must be crazy. Go get the real stuff, I will pay the price, "Nooooo" he said which is actually smart business because an OD down there can get you Natural Life, but I just could not give him money for garbage so rather than buy it I let the "friend" stay sick and left it alone. If he was smart he would have browned the "cut" but most people are not smart.
Bodymore: Let me be explicit so ther is no misunderstanding. If you talk to folks from the NE they will tell you that you can find the same stamp 10 different ways. SW Asia and SE Asia are a world apart geographically, culturally, and in terms of drugs. the "999" is a silver stamp used to denote pure silver for trade. IT is not a SE Asian OIR SW Asian culturism. In other words, it is like a man in Brasil and a man in Compton naming their d ime bags of cok "Hot Stuff." Not a real big mystery.
SW "999" is always heroin. SE "999" morphine." SE Asian is all but extinct (still a bit but not much), while the SW is better than ever. It is a famous Afghan rand. If you ever go, or know someone who goes to Pakistan there is a bazaar in NW, right over the NW line from Peshawar. In that bazaar it is like a heroin supermarket (and guns and arms). They offer samples, etc. You can buy several different grades, even arrange to have ti smuggled to your destination of choice. "999" is a world famous brand and is probablly one of the biggest sellers in Peshawar.
Erowid is a site like any other. Noone running it has probablly ever been to either region and is pulling pictures off the internet, etc. They learn, somehow, that "999" is an old brand of morphine, and so when they see a picture of a block of "999" they of course make the natural assumption.
"999" morphine is snow white, that is why they are able to even sell it as a commodity - because it shortens the synthesis of heroin considerably, and as a commodity it allows the manufactuer to turn a profit greater than with the expense of smuggled opium (the Thai/Malay Border is a dodgy place, everyone going through gets heavily searched, etc).
Laud: It is a 2 step process, not 3. You have morphine, you acetylate it, you have heroin, all in one step: Acetylysation. If you want GOOD heroin that is different.
I have already explained colour to death.
There IS no difference in manufacturing betwen #3 and #4. They are one and the same. The difference is that once completed, 3 is admixed with potenitators, adulterants, and dilutents, and SOMETIMES dyes.
They are both #4. #3 is a technical definition for an admixture of #4, any #4 with an admixture ff at least 40% caffeine hcl is techically #3.
You believe that acetylysation is easy? It is. Explain it though.
"Pure heroin is white." We can read Merck as well. If you make it though it will NVEVER be white unless you make it white yourself. You have to run it through carbon, but then this has been talked about to death.
No offence but you need to start at the begnning. The ONLY definition for #4 is a heroin sepcifically prepared for injection and this includes Tar, which is an acetate and of course BLACK, as well as Homebaked which can be any colour under the sun although usually black or pink.
As for coming across pure heroin, buy a plane ticket and you can but it for 20 US a gram. Not as rare as you imagine, but probably easier to catch a unicorn then find it in the US.
As for the last part, most Middle Eastern heroin is #2.
Woody: Right about most except that colmbian is considered to be #4, as is so called Mesican Mud, the Chco Fine of the 70s and 80s, brown power from Durango, #4 also. Tar by virtue of being prepares specifically for injection, which is what #4's tech. definition also becomes #4 but...the terms were old (early 70s) and the DEA was not thinking straight when they devised the system so...Maybe it is all academic although interesting to discuss.
Just to split hairs, to inject #2 you need an acidic catalyst to convert the pH, but yeah, add water so yep you have it right.
