I explained to you that I am the original author to show you that anybody who wishes to can register at Wikipedia, author anything they wish, and that anybody who wishes to can then come along and change it to say anything they want. Though it can be useful for secondary sourcing via citations it means absolutely nothing in terms of factual information.
As for claiming I spread misinformation, you could easily prove that by actually posting a real source as opposed to a worthless collection of opinions like Wikipedia. Anyone imagining that Tar isn't heroin...or that says Tar is "#3 with lactose" (actually saying that is just sad) ought to check themself at the door and not start tossing out advice in a harm reduction site.
If you understood the process of acetylisation you wouldn't be spouting ridiculous nonsense like, "Tar isn't heroin." MAM-3 and 6 are part and parcel of ALL illicit heroin. 6 comes from hydrolysis, 3 from incomplete acetlyisation under less than optimum circumstances (using acetyl chloride and heating sans reflux for far too short a time).
"Small varying levels of heroin." Tar can have purity in the 8th percentile, the highest purity recorded was 87%. "Monoacetylcodeine" is found in any heroin that has been manufactured from poorly synthesised morphine (basically all except SE Asian).
#3 Heroin has a caffeine content of at least 50% though the technical definition is 60%. This is because it is actually heroin hydrchloride (at the POM, point of manufacture) but intended for smoking. You cannot effectively smoke #4. To smoke a powder its melting point and its vapourisation point have to be very closely aligned. If #4 is left in its natural state its melting point is far lower than its vapourisation point so that it burns before it can vapourise and be inhaled. Caffeine raises the melting point if combined in the right amounts.
More than simply adding caffeine though, flavourings like quinine, strychnine, vanillin, etc. are added. SE Asian Heroin began life in the licit phamaceutical factories in and around Shanghai and Tsientin, China in the late 1920s. The factories used to produce flavoured tablets that could be effectively smoked in opium pipes. Trying to capitalise on opium addiction the manufacturers did their best to mimic the opium experience.
As some might know, in SE Asia aspirin powder is combined with prepared opium because smokers mistakenly believe it potentiates opium. Trying to get that same same chemical taste, quinine and strychnine were used in the tablets. The tablets were also branded in much the same way as heroin in the Northeastern US is (though in the US it is merely a rubber stamp upon a glassine envelop) via colourisation and inactive flavourings like vanillin and different perfume extracts (essence of rose, etc).
The Japanese Occupation put an end to the tablets and the factories that made them. Much of the Shanghai mileu moved to the then British colony of Hong Kong. By the early 1950s the remnants of the Chinese Nationalist Army who hadn't been evacuated to Formosa (later renamed Taiwan) began to go native. The northeastern hill country of Burma (now Mynammar) had almost a century-long involvement in the opium trade due ro British manipulation, though at that point the trade was entirely illicit and for an export market. After initial forays into opium export some enterprising ethnic Chinese began manufacturing powderised heroin.
Not long after, the manufacture of #3 began. Since tablet presses were rare at that time they simply gave #4 a steambath and pressed it through screen mesh to create uniform oblong kernels that resembled rice (after first combining the heroin with the potentiator/flavouring/trademarking admixture I described.
By the 1960s #3 was nearly the only form used by addicts on the mainland though on Hong Kong (especially Kowloon) had a small IDU population using #4. Outside of SE Asia though #3 only found a market in Amsterdam, West Germany and Paris. In fact Amsterdam's infatuation with #3 was the primary factor behind the current innundation of Western and Central Europe with #2 Heroin (but that is a different subject).
By the very early 1980s it fell from popularity in Europe as #4 became cheaper (originally #3 was much cheaper than #4 due to its much lowet purity). More importantly, SE Asia's domestic market radically shifted towards #4 as well. The last recorded seizure of #3 that I am aware of was in 2005. From the late 1990s until then it held onto a tiny market share in Malaysia (Pattaya). Co-incidentally that is also the last place in which Heroin #1 was found as well. Times change.
(Edited for spelling)
