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Acetylization of O

P

papasmurf1978

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Aug 16, 2010
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According to many sources, black tar heroin is just acetylated opium, although i suspect it is most likely defatted and cleaned up a little first.
My question is wouldn't the acetylated opium also contain 6-monoacetylcodeine (6-MAC) which is toxic and quite often deadly? 6-MAC can easily cause death by anaphylactic shock as it causes the body to dump masssive amounts of histamine into the bloodstream (imagine injecting this crap-you would be a goner for sure).
Is there a way to remove the codeine before acetylation, or a way to convert the 6-MAC to a less toxic by-product?
 
You are correct that black tar is often acetylated opium, and this is especially true in the south-western US. By acetylating cooked opium or "de-fatted" opium, the morphine is converted into diacetylmorphine, and this chemical change occurs on something called hydroxyl groups. Morphine has two hydroxy groups, hence: di(two)acetylmorphine, and codeine has one hydroxyl group. Therefore, assuming the hydroxyl group is in the 6-position, the common crude method of heroine manufacture would produce 6-acetylcodeine.

I am unsure as to whether 6-AC is toxic, but considering the low concentration of codeine in opium, I would not suspect the chemical to pose a problem. Plenty of people do dope without having allergic reactions, in fact, I've never heard of it.
 
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Thanks for the info, Chauncey. I agree to sticking with the cooked opium, which is what I have been doing for years. Eating or drinking the stuff seems like such a waste, as only 30% - 35% is actually absorbed by the body. I suppose inhaling the vapors would be a better way to go. Would defatting the opium before doing this be advised?
 
this skirts the edge of synthesis questions, but I'll shift it over to advanced drug discussion and the mods there can make a call on it.
 
Black tar is not "acetylated opium". It is just morphine that is acetylated without reflux which gives it the gooey form.
 
To add to that, I'm pretty sure the DEA has tested tar for purity in the past that was upwards of 80%, which would be impossible if it was just acetylated opium. What do morphine levels max out at in refined opium, like 20%? I would be surprised if it's even that high. I'm almost positive I read all this on BL before.

Edit-wiki says morphine content maxes out at 12%, although it's not specified if that's for cooked or raw.
 
Chauncey_GARDENer said:
...I am unsure as to whether 6-AC is toxic, but considering the low concentration of codeine in opium, I would not suspect the chemical to pose a problem. Plenty of people do dope without having allergic reactions, in fact, I've never heard of it.
Click to expand...

I don't know about 6-AC, but I'd heard and had always thought it rational that opiates and most opioids create a rather strong histamine reaction, which usually comes from allergies, right?

That's why we itch like crazy and why after a good year + of a LARGE (east coast stamp) heroin habit I was immune to the typical swelling, redness, etc of mosquito and spider bites, even to this day - over a decade later... Tolerance to histamine...
or so I thought.
 
This probably sounds like bullshit to many of you, but on one very rare occasion while living in the southwest, with my closest friend who was an older Mexican junky, both of us spoke spanish, I encountered tar that had just been made within the last few days. We had gone in on a larger quantity that lasted us a few days. This was the oddest thing. It started out an almost clear translucent very faint light beige-ish color and turned orange then the more familiar brown over the course of just a few days. If it wasn't for my more experienced friend, I wouldn't have thought it was even heroin when we first bought it. Like I said, you guys have no reason to believe me and probably think this is bullshit, but it was certainly not acetylated opium. Most tar has been sitting in a warehouse for years, as the DTO's have huge stockpiles at every stage of the smuggling routes. I remember a warehouse in the Phoenix suburbs was busted once with tons upon ton. Unfortunately this is the closest I've ever come to seeing how tar was made, but the color and resemblance to opium has more to do with the lack of acetic anhydride and the refusal to clean the material up afterwards than anything to do with opium. There are many different "kinds" of tar that look very different, so I guess it's possible a small portion is just acetylated opium, and I have encountered really nasty, soft slimy tar that was weak and gave me cotton fever type symptoms which I suppose was possibly acetylated opium, but that's not even 2% of the tar sold. Think about it, why would DTO's smuggle in a product that is so weak to start? Smuggling space is extremely precious, and the drugs are practically worthless before they cross the border. Average quality tar is almost always better in both potency and subjective effect than manhattan heroin, although it is a nasty product that destroys your veins and causes infections. Those things aside, it was rarely if ever <20% pure when I was last actively using it.
 
Thanks for the info everyone. I feel kinda silly now. Mahatoka had a good point: acetylated opium would be much too weak to pass for heroin, the morphine content is simply too low. However, Turing Machine stated he has a case of "cotton fever" after (presumably injecting) some low potency tar. Perhaps this low grade tar was actually acetylated opium, and the cotton fever was a reaction to the 6-MAC. But then again Turing Machine made another good point: why would a smuggler try his luck with anything less than the purest product he can find? I will continue to research this from an academic standpoint, at this point all I can do is speculate.
P.S. Just being curious, I wonder what would be the properties of acetylated opium? What color, what consistency, etc... I realize there is a "no synthesis" policy here, I'm only being speculative, but if I'm crossing a line here, someone let me know.
 
I'm not even sure if acetylating opium would be in any way feasible. There's so much stuff in raw opium, who knows where those acetyl groups would end up at...

Anyway, morphine+codeine are relatively easy to separate from the rest of the alkaloids, but it's harder to separate the codeine from the morphine, and clandestine heroin makers are not known for rigorous purification methods. So some codeine is often left in the morphine which they acetylate, thus the final product will have some acetylcodeine, and this is probably the cause of the allergic reactions.
 
In that DEA report that describes heroin production in SE asia, they describe the reaction product of the morphine base with acetic anhydride as a "thick, soupy mixture" containing heroin acetate. I've always assumed that tar was made with GAA, but it may be that tar is even made acetic anhydride, and just the reaction product that has been dried without the freebasing step. Does anyone know which heroin salt composes tar? I suppose that it being the acetate salt wouldn't suggest whether it was made with GAA or acetic anhydride but it would show that the material has not been purified with an A/B extraction. The vinegar smell common to tar suggests that it would be the acetate salt since acetic acid is obviously present and implies that it has never been freebased after the conversion to heroin. Since SE asian heroin base formed from the heroin being basified out of this solution is roughly 70% pure, the 20-80% purity found in tar would be within the range to be expected of material which has stopped short of this step.
 
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