Well of course des-tramadol is the active opioid, it is 100-200x more potent than Tram itself. In fact, a fun fact: M1's binding affinity is actually HIGHER than oxycodone's, according to some sources. For all practical purposes, tram is useless as an opioid with only negligible affinity for mu receptors(and effectively none for kappa and delta, as tramadol and M1 are highly Mu selective)
So your right with the message to swallow them, however wrong about oral being the "only effective" way. As I said, MOA is irrelevant, it will be still be metabolized to the active form.
But definantly take them orally. I only posted to help clear up a misconception that pro-drugs have to be swallowed to be active, or oral Codeine/tramadol is more potent than parenteral, as it is simply not true.(at least not with tramadol, but it is true of some other pro-drugs, but no opioids that I know of).!Their is a lot of misinformation floating around, and I would like to clear it up. That is all.