So higher the number the better?
No, it's a outdated numbering system the DEA used to label the different types of heroin in Vietnam in the 1970's. They are:
#1-morphine base or hydrochloride- It's not really heroin yet, but it had a market in asia, and drug manufacturers like the triads or the french connection prefered to buy the less bulky morphine as opposed to opium. Still sometimes shows up in afghanistan.
#2-Heroin base- when the morphine is converted into heroin it's freebased at the end of the cook.It's usually brown. This is the kind of heroin most common in Afghanistan. Usually smoked or mixed with an acid and injected
#3-Heroin hydrochloride cut with caffeine or barbiturates- In 1920's China someone started sell red tonic pills with heroin, caffeine, quinine, strychnine and aspirin. Later they marketed these tonic pill as 'anti-opium pills' which were traditionally made out of opium ashes, which still has a lot of morphine left.Naturally the addict would stop taking opium, and take heroin instead. Someone put it into an opium pipe and found you could smoke these pills, then it spread like a wild fire.Over time the formula changed to 50% caffeine, 49% heroin, 1% strychnine. Also sometimes it's made with (pheno)barbital instead of caffeine and strychnine. It turned out that heroin forms what's called a eutectic mixture(lower melting point, like water and salt) with caffeine or barbital meaning it wouldn't burn up and it vaporized more easily.Either brown, red, or grey, it less pure than number #4 but not by much, cut's notwithstanding. Usually smoked, but can be snorted or injected. Not very common now, but was once popular in the SE Asia.
#4-heroin hydrochloride- The heroin base is dissolved, decolorized with activated carbon and is turned into the hydrochloride salt using ether, ethanol, and hydrochloric acid. This is the most common type of heroin in Burma and Colombia, though Mexico and Afghanistan also make small amounts.It can be snorted or injected.
Techically black tar is also #4, it's just not purified as much if at all. It can be smoked or injected, and it can be cut into a snortable powder.
Dark Wizard said:
Mexican Black Tar Heroin #3 is unpurified Heroin, while Heroin #4 (China White) is put through a production process that refines the Heroin into a much (much) purer form. So it's extremely unlikely that "Mexican Black Tar' will ever be more potent then Heroin #4. I have a buddy out West in California who can only get "Mexican Black Tar" and he tried Heroin #4 from Chicago and he said Chicago's "H" blew his "Black Tar" out of the water.
Your friend must be getting some bunk shit. Believe it or not, tar can be stronger then some powder. Uncut tar's often 70%-high 80% pure, plus the impurities are active. I've heard of some who tried both, and while they liked the powder, they didn't feel it was really that much different or stronger.