Drugs of Natural Origin

Most drugs that have intoxicating effects come from a natural origin that contain certain chemicals mostly found in plants. Cocaine, opium, marijuana, caffeine, and tobacco all come from naturally grown plants. Cocaine is extracted by chemical means and is not entirely natural, but the plant does contain cocaine just not in a pure form. Opium is actually a drug that is natural and does not require chemicals or any scientific extracting methods to obtain the sap. This drug is found in the Asian Poppy Flower and before the bulb flowers it is cut and a white sap is withdrawn. This sap then turns reddish-brown and dries and that is opium, natural opium contains twenty-percent morphine and the rest is opiate alkaloid. Marijuana is a natural plant, though there are advanced growing methods to strengthen the natural THC chemical. The plant is basically dried and smoked, much like opium. These types of drugs are natural and should be able to grow naturally with everyone able to benefit from their effects. Opium has great medical uses especially with pain, depression, and anxiety. The government and pharmaceutical companies are the reasons why pure morphine, heroin, and fentanyl were created. These medicines do have medical uses though are also dangerous to a person's mortality. Heroin was made by Bayer, the German pharmaceutical company, which advertised the drug as a non-addictive morphine substitute. Patients were given heroin or ordered through mail order catalogs and the effects were terrible. Before the Harrison Act, morphine or cocaine could be ordered through a sears catalog with a syringe and supply of the drug of choice and delivered in the mail. This country used to be the drug capitol of the world with a vast majority of cities containing opium dens. Since the government and wealthy citizens in the lobby did not like the Chinese, opium was soon banned in cities and driven underground. Most opium dens were then disguised as laundry mats or some other legitimate business, all levels of society would attend these dens and participate in the traditional form of opium use. I believe the prejudice against the Chinese forced people to dislike this natural tradition and caused many people to use easily hidden drugs, like morphine and syringes, to enjoy the effects in a more psychologically and physically addictive manner. Regular opium use would be less harmful and is not as life threatening as using a syringe and a more concentrated drug that is chemically extracted. These drugs, morphine, hydromorphone, and hydrocodone are legal if prescribed. They are controlled, though people do easily gain access to these substances and overdoses are reported in epidemic numbers. It is human nature to use these substances, we have for thousands of years, though the natural substances were used hundreds to thousands of years ago and problems never occurred as we are seeing today. Most likely, the reason is because there were never such restrictions or such powerful extractions made for pills or intravenous use.