6000-year-old Summerian texts refer to the opium poppy as the 'joy plant'. It is thought Arab traders took opium to China in about the 7th or 8th century

All natural and synthetic opioids exhibit a three dimensional T-shaped configuration (Barchas, Berger, Ciaranello and Elliott, 1977). This T-shaped molecule has two broad hydrophobic surfaces which are at right angles and a methylated nitrogen which is usually charged at physiological pH. The charged nitrogen is essential for activity and lies in one of the hydrophobic planes. A hydroxyl group at carbon 3 on the other plane is also essential. This configuration which all opioids have is called the piperidine ring. Figure 1 is the structure of morphine with the piperidine ring indicated by bold lines. Simple changes on the morphine molecule produces several semisynthetic derivatives. Diacetylmorphine, or heroin is made from the morphine molecule by the acetylation of derivatives of the natural opium alkaloids, there are a number of other structurally distinct chemical classes of both the phenolic and the alcoholic OH groups (see Table 1). In addition to morphine, codeine and th!

Heroin is derived from raw opium gum, which is produced only by the opium poppy plant, although other varieties of poppy exist. The California, Flanders, and Oriental poppy are three types grown domestically. Poppy—both the opium-producing and non-opium-producing varieties—can be found in many different climates all over the world. Opium poppy has been grown in Asia for many years, and more recently has been cultivated in Latin America. About 60 percent of the world’s opium is produced in the remote parts of Southeast Asia, especially in the aptly named Golden Triangle, which includes parts of Burma, Laos, and Thailand. Other primary growers include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Colombia, and Mexico.

The hill tribe growers use a technique called slash-and-burn farming to prepare the poppyfields for planting. After all the trees have been cut down and vegetation cleared and burned, the farmers take handfuls of seed and spread them over the field. Poppies take about three months to mature, and the farmer may weed the fields once or twice during that time. When the plants are mature, the farmers start harvesting opium gum using primitive, unsanitary tools, made from whatever can be found nearby. The tools are often handed down from generation to generation.

Opioidergic neurons are particularly concentrated in the ventral tegmental area. The VTA is an important nerve tract in the limbic system. The VTA passes messages to clusters of nerve cells in the nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex. This forms the brain's primary reward pathway, the mesolimbic dopamine system. Its neurons are called dopaminergic because dopamine is manufactured, transported down the length of the neuron, and packaged for release into the synapses.

sants. Endorphins are also involved in glucose regulation. Opioid receptors are functionally designated as mu, delta, kappa, etc. These categories can be further sub-classified by function or structure. Decoding the human genome has allowed the genetic switching-mechanisms that control the expression of each opioid receptor to be determined at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional level.

Some topics in this essay:
Southeast Asia, Opioid Receptors, Hopkins University, Inhibiting GABA, South America, Ciaranello Elliott, Manufacture Smack, Introduction Heroin, Hong Kong, Niles Taylor, opioid receptors, opium poppy, opium gum, morphine molecule, raw opium, nerve cells, southeast asia, opioid receptor, ventral tegmental, mu opioid, non-addictive substitute morphine, raw opium gum, receptor-proteins nerve cells, china white horse, opium poppy plant,