Diacetylmorphine is probably the best opiate analgesic modern medicine has. British ambulances still carry it as a first-line drug for acute myocardial infarcti

Diacetylmorphine is probably the best opiate analgesic modern medicine has. British ambulances still carry it as a first-line drug for acute myocardial infarctions. It's an anxiolytic, a wonderful painkiller, and dilates corony arteries. It's not as widely used as it probably should be because of the feat of addiction. Recreational heroin drug use is dangerous because of the illegality - you don't know what you're getting. The varying levels of purity have twofold danger - increasing the risk of overdose due to getting a more pure drug and using the larger dosage you became accustomed to from the less pure stuff, as well as the risk of the substance used to cut the heroin being harmful in itself. Historically, heroin was used by people that WERE holding down jobs[0]. >According to Dr James Mills, a historian who has traced drug use through the 20th century, they tended to be doctors or middle-class patients who could afford to sustain a habit. Additionally, if we were to legalize heroin's use, we could sell naloxone packaged alongside the heroin. Naloxone, if you're not familiar, is an opiate antidote that is extremely effective. This would greatly reduce the chance of an overdose having fatal effect. As I've noted with meth elsewhere in this thread, I'm not suggesting anyone go and pick up a drug habit, but the vast majority of the dangers related to heroin (and most drugs - though obviously stuff like jimson weed is just plain bad for you...) are related to the illegal nature of it, and even those inherent to the drug itself can be mitigated much more easily in a legal setting [0]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4647018.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4647018.stm