Anthrax case linked to heroin. This year's cases of anthrax infections among heroin users follow an outbreak in 2009 and 2010, which saw 119 cases in Scotland, five in England and two in Germany.
Local Drug and Alcohol Action Teams have been advised to inform heroin users about the risk of anthrax infection after a drug patient was diagnosed with anthrax infection in Oxford. Dr Éamonn O’Moore, the director of the HPA’s Thames Valley Health Protection Unit, said: Injecting drug users often experience skin infection but we strongly advise them not to ignore signs such as redness or excessive swelling around injection sites, or other symptoms of general illness such a high temperature, chills, severe headaches or breathing difficulties.
They should seek medical advice quickly in such circumstances generally but particularly now because we have concerns that some batches of heroin in circulation in Oxfordshire and the wider Thames Valley may be contaminated with anthrax. . – Health Protection Agency expert Dr Fortune Ncube.
A Fateful Harvest - part 5 - A heroin lab bust. Heroin. Heroin /ˈhɛroʊɪn/ (diacetylmorphine or morphine diacetate, also known as diamorphine (BAN, INN[4]) and commonly known by its street names of H, smack, boy, horse, brown, black, tar, and others[5] is an opioid analgesic originally synthesized by C.R. Alder Wright in 1874 by adding two acetyl groups to the molecule morphine, which is found naturally in the opium poppy. It is the 3,6-diacetyl ester of morphine. Administered intravenously by injection, heroin is two to four times more potent than morphine and is faster in its onset of action.[6] Illicit heroin is sometimes available in freebase form, dulling the sheen and consistency to a matte-white powder.[7] Because of its lower boiling point, the freebase form of heroin is also smokable. As with other opioids, diacetylmorphine is used as both a legal, medically prescribed drug (e.g., as an analgesic, cough suppressant and as an anti-diarrhea drug) and a recreational drug, in which case the user is seeking euphoria.