Getting Injected With Morphine at the Hospital?
Question by unsure: Getting injected with morphine at the hospital?
How is that legal when heroin is illegal if its basically the same thing
Best answer:
Answer by Shay
Same way percription pain killers are legal, they are percribed to people who need it to cope with pain.
Answer by T
Heroin gets converted to morphine in the body when it is metabolized, yes, but it works more quickly and is about 3x stronger than regular morphine and it crosses the blood brain barrier more easily so it gives a much more euphoric high which makes it more likely to cause psychological dependence (addiction) and physical dependence (withdrawal). It is a schedule I drug in the United States which means that there is no acceptable medical reason to use it and so it is illegal to use.
>>It is actually legal in the United Kingdom, though, and they prefer it over morphine because of its different side effects.
What’s crazy is that while heroin is 3x stronger than morphine and it is illegal, there are other drugs like dilaudid and fentanyl that are much stronger than that! Dilaudid is 8x stronger than morphine and fentanyl is 100x (yes, one hundred) stronger than morphine. But these drugs are metabolized differently and therefore have less abuse potential because they don’t give the same strength of a euphoric high.
Opiates and opioids (like morphine, dilaudid, fentanyl, oxycodone, etc) are important in pain management because addiction is not as common as many people think it is and managing pain has recently become a much higher priority in health care than it used to be. It is now often referred to as the “fifth vital sign” (with temperature, pulse, blood pressure, and respiration rate as the “primary four” vital signs). Treating pain greatly increases quality of life and it is important in health care. Many times pain cannot be managed adequately without opioids or opiates.
Best Wishes,
Tiffany