What Brand Used to Have a Product Called Heroin?
Question by Steven B: what brand used to have a product called Heroin?
supposedly there used to be a consumer brand called Heroin. not sure how long ago and I’m not sure what type of product it was.
Best answer:
Answer by J’accuse!
Heroin was a Bayer trademark, until Bayer let it lapse.
from wikipedia:
Felix Hoffmann, of Bayer in Elberfeld, Germany created heroin as a medicine 11 days after inventing aspirin. Afraid of the possible side effects of aspirin, Bayer registered heroin (probably from heroisch, German for heroic, chosen because in field studies people using the medicine felt “heroic”) as a trademark.
From 1898 through to 1910 it was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children. Bayer marketed heroin as a “cure” for morphine addiction before it was discovered that heroin is converted to morphine in the liver. All opiates are converted by the human liver into the identical molecule with varying degrees of concentration in the blood stream. The company felt somewhat embarrassed by this new finding and it became a historical blunder for Bayer [1]. As with aspirin, Bayer lost some of its trademark rights to heroin following World War I.