WHEN I WAS A KID

When I was a kid in the 1950's and someone in the family had a cough, my mom sent me to the drug store to get some terpin hydrate elixir with codeine.   It was all the rage.  Codeine was recently discovered to suppress coughs.  Drugs!!!

That terpin hydrate was quite a concoction.  The pharmacist could put it together.  They could throw in turpentine oil, syrup, alcohol, oregano and thyme.  Whatever they had laying around.   Unscrupulous purveyors of medicine had been selling this kind of stuff out of the back of a horse-drawn cart for a hundred years.  Of course, the turpentine was useful in drying up mucous membranes but it could kill you if you got too much.  The alcohol made you not care so much.

The trick in the 50's was the codeine.  It is a mild opiate.  There were really no laws restricting opiate medicines at the time.  The pharmacy made me sign for the drug but that's all.  I wasn't of age.  The medicine definitely worked.

In the 1960's, the US started to get serious about restrictions on opiate medicines.  In 1970, the Controlled Substance Act was passed by Congress and our drug policy regarding narcotics was formulated.

The opiates were wonder drugs for pain but the side effect of addiction made them killers. Here is a brief list of opiates you may have heard of and their relative strength.

Morphine taken orally - baseline
Codeine - 1/10 as strong as morphine
Demerol - 1/3 as strong as morphine
Vicodin - same as oral morphine
Oxycodone (OxyContin) - 1 1/2 times as strong as morphine
Morphine taken IV - 3 times as strong as oral morphine
Heroin - 3-5 times as strong as morphine
Fentanil - 50-100 times as strong as morphine

There are many more opiates in use - some a thousand times stronger than morphine.  Pain is bad - addiction can be worse.
O_O