Morphine, Nicotine

and Caffeine
Emory Bouffard & Roman
Bradley
 Opium comes from a poppy, Papaver somniferum.
Archeologists estimate that the effects of opium have been
known for more than 5000 years (Euphrates River delta).
Mesopotamia is thought to be the first place that the
Opium effects have been known.

Used all over the world as

healing remedy thousands of
years ago.

● Greeks
● Pheonicians
● Minoans
● Egyptians
● Babylonians
● Many many more.
Opium in China
This man, everyone knows him, brought tobacco back from the New
World. So, Europe has tobacco and smoking. Smoking makes people
feel good*. Other countries liked smoking too! But, Ming Dynasty in
China wasn’t a fan. Last emperor banned the smoking of tobacco.

But opium is still legal! Two ideas on how smoking opium came to
be such a big part of Chinese culture:

1. Citizens smoked opium as a substitute for tobacco

2. Small Portuguese trading posts and Amoy in the East China
Sea introduced them to the idea of mixing tobacco and opium.

Either way they became hooked, and almost 100 years after the
banning the smoking of tobacco, opium was banned as well.
Step 1. Make a cut in a
not-yet bloomed opium Opium Tutorial: Drugs made
poppy. A milky liquid
comes out of the cut
easy Step 3. Take dried opium
Step 2. Take the sap off of the plant with and it can be placed in bags
a spatula-like tool. Let it dry. or rolled into balls. The
balls of opium are what
would be put into a pipe to
smoke.
 Opium Wars
Christopher Columbus introduces smoking ≈ 1429 → Last emperor of the Ming Dynasty doesn’t like smoking ≈
1650→ Opium becomes BIG in China directly after→ Imperial edict bans the transportation and sale of Opium in
China=1729

Europe is addicted to tea, because tea has caffeine*→ China has the tea→ China doesn’t want to trade anything with
Europe because they have everything they need→ Britain doesn’t want to pay actual money for tea→ China is still
addicted to opium→ Britain still has the British East India Company in Bengal which happens to be a great place to
grow the opium poppy OPPORTUNITY → Britain trades opium with China.

Tea leaf is called Camellia
sinensis, it has caffeine in it,
so Europe REALLY needs
the tea.
China still hooked on opium , even if it’s illegal. In 1839 the Chinese tried to outlaw
the trade of opium again, and they confiscated and destroyed a year’s supply of
opium in a warehouse (Canton aka Guangzhou). Days later, drunk British soldiers
accused of killing local farmer. British declares war on China, and thus begins the
First Opium War (1839-1842) . Second Opium War is about 20 years later. British
win both, and with each victory more money is paid and more ports of trade opened.
*Definition of alkaloid: any of a
class of nitrogenous organic
compounds of plant origin which
have pronounced physiological
Morphine
actions on humans. They include
many drugs (morphine, quinine)
and poisons (atropine,
strychnine). Opium is made of 24 different alkaloids*, so the ball that looks like
poo on the 3rd slide worked just fine for smoking as a kind of
calming agent, causing people to get tired.

One of the alkaloids inside is known as morphine. Morphine is

about 10% of the ball of opium.

Ideally, pure morphine could be extracted and used to create

stronger drugs.

● 1803, Friedrich Serturner, German pharmacist.

 Structure of Morphine
ONE difference. CH3O vs HO. Wonder Drugs throwback:
Codeine is in opium, too, but
it’s only 0.3 to 2% vs In 1898 at the lab of Bayer and Company,
morphine, which is 10%. chemists tried doing something they did 5
Codeine is less powerful and years before, but this time with morphine.
less addictive.

They definitely got a stronger drug, which was kind of the goal.

Morphine Diacetylmorphine ← This has a VERY different commonly known name.

 Opium→ Morphine→ Heroin The term “opioids” refers to all drugs that
come from the opium poppy. Heroin, and
https://www.deamuseum.org/ccp/opium/production-distribution.html morphine are only two of many.

● The name “heroin” came from calling it “Hero drug.”

● Morphine and heroin have the same psychological effects on the brain. Drowsiness, cloudy thinking, slower heart beat,
euphoria, and more.
● Narcotic (means that it has sleep-inducing properties) and so is heroin.
● Heroin is absorbed into the brain WAY faster than morphine, and that’s what makes it so addictive (heroin is the most
addictive drug on the planet).
● It connects to the opioid receptors in the brain faster than morphine, and that gives a “high” much quicker than morphine.
● As people use it more and more they also build a resilience faster.
● Average cost of heroin (street cost) is $5 to $10 for 0.1 grams
● Companies have issues getting rid of acetic acid because it’s a side product in the production of heroin.
● A 20 mg dosage of heroin creates a high within 20 seconds when injected, and when snorted or or smoked it’s within 10
minutes.
The link above tells how the production of heroin works and how it’s made from the morphine base.
 Potency: In the field of pharmacology,
potency is a measure of drug activity
expressed in terms of the amount required to
Levels of Potency produce an effect of given intensity.

Opium Morphine Heroin

Carfentanil
Fentanyl
 Morphine works like an
endorphin in the brain, and
endorphins serve as pain
How? relievers.

● Endorphins are
Morphine and other similar alkaloids polypeptides.
(opioids) all act as really great pain
relievers. It’s thought that the reason ● Polypeptides are strings
for this is the “shape” aka chemical of amino acids
structure, and that they’re able to fit Beta phenylethylamine unit
into the pain receptors, essentially ● Amino acids are just
numbing them. compounds with amine
and carboxyl groups

● An amine is just a
nitrogen atom and a lone
pair

Both endorphins and morphine

contain a beta phenylethylamine
unit.

Morphine
Morphine Rule
Phenyl or aromatic ring + quaternary carbon atom (carbon atom is directly attached to four other carbon

atoms + CH2CH2 group + a tertiary nitrogen atom (nitrogen directly attached to three other carbon atoms).

Scientists discovered this rule when they saw that when meperidine (not similar to morphine AT ALL) made

rats lift up their tails in a weird way. Morphine made the rats do the same thing, and the one thing they had in

common were these 4 things.

Nicotine
From the plant Nicotiana, named after the French ambassador to
Portugal, Jean Nicot, who was a nicotine enthusiast.

King James I wrote a pamphlet to tell everyone how bad smoking,

saying the “custome loathesome to the eye, hatefull to the nose,
harmefull to the brain and daungerous to the lungs.”
In 1634, Russia banned it, punishable by slitting of the slips,
flogging, castration, or 50 years of exile.

Tobacco leaves are 2-8% nicotine, dependent upon how it’s

processed and the climate grown in.

In small doses, nicotine is a stimulant. But in larger doses, it acts as

a depressant.
 Nicotine Structure
because tobacco delivers nicotine→ nicotine activates nicotine receptors→ receptors
release chemical in brain called dopamine→ dopamine makes you feel happy, feeling of
euphoria. But when larger doses are taking, circulation slows, oxygen is delivered to the
body and brain at a slower rate, it gives a sedative effect.

Absorbing a dose as small as 50 mg can be lethal to an adult, killing in just a few minutes.
Nicotine is 1000 times more potent when absorbed through the skin versus taking it orally.

Nicotinic acid and pyridoxine have very similar structures to nicotine, but they’re both
actually vital in our diet. Nicotinic acid is also known as niacin. Pyridoxine is vitamin B6.
both are forms of vitamin B, and if we have a deficiency of either it’s bad.

Pyridoxine (B6)

Niacin
Caffeine
Caffeine is a powerful central nervous
stimulant and blocks the neuromodulator
adenosine. The heartbeat rate increases, some
blood vessels contract, others open, and
certain muscles loosen, making them easier to
contract.

This all sounds kinda scary, but really what caffeine does is numbs the adenosine in the body (a molecule that slows
the spontaneous firing and induces sleep).

That doesn’t mean caffeine isn’t dangerous. It still counts as a stimulant drug, but it takes way more to kill than
methamphetamine or cocaine.

A fatal dose of caffeine is 10 grams, and one cup of coffee has 80-180 mg, so it takes 55-125 cups of coffee, all
ingested at the same time to actually kill someone.
Caffeine (?)
Caffeine has become a term that really describes anything with the
same basic structure, including theophylline, theobromine, and
paraxanthine.

Theophylline is found in tea, theobromine in cocoa, and caffeine in

coffee.

As seen in the image, all of the molecules are almost identical, other
than the number of CH3’s and the orientation of them.

Caffeine still has withdrawal symptoms, because it is still a drug.

Withdrawal symptom include headaches, fatigue, drowsiness, and
even nausea and vomiting.
 Sources of Caffeine
Tea actually has more caffeine than coffee, if we’re talking about just the leaf.
By weight, the tea leaf has twice as much caffeine as coffee beans. After the tea
is measured out (little is used in a normal cup) and after the steeping process, a
cup of tea has about ½ as much caffeine as a cup of coffee. It’s thought that tea
has been around for 3200 years, originating in China.

It’s thought that the cacao bean was the first source of caffeine in
the New World. The Olmecs in Mexico are thought to be the
first ones to use the cacao bean, in 1500 BC.

Chocolate has a compound in it called anandamide, which binds

to the same receptor as a compound called tetrahydrocannabinol
(THC). Both actually have the same atoms inside, they’re just
structurally different. And both have the same mood-altering
effect, the feel-good appeal.
Extinction
Coffee is grown as a monoculture (one crop in a
single area), and that means that huge chunks of
land are used solely for its cultivation.

As soil is used over and over again for the same

thing, it quickly exhausts it and makes it far more
difficult to produce any crop. because coffee
plants grow so well in tropical climates, often
times it’s rainforest land that is cleared for their
cultivation.

It won’t be long before coffee prices spike out of

control due to the inability to find areas where
production is possible because of exhausted
resources.
 Kahoot!
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