Many of us have heard of Heroin use, but the idea that Heroin could or even would be studied for medicinal purposes is ludicrous is it not? Perhaps, but let’s take a look at the case for Heroin, shall we?

Heroin like many other drugs is an opiate at heart. Medicinal pain killers (the strongest ones) are also usually of the opiate family. But despite being cousins in the same family – they are more like 4^th or 5^th cousins in that their similarities end at family ties. Through studies done on opiates that did include Heroin it was clear that while Heroin was a far more potent opiate against pain and does this faster than other drugs currently available – that Morphine (for example) has longer lasting effects. Beyond that – Morphine isn’t the only opiate currently available as a pain killer, and with the multitude that are available the risks versus the gains of adding Heroin to the list of available Pain killers as prescription medication are simply too large to be ignored.

While many legalization advocates for Heroin like to argue that it should be made available as an alternative opioid because each patient is different and some respond better to one opiate while others find comfort in another. This is all very true, but that doesn’t change that there is still a very large variety of opiates already available, so adding another does very little considering what’s already there. If a patient isn’t responding to Morphine for example it makes more sense to offer them another of the many ones available then to begin a legal battle over an Opiate that isn’t even considered legal for use. Until a patient has exhausted all the opiates currently available the choice of Heroin as the answer is highly unlikely. Especially in this case as Heroin and Morphine already share much of the same chemical structure, offering a patient a new drug that has many of the same chemical compounds to the one that has already failed them makes far less sense than trying something new altogether.