A.2 Opiate Narcotics

INTRODUCTION The term narcotic has had wide and inconsistent usage in lay, legal and scientific circles. Some use the word to characterize any drug which produces stupor, insensibility or sleep; many apply it only to derivatives of the opium plant ( `opiates'); others consider the term equivalent to 'addiction-producing'; and in legal matters, 'narcotics' may refer to almost any allegedly dangerous drugs, (for example, marijuana and cocaine are often included with opiate compounds in narcotics regulations in spite of the dissimilarity of their effects). To reduce some of this ambiguity, the specific phrase opiate narcotic is used in this report and is restricted to opium, morphine and related alkaloids obtained from the opium poppy plant (Popover somniferum), and the semi-synthetic derivatives of these alkaloids and wholly synthetic substances with similar pharmacological properties. Opium is prepared from the dried juice of the unripe seed pod (capsule) of the poppy plant, obtained soon after the flower petals begin to fall; the alkaloids are obtained from opium by various extraction processes.