WI: Popular use of Heroin begins in the 1870s

First synthesized in 1874 by English chemist Diacetylmorphine did not become popular as a medical drug until it was independently re-synthesized by Bayer and marketed in 1898.

How might its widespread use legal/illegal affect societies of the world it if it became popular soon after its invention?
 
Popular use as opposed to medical use would have required either a tablet form or a drink. Recreational use of hypodermic syringes was a purely 20th century phenomenon.
 
Popular use as opposed to medical use would have required either a tablet form or a drink. Recreational use of hypodermic syringes was a purely 20th century phenomenon.

Could they have done that back in the 1870s? I'm not really up to snuff on that type of knowledge but if it could be done that would have some interesting effects.

Didn't cocaine start taking off as a drug in the 1880s?
 
Popular use as opposed to medical use would have required either a tablet form or a drink. Recreational use of hypodermic syringes was a purely 20th century phenomenon.

You can snort it or smoke it, though. Allegedly, soldiers in Vietnam would add it to their cigarettes, which obviously existed in the 1870s. Injection is the most well-known form of ingestion, but not the only one.
 
Popular use as opposed to medical use would have required either a tablet form or a drink. Recreational use of hypodermic syringes was a purely 20th century phenomenon.

Weren't cocaine addicts using the syringe to ingest it? Plus, heroin can be smoked or snorted as well, it's just more dangerous.
 
You're all forgetting the supply side. Coca liqueur was obtainable (see image) and Laudanum contained all alkaloids from Opium, but before there was a supply of hypodermic syringes (probably from WWI) Heroin in powder form would be for professionals only. Aleister Crowley, who was prescribed Morphine for the bronchitis he got when climbing K2, was then prescribed Heroin to break the Morphine addiction before being prescribed Cocaine for both addictions, just creating another. Ah, doctors! Meanwhile kiddies:

18p5h9vkeus7fjpg.jpg
 
What if there's a war in the Far East (say, over the Philippines :p) that results in shipping being interdicted to the US in the 1870s?

Now, I know The Knick isn't a scholarly source, but what effect would this have on the rise of other drugs? Cocaine would take a serious blow, and that could leave the alternative opiates (heroin) a window to go mainstream earlier.
 
What if there's a war in the Far East (say, over the Philippines :p) that results in shipping being interdicted to the US in the 1870s?

Now, I know The Knick isn't a scholarly source, but what effect would this have on the rise of other drugs? Cocaine would take a serious blow, and that could leave the alternative opiates (heroin) a window to go mainstream earlier.

Um, surely this would give an advantage to Cocaine? It comes from the Americas after all.
 
In what form would it be available to the public? It may become popular for recreational use and abuse but like opium it'll probably be subject to the same derision.
 
What if there's a war in the Far East (say, over the Philippines :p) that results in shipping being interdicted to the US in the 1870s?

Now, I know The Knick isn't a scholarly source, but what effect would this have on the rise of other drugs? Cocaine would take a serious blow, and that could leave the alternative opiates (heroin) a window to go mainstream earlier.

Mainstream possibly in a medical context as an analgesic. Could it become mainstream drug of choice for junkies and opiate addicts? Possibly, depends on the dissemination of the drug.
 
Um, surely this would give an advantage to Cocaine? It comes from the Americas after all.

Yep, I just double checked and i should have known better than to rely on Soderbergh.

What about the opposite then, a nasty war in the Carribean (perhaps over the Guayana Basin or the Panamanian secession) could interdict the flow of cocaine into the US, forcing opiates from the Golden Triangle (did it exist then?) to the fore.
 
Popular use as opposed to medical use would have required either a tablet form or a drink. Recreational use of hypodermic syringes was a purely 20th century phenomenon.
Hypodermic syringes had have been around since 1853 from my understanding. If your saying that the supply of said syringes wouldn't be enough to reach poor morphine addicts then thats another problem.
 
Hypodermic syringes had have been around since 1853 from my understanding. If your saying that the supply of said syringes wouldn't be enough to reach poor morphine addicts then thats another problem.

Exactly. For one thing, they were often made of pure silver. No plastic yet!
 
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