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Article: A hundred-year habit.(centenary of Bayer's chemical medicinal - heroin)
- Article from:
- History Today
- Article date:
- June 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 History Today Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1898 a German chemical company launched a new cough medicine called `Heroin'. A hundred years later, this drug is flooding illegally into Britain in record amounts. The latest Home Office annual figures show a 40 per cent increase in police seizures of heroin. The National Criminal Intelligence Service believes that up to 80 per cent of the heroin currently entering Britain is controlled by Turkish organised criminals based in London and the South East. How, then, did nineteenth-century science come to bequeath this notorious drug of abuse to twentieth-century crime?
In 1863 a dynamic German merchant called Friedrich Bayer (1825-76) set up a factory in ...