Home-Made Heroin? How Making Drugs at Home Will Soon Be Technologically Possible

Forty years of a US war on drugs have proven at least one thing, that it is very, very difficult to stop international trafficking in illegal drugs. Advances in genetic engineering, however, may accomplish what drug enforcement has not, ending drug smuggling, but by replacing it with the ability for anyone to make the same drugs at home.

Who Is Behind Home-Brewed Heroin?

The funding for the research that will lead to the ability for anyone to make heroin, morphine, or cocaine with an at-home kit isn't coming from some criminal syndicate. It's coming from the American government, who are paying for research at institutions as diverse as the University of California at Berkeley, Texas Tech University, and MIT. The objective of this research isn't to take over the production of opiates. There are already legal poppy fields on the island of Tasmania that provide all the legal opiates needed for medication. And the plan certainly isn't to undercut criminal narcotics traffickers. 

American scientists are genetically engineering yeast to make over 2500 different kinds of opiates for the simple reason that it is easier to duplicate these naturally occurring chemicals in the lab than it is to collect them from plants in nature. All 2500 of the natural opiates are made by plants through a process that starts with the creation of a chemical called S-reticuline. Then the plants generate enzymes that transform this base material into the alkaloid compounds we know as opioids.

A laboratory headed by Dr. John Dueber at the University of California at Berkeley has modified yeast so that they can make S-reticuline, and other laboratories around the United States are genetically engineering yeast so that it can make the individual chemicals.

What Legitimate Reasons Could There Possibly Be for Making Designer Opiates?

One of the most immediate applications for these home-brewed opiates is space travel. There is a limited amount of room on space stations for storing all the drugs that the crew might eventually need. It only takes a very small amount of yeast that can be grown in water and nutrients for harvesting needed drugs.

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Another application of this research would be finding opiates that are safer and less addictive than the narcotics currently used in medicine and common on the street. A problem with nearly all opiates is that taking too much stops breathing. As millions of Americans know from personal experience, nearly all opiates are addictive. With the ability to make large quantities of over 2500 different opiate compounds in the lab, researchers can identify "new" drugs that relieve pain without causing stupor, or that don't carry the risk of asphyxiation, or that aren't addictive. It is also possible to collect plants in the wild (without endangering the species), grow them in a greenhouse, harvest them and process them for opiates, and then test them first on microorganisms, then on lab animals, then in small clinical trials, and then in large clinical trials for safety and efficacy. It will still be necessary to run clinical trials, but it won't be necessary to deplete stands of drug-producing plants in the wild.

Will the Ability to Make Cocaine and Heroin in the Lab and at Home Increase Drug Abuse?

The World Health Organization estimates that, world-wide, 16 million people use cocaine, heroin, and other opioids illegally (although these numbers may underestimate opioid abuse in the United States). If these kinds of biosynthetic yeasts became widely available they would transform the illegal drug market. It is vastly easier to make drugs with yeasts in a jar than it is to smuggle cocaine from South America.

Tailor-Made for Criminal Activity

Brewing illegal opiate drugs would be much harder to detect than making methamphetamine in a lab or nurturing marijuana plants under grow lights. Brewing illegal opiate drugs would also be a lot cheaper than smuggling cocaine or growing illegal marijuana. There is no need for expensive, explosive, toxic chemicals in the production process. The only raw materials needed are water and sugar. There is no need to cross international borders. The equipment to raise opioid-producing yeast might be as simple as a jar with a lid. Just about anyone, when the technology is worked out, might be able to do this without a knowledge of chemistry or connections in illegal trade.

Policy analysts Kenneth Oye, Tania Bubela, and J. Chappell H. Lawson predict that the technology for home-brewed morphine is imminent or may even already be here. The technology for making heroin would come very quickly; because cocaine involves a different enzyme process it may be farther away.

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A liter of of home brew might produce 10 grams of morphine. It might be necessary to drink as little as one or two milliliters (a little more than 1/4 of a teaspoon) of the liquid to get a standard dose of the drug. A quart of the liquid might yield 500 to 1000 hits. Even if the street price of illegal drugs is greatly reduced to say, $5 for the equivalent of a bag of heroin, that's still $5000 to $10,000 for growing some yeast in a jar. Oye, Bubela, and Lawson urge governments to control opioid-producing yeasts now before they fall into the hands of criminal elements.

Will the Ability to Make Opioid Drugs from Yeast Increase Drug Abuse?

It's not a foregone conclusion, however, that the ability to make opioid drugs from yeasts will result in massive increases in drug abuse. In Europe, where the war on drugs largely failed, street drugs like heroin have become extremely cheap. This hasn't resulted in massive increases in drug addiction. As David Nutt of Imperial College London, a former drug policy adviser to the UK government, was quoted in New Scientist, “People don’t take them because most of them are not stupid.”

Similarly, the ability to make drugs at home won't make crime go away. It might put poppy growers in Afghanistan and cocaine makers in Colombia out of business, but the crime syndicates have already found other activities for making money. Like every other technology, home-brewed opioid drugs hold the potential for good or evil. We must control technology rather than allowing technology to control us.