"Heroin" was a brand name coined for the bonding of morphine, opium's active ingredient, with acetic anhydride, a common industrial acid. The name was supposed to refer to the "heroic," fearless and painless, sensation users felt after using it. It was discovered by a British chemist in 1874, and first mass produced by German pharmaceutical Bayer in 1898.

    Pharmacists marketed heroin as an excellent pain killer and a cure for many diseases, including infantile respiratory ailments. It was administered with a hypodermic syringe, also as a non-addictive substitute for morphine.

    Internationally, heroin's treatment wasn't comprehensively controlled until 1925 when the League of Nations passed strict regulations on international heroin trade, and later stipulated that heroin producers could only make quantities sufficient for medical use. Retroactively discerned ability of heroin to produce lasting physical addiction and psychological dependence made it into one of the most notorious abused substances, a "maintenance drug" that requires daily dosage, and inevitably creates enormous profits in a black market never short of supply or demand.