3
A third method is to imbed some granules of heroin in the tip of
a cigarette which is lit and held in a verticle position, while the smoker
inhales the fumes. The use of heroin in this manner is called 'firing the
ack-ack gun'. Other known methods include intravenous, intramuscular or
subcutaneous injection and the mixing of heroin with other ingredients in
the form of red pills which are either smoked or taken orally.
THE MANUFACTURING PROCESS
The
The manufacture of heroin is comparatively easy and need not
necessarily take place inside a well-equipped pharmaceutical laboratory.
equipment required is neither complicated nor expensive. The drug consumed by addicts in Hong Kong generally of poorer quality than that used
medically by injection
Tay
is smuggled in from illicit sources abroad, either
in refined form or in the form of morphine which is then manufactured locally to produce heroin.
In Hong Kong, most addicts employ barbiturates as a base powder
during the smoking of heroin. Pharmacological investigations carried out
by Dr. Carl C. Gruhzit, of the University of Hong Kong, revealed that the
combined use of heroin and barbiturates may produce a particularly severe
form of drug addiction. Legislation was therefore enacted to have
barbitone, and its salts and preparations, included in the first schedule
of the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, thereby placing these drugs under very
stringent controls.
OTHER ADDICTIVE DRUGS
The opium-morphine-heroin group does not comprise the whole of
the drug problem, for there are other drugs of addiction and abuse such as
barbiturates and amphetamine developed for medical use. Unlike morphine,
these are wholly synthetic and produced entirely in pharmaceutical laboratories.
Procurable through diversion from legitimate medical use, they claim only a
small number of addicts in Hong Kong.
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