Heroin Helper Blog

Jim is my cousin. Haven't seen him for years. Interesting to read your story.

Wow, pretty flattering, Francis. One little correction: the state crime lab probably didn't find morphine in any of the 100 samples they analyzed although they made that claim while trying to ward off summary judgement throwing out their initial charges (which refiled a few months later. When I finally got ahold of their test notes I saw they were even more ignorant and mendacious than I had expected.

After their first twenty tests or so utterly failed to show any morphine at all, these guys ran pure morphine through their GC spectrometer to make sure it was capable of recognizing it. It was, so they went back to testing and — how lucky for them — that's when they found morphine. This time on a much less sensitive Thin Layer test.

I say they found morphine (really, they said it) but I'm not sure they did, really. For one thing, TLC is a pretty good test for opium alkaloids and should have yielded clear results if they were testing real opium poppies. Yet, in the single test that detected morphine, they characterized the results as something like "very low, trace indication" of the stuff, thus inventing a new level of test result. Normally "low" is the lowest score for a TLC plate.

They called it "very low" and added the word "trace". That's already reaching, but they also found codeine — at levels much higher than ever happens in opium.

So, that's it. Their equipment could find morphine if it was there, they demonstrated that, but they found it just once and never again although they used at least three methods of analysis. Just as interesting was the complete absence of thebaine. That's a pretty big anomaly that tends to throw serious doubt onto any identification of opium but, while the scientists at the crime lab noted the lack of thebaine, they were quiet about it otherwise. All in all, their tests didn't help the state's case.

But I was happy to use the state's findings! I didn't have my own staff of loyal liars and even if I did, I don't think they could have produced any better results from my point of view.

Obvious;y, there was a flaw in their methodology but I won't speculate on it since I want them to keep on making that mistake.

If indeed it was a mistake. It seems hard to believe the effects of poppy tea don't come from opium alkaloids but just because it "feels like" morphine doesn't mean it's morphine. And when the goal isn't pain relief but to throw a human being into a cage to be tormented for a few years, I think that should be kept in mind.