Sometime around 1999 or 2000 I read the story about Heroin. In summary, Bayer sold Heroin in the late 1800s as a non-addictive alternative to Morphine.
(At the time, Morphine addiction was a huge crisis, with many people getting addicted to Morphine when using it as directed by a doctor.)
There was a huge scandal when, about 10 years after Heroin entered the marketplace, it came out that Heroin turns into Morphine in the brain. It also enters the brain much faster.
(This, BTW, means that Heroin is an extremely powerful painkiller. The UK used to use it for medical purposes until very recently.)
I wasn't surprised when it came out that Oxycotin was highly addictive. I knew it was just the same thing over again. A drug company markets an opiate as safe until everyone realizes it's not safe at all. It only took about 110 years for most people to forget about Bayer's Heroin scandal for someone to get away with it again.
I am pro using heroin medically (and all/any drugs where trials have shown them to be effective). For heroin, it's a powerful drug that can be used in palliative care situations where nothing else will do. When it's administered in a controlled setting by a medical professional. The risk and danger of addiction is very low in these circumstances.
Overly cautious drug policy (such as an outright ban on heroin (or any drug)) can deny powerful remedies to those who can benefit from them.
Also reminds me of weight loss pills, which for whatever biochemical reason, seems to always fry the hearts of whoever takes them. I think I've seen the cycle "new hot pill -> publically available -> oh crap, people are having heart attacks" at least three times in my life.
It's because weight loss pills tend to rely on the appetite suppressing effects of stimulants. Often, the compounds are intentionally chosen because they behave near identically pharmacologically to traditional stimulants. As such, they carry similar cardiac risks, if not significantly more because unlike traditional stimulants, the "diet pill/supplement" market is completely unregulated. This compounds the issue, because any vendor can provide incorrect dosage amounts, and also because people tend to treat 'unregulated diet pills' less seriously than say, methamphetamine.
It was widely used in 'weight loss' pills up until 2004, whenever it was restricted due to a combination of it's chemical similarity to amphetamine/methamphetamine (allowing for easy clandestine synthesis of more powerful psychoactive compounds), and people dying because they didn't realize they were taking completely unregulated substances on par in seriousness with other, culturally/politically demonized stimulants.
If one were to compare the 2d structures of both ephedrine and amphetamine/methamphetamine, even with no chemistry knowledge, one can see how similar these molecules actually are. Not to imply that molecular similarity necessarily always leads to similar pharmacological effects, but in this case it certainly does.
While using it for weight loss does sound unnecessarily dangerous, how risky is it really, comparatively? High daily doses of amphetamine are still regularly prescriped to young children.
The dangers of Ephedrine are benign when used correctly (oral, low dose amounts), as is both amphetamine and methamphetamine (the United States gives meth to kids for ADHD, there's a reason it's schedule 2).
Even what one might call a 'high dose' (but still under the prescribing guidelines max limit) of prescribed amphetamine is still rather benign, unless one has a pre-existing condition which increases the risk of adverse health effects.
(At the time, Morphine addiction was a huge crisis, with many people getting addicted to Morphine when using it as directed by a doctor.)
There was a huge scandal when, about 10 years after Heroin entered the marketplace, it came out that Heroin turns into Morphine in the brain. It also enters the brain much faster.
(This, BTW, means that Heroin is an extremely powerful painkiller. The UK used to use it for medical purposes until very recently.)
I wasn't surprised when it came out that Oxycotin was highly addictive. I knew it was just the same thing over again. A drug company markets an opiate as safe until everyone realizes it's not safe at all. It only took about 110 years for most people to forget about Bayer's Heroin scandal for someone to get away with it again.