MS Contin - Heroin

[FlyBoy]

Swim searched the posts and couldn't find anything on experiences or successes with producing heroin from MS Contin. He thought that it was probably just as easy to extract it as would be morphine HCl but he doesn't know if the reaction with anhydride will work with the suplfate rather than the HCl salt.
Any suggestions/experiences or tips?

[MarleyBob]

Well contins are filled with oxycodone, are you talking about just extracting this stuff or actually turning it into heroin?

[fierceness]

Well contins are filled with oxycodone, are you talking about just extracting this stuff or actually turning it into heroin?

Wrong.  MS Contin is Morphine Sulfate.  However, OxyContin is OxyCodone.

[MarleyBob]

[FlyBoy]

[Newton]

When extracting those pills, I'd do an A/B anyway, after dissolving in H20 and filtering, to get rid of any non-alkaloid crap. Use HCl to claim the desired alkaloid from the non-polar layer, there you've got your Morph.HCl !

[Bwiti]

I wonder what would be created if oxycodone is refluxed with acetic anhydride?

[Rhodium]

Oxycodone

Reaction of this with acetic anhydride would very likely attach an acetyl group to the free OH group (but it is very sterically hindered, so the yield might not be very good, at least not without the addition of a catalyst like DMAP).

The big question is however if it would be worthwhile to perform the reaction -  the free OH group is not phenolic (and thus acidic) like the ones on morphine, so the lipophilicity will not be considerally affected by the acetylation, and it is thus not likely that the potency of the drug will be affected by such a conversion.

[FlyBoy]

What about when you react with Glacial Acetic Acid?  Do you use the base or HCl Salt?

[foxy2]

What about when you react with Glacial Acetic Acid?

No Acetic ANHYDRIDE.

I would react the acetate salt if I had the choice. This is pure speculation tho.

[FlyBoy]

[Rhodium]

The term "junk" is not correct chemical nomenclature for anything. Please stick to generic chemical descriptors.

Possible reactions:

Morphine Freebase + Glacial Acetic Acid -> Morphine Acetate

Morphine Acetate + Acetic Anhydride -> Diacetylmorphine acetate (Heroin acetate)

Morphine Freebase + Acetic Anhydride -> Diacetylmorphine acetate (Heroin acetate)


First, make sure that you have understood the difference described in

Post 90174 (missing)

(Osmium: "Acetic Anhydride vs. Glacial Acetic Acid (GAA)", Chemicals & Equipment)

Then, if you take a look at the article

4-Dimethylaminopyridine as a catalyst in heroin synthesis

(https://www.thevespiary.org/rhodium/Rhodium/pdf/heroin.synthesis.pdf) you'll see that their preferable starting material seems to be Morphine Base. If you on the other hand check out the publication

Opium and Heroin Cultivation in Southest Asia

(https://www.thevespiary.org/rhodium/Rhodium/chemistry/heroinmfg.html), which deals with ghetto heroin manufacture, you'll see that they use either the base or the HCl salt without any preference.

[FlyBoy]

[methlab]

Can the morphine sulfate extracted with a normal A/B from MST Cont? For example dissolving the pills in water (Q: should i just wash with handwarm water or should i boil it and remove the waxy product on top after cooling?). Then an A/B followed by toluene extraction, then gas with HCl?