Can You Make Opiates At Home? | The Dangers Of Homemade Opioids

Scientists have discovered how to make opiates from yeast and sugar. It involves feeding sugar to genetically modified yeast, similar to the process of brewing beer. 

There are many benefits to synthetic opiates from a medical standpoint. However, it raises the question of whether making opioids easy to create will lead to a whole new drug problem as people try to make heroin at home.

What Are Homemade Opiates?

Opiates are opioids that come from a natural source. Normally, opiates are made from a sap-like substance in the opium poppy plant. Heating this “goo” with lime produces morphine, the base opiate for most opioid drugs on the market today.

Using genetically engineered yeast instead of naturally grown opium, scientists produced hydrocodone, the active ingredient in prescription painkillers Vicodin and Norco.  

They also made thebaine, an opiate alkaloid that can be made into other opioid drugs, including:

• oxycodone (OxyContin)
• oxymorphone (Opana)
• buprenorphine (Subutex)
• naloxone (Narcan)

The process of using yeast strains to make “homemade” opiates takes away the need for fields of poppy plants. While poppy seeds are somewhat legal in the United States, the poppy straw (the part of the plant containing opium) is illegal to grow. 

You’d have to grow a lot of poppies to make a significant amount of morphine, which would be hard to hide from law enforcement. Even if they’re used for medical purposes, poppies depend on good weather and crop conditions to grow, which are unreliable.

The Home-Brew Heroin Process

Home-brew heroin isn’t a thing yet, but it could be. If a strain of genetically modified yeast gets out, anyone with some knowledge of molecular biology could create morphine at home. Since heroin is made from morphine, this could have serious implications.

Fortunately, there are quite a few steps between morphine and heroin that require a complicated chemical process and a decent laboratory. It’s also pretty dangerous.

As it stands, the process of making opiates from yeast doesn’t yield enough hydrocodone or thebaine for large batches. It would take a lot of time to scrape together enough yeast to make a significant batch of home-brew heroin.

Since 2016, about the same amount of people (over 14,000) have died yearly from semisynthetic opioid overdose as from heroin overdose. Even if modified yeast doesn’t lead to home-brew heroin, it might make people who use heroin switch to homemade hydrocodone.

Dangers Of Homemade Opiates

The idea that making opiates may become as simple as brewing beer has raised some public health concerns. If genetically modified yeast exists, chances are someone who isn’t supposed to will find out how to make it. 

Prescription opioids are largely responsible for drug addiction and overdose deaths in the U.S. today. Creating a way to make them at home could exacerbate this problem by providing easier access to opioids for people who struggle with drug abuse.

It could also lead to new, more dangerous opioids or drugs that aren’t quite formulated properly. 

And while opiate-producing yeast can make mild opioids like codeine and methadone (which is used to treat opioid addiction), it could also create fentanyl, one of the deadliest opioids out there.

If genetically engineered yeast becomes a viable option for producing opioids in bulk, law enforcement will have to know how to respond if it’s abused. 

Some people believe that “home-brewing” opioids with yeast should be illegal. Others argue that overregulation will create a black market of unregulated drugs and worsen the problem of implementing criminal punishment for drug abuse instead of addiction treatment.

If you’re reading this article to learn how to make heroin at home, or you’re concerned about a loved one who’s abusing opioids, it may be time to ask for help with opioid addiction. 

At Ark Behavioral Health, we’re always here to answer your questions about opioid abuse and treatment options. Reach out to a treatment specialist today to learn more.