Question: how did we discover the harmful drugs ?

Roisin Jones answered on 10 Nov 2016:

Interesting question! Many drugs that we now consider harmful, including morphine, cocaine, alcohol, etc are naturally occurring, either in a plant (as in the poppy for morphine, coca plant for cocaine) or as a by-product of a natural process (fermentation for alcohol). Most of them have been known for hundreds if not thousands of years, although it’s only been in about the last 200 years (with the exception of alcohol) that people have started isolating them from the plants and taking them in their raw form.

Most other drugs are based on compounds that are found in nature, and were made deliberately as an alternative: for example, heroin was first made from morphine by a scientist experimenting with reactions of morphine with acids, and amphetamine was first made while searching for a substitute for ephedrine (a drug isolated from the Chinese Ephedra plant).

These days, the illegal drug market also has things known as ‘designer drugs’. These are substances which were specifically designed by clandestine chemists to have the same effects as well known drugs, but which are different enough structurally that they’re not illegal: one of the main challenges for the police these days is keeping up with the new drugs and how they’re made, which is what a lot of my research tries to figure out.