Chapter Three - Heroin™

CHAPTER THREE

Heroin™

IT WAS SUPPOSED to be the next big thing.

In 1898, just one year after Bayer launched Aspirin, their lab team filed a trademark for a brand-new drug. The name came from the German word “heroisch.” Heroic. Because that’s how test subjects said it made them feel.

The name was Heroin™.
Yes, trademarked.

At the time, morphine addiction was a growing problem. Doctors were looking for alternatives. Bayer believed it had found one. This new compound, diacetylmorphine, was said to be safer, less habit-forming, and more effective. Early ads claimed it could cure coughs, relieve pain, and help with “irritation of the nerves.”

It was sold in syrup form.
Over the counter.
Recommended for children.

By the early 1900s, Bayer’s heroin was being shipped around the world. It was hailed as a wonder drug. A modern medical breakthrough. So pharmacies stocked it. Hospitals used it. Doctors prescribed it.

Nobody questioned the science. Not yet.

It didn’t take long for the truth to catch up. Heroin wasn’t just addictive. It was more addictive than morphine. Patients built tolerance quickly. Withdrawal was brutal. Dependency was rapid.

By the 1910s, warnings began to surface. Some countries banned it. Others restricted it. By 1924, the United States outlawed it entirely. But by then, the damage was done.

Bayer quietly stopped producing it. The trademark faded. The name stuck.

And the world learned a lesson, or at least it thought it did.

Bayer’s early empire was built on two drugs: one that still fills medicine cabinets to this day, and another that would go on to fuel a century of addiction, policy, and prison.

Same lab.
Same time.
Same company.