Heroin At Home: The Tricky Exam Question

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday November 22, 1996

By JULIE DELVECCHIO

More than 200 first-year university students were asked in an exam paper how to make a type of heroin from common pain killers that can be found in most home medicine cabinets.

The Macquarie University students were asked how they would isolate codeine from paracetamol to form home-bake heroin, which is a synthetic form of the drug, as opposed to an opium-based form.

The question appeared in a recent organic chemistry paper, prompting calls from students questioning the value of such knowledge.

However, the head of the School of Chemistry at the university, Associate Professor Barry Batts, said: "Using heroin as an example of how you separate A from B or whatever it might be, there is really absolutely nothing wrong with a question like that. It is just a matter whether you are talking of heroin or toothpaste.

"The exam paper is not set in a vacuum. It is set by one person and read by one or two others. Heroin is so emotive and I think in a university you have to not be emotive."

A student who sat for the examination said she was shocked that such a question was on the paper.

The student, who did not want to be named, said home-bake heroin had been referred to only briefly in a lecture.

"It's like giving a whole lot of people a loaded gun," she said. "We probably wouldn't have put two and two together if it wasn't in the exam."

A second student who sat for the exam said: "People who want to do that sort of thing can certainly find out easily how to do it but I don't think it needs to be pushed in front of 18-year-olds' faces.

"I don't think people who don't know how to do it need to be told how to do it or need to be pushed in the direction to find out how to do it."

Another student agreed: "It is just a reaction like everything else but it happens to produce heroin. That is quite dangerous information to have in the wrong people's hands."

Mr Batts, who did not set the paper, said Macquarie University had procedures for students with concerns about exam questions.

"The Registrar is the normal way of doing it," he said. "Universities are very well used to this sort of thing."

Dr Costa Conn, in the School of Chemistry at the University of Technology, Sydney, said it was not irresponsible for universities to set such questions.

"We are constantly struggling to make sciences relevant to everyday things. You talk drugs and people's eyes light open, unfortunately," he said.

"Any sort of second-year chemistry student could probably do it. People without chemistry degrees or chemistry experience do it if they are trained properly or know what to do. The information is quite freely available if you know where to look."