According to the Addiction Research Foundation opiates are very strong painkillers (much stronger than the pills that people take for minor pain).

The name "opiates'' comes from opium, a gummy substance collected from the seed pod of the opium poppy.

Morphine and codeine are drugs made from opium. Heroin is made by adding a chemical to morphine.

Today, many drugs in the opiate category don't actually come from opium at all. Instead, they are made synthetically from chemicals. Some examples are oxycodone (in Percodan/Percocet), meperidine (Demerol), hydrocodone (in Novahistex DH), and hydromorphone (Dilaudid).

* Street names include: Junk, H, horse, smack, shit, skag (for heroin); M, morph, Miss Emma (for morphine); meth (for methadone); percs (for Percodan, Percocet); juice (for Dilaudid) What do opiates look like? Opium comes in dark brown chunks or powder, and is usually eaten or smoked.

Heroin on the street is usually a white or brownish powder. It is usually dissolved in water and injected under the skin or into a vein or muscle, but it can also be sniffed into the nostrils or smoked ("chasing the dragon'').

Other opiates come in a variety of forms -- tablets, capsules, syrups, solutions, and suppositories.

Who uses opiates? Doctors and dentists prescribe opiates for patients who are in severe pain.

Because these painkillers are addictive, they shouldn't be taken steadily for a long time. They are safe in the short term -- for example, if you have had surgery or have an abscessed tooth.

When someone is dying from a painful disease, the risk of addiction is not important, and opiates are given for as long as needed to keep the person in comfort.

Certain kinds of opiates help people who are addicted to illegal opiates such as heroin; they are given a safer, legal drug (usually methadone) so that they can live a more normal life off the "street'' and, in many cases, finally become drug-free.

Other medical uses of opiates are to control bad coughs or diarrhoea. Some non-prescription products contain a small amount of codeine.

People who use opiates illegally are looking for a different effect -- a "high'' and a mellow, relaxed feeling. Although heroin gets the most publicity, many users take illegally obtained prescription drugs.

Some of the most commonly used and abused opiates are the codeine-containing preparations such as Tylenol No. 1,2, and 3, 292's, Atasol 8, 15, and 30, Exdol 8, 15, and 30.

Are these drugs dangerous? Yes. Opiates can be dangerous if they are used without medical supervision.

Here are some of the reasons.

These drugs (especially heroin) can kill you if you seek the "high'' by taking larger doses than your body is used to. And with street heroin, it is easy to overdose accidentally, because the purity of the drug varies so much -- anywhere from zero percent on the low end to almost pure on the high end.

The purer the heroin, the more likely an overdose.

Many people inject opiates because the effect (called the "rush'') is faster and stronger. But they run extra risks: tetanus, other infections, liver disease, and even brain damage from dirty needles and impurities in the drug, and AIDS or hepatitis from needles shared with others.

How addictive are opiates? You can -- quite quickly -- become physically and psychologically dependent on opiates.

If you use them steadily, you become tolerant to the desired effect. That is, you must take more and more of the drug to get a "high'' or even to control pain. If it's the high you're after, however, at a certain point no amount of the drug will work unless you stop taking it for a few weeks.

Once you become physically dependent on opiates, stopping use abruptly will make you sick. Although people rarely die from withdrawal, it can be miserable (much like a bad case of 'flu).

PAYING THE PRICE -- A tearful Sandra Gregory, 30, looks out the window of a prison bus in Bangkok, Thailand. The British woman from Halifax, UK, was sentenced to 25 years prison for trying to smuggle 102 grammes of heroin out of the country. A fellow Briton was found not guilty. The court initially sentenced her to death, the maximum penalty for heroin trafficking, but it immediately commuted the sentence to 25 years because she had confessed.

DRUGS DGS