Bayer Pharmaceutical Products invented heroin (diacetylmorphine) and started selling it from 1898. The drug now responsible for a high proportion of all drug overdose deaths was promoted as a cough suppressant as well as a better and safer substitute for morphine and codeine. Heroin was welcomed with open arms as an effective remedy – this being an age when pneumonia, tuberculosis and even the common cold were scourges – and doctors by the thousand were sent free samples to try.
Nevertheless, no sooner than 1899, stories began emerging of people becoming tolerant to the drug, and over the following few years, addiction cases started to be reported. Bayer stopped manufacturing heroin in 1913, and it was banned in the US in 1924.