MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 62 of 100

Correct — option (1), 'Poppy plant'. Heroin comes from the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. The unripe seed capsule of the plant is scored with a blade and exudes a milky latex, which dries into the brown gum called opium; that latex is the source of the whole family of opiates. Morphine is the principal alkaloid extracted from it, and heroin is not itself a plant product but a semi-synthetic derivative — diacetylmorphine, made by acetylating morphine — which is why the question asks for the plant whose latex is used to prepare heroin rather than the plant that contains it. The same latex yields codeine, thebaine, papaverine and noscapine, which is why the poppy remains a licensed medicinal crop even though its derivatives are among the most tightly controlled substances in the world. In India the plant is grown only under licence issued by the Central Bureau of Narcotics, and the narcotic drugs derived from it are regulated by the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. Heroin is the drug commonly called smack or brown sugar in Indian usage, and its street forms are crude acetylated preparations of opium rather than pharmaceutical-grade material.

• (2)Coca plant — The coca plant, Erythroxylum coca, is the source of cocaine, which is obtained from its leaves rather than from any latex. Cocaine and heroin are opposite in their pharmacological effect as well as in their origin — cocaine is a stimulant of the central nervous system, heroin a depressant — so the two are never interchangeable in an examination answer. This is the most attractive of the wrong options because both plants are famous as sources of illegal drugs, and a candidate who has learnt the pair of names without attaching each to its drug will guess between them.
• (3)Hemp plant — The hemp plant, Cannabis sativa, yields the cannabis group of drugs — the dried leaves and flowering shoots as ganja or marijuana, the resin as charas or hashish — and not heroin. Cannabis products are obtained from the resin and the vegetative parts of the plant, and their active principle is a cannabinoid, chemically unrelated to the opiate alkaloids of the poppy. A candidate who reaches for hemp is usually recalling that it is the other classical Indian narcotic plant named in the law, but the NDPS Act itself keeps cannabis and opium in separate definitions precisely because they are different substances from different plants.
• (4)Bajra — Bajra is pearl millet, a coarse cereal grown as a rainfed food and fodder crop across the drier parts of Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat. It is not a narcotic plant at all, produces no latex, and appears here only as the obviously wrong choice that a question of this kind usually carries. Options like this one are worth noticing in a timed paper: recognising immediately that one choice is a food grain reduces a four-way question to a three-way one before any pharmacology is recalled.

Narcotic and psychotropic substances of plant origin fall into a small number of families, and each family should be held with its plant, the part of the plant used, and the drugs derived from it. The opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, gives the latex of the unripe capsule, from which opium and then the alkaloids morphine, codeine, thebaine, papaverine and noscapine are obtained; heroin is made from morphine by acetylation and is therefore a semi-synthetic opiate rather than a natural product. The coca shrub, Erythroxylum coca, gives cocaine from its leaves and is a stimulant. Cannabis sativa gives ganja from the flowering tops, charas from the resin and bhang from the leaves, and its active principles are cannabinoids. Keeping the three families apart matters because the questions almost always test the pairing rather than the chemistry: which plant, which part, which drug, which effect on the nervous system.

Questions on narcotic plants sit at the meeting point of biology, chemistry and current affairs, and MPSC asks them in all three registers — as botany, as the source of a named drug, and as an item on drug-control law. The reliable preparation is a three-column table of plant, part used and drug, with the effect on the central nervous system noted alongside, because that single table answers the entire family of questions. It is also worth knowing the legal frame in outline: the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 is the governing statute, the Central Bureau of Narcotics licenses poppy cultivation, and the Narcotics Control Bureau is the enforcement agency. This paper prints the stem ungrammatically, but the substance asked for is unambiguous, and a candidate should answer the question the paper meant rather than pause over its English.

• Heroin is diacetylmorphine, prepared by acetylating morphine, which is itself extracted from the latex of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum.
• The latex is obtained by scoring the unripe seed capsule of the poppy; dried, it is opium, the source also of codeine, thebaine, papaverine and noscapine.
• Cocaine comes from the leaves of the coca plant, Erythroxylum coca, and is a stimulant, whereas heroin is a depressant of the central nervous system.
• Cannabis sativa, the hemp plant, yields ganja, charas and bhang, whose active principles are cannabinoids and not opiate alkaloids.
• In India narcotic drugs are governed by the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985, and licensed opium poppy cultivation is administered by the Central Bureau of Narcotics.

• Swapping the coca plant for the poppy, the single commonest error in this question
• Believing heroin is extracted directly from the plant; it is a semi-synthetic derivative made from morphine
• Assuming that hemp and poppy products are interchangeable because both are controlled substances under the same Act
• Taking the part of the plant for granted — opium comes from the latex of the capsule, cocaine from the leaf, charas from the resin

MPSC asks this theme as direct one-line recall — name the plant, name the drug, name the part used — and occasionally as a match-the-columns item pairing plants with the substances obtained from them. The distractor set is nearly always the same three narcotic plants with one harmless crop added, so the question is answerable quickly by anyone holding the plant-part-drug table. Related items appear in the current-affairs register too, on seizures, on the agencies involved and on the law, so the Act of 1985 and the two central agencies are worth knowing by name.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Cocaine is obtained from which part of which plant ?

  • (a)The latex of the unripe capsule of Papaver somniferum
  • (b)The leaves of Erythroxylum coca
  • (c)The resin of Cannabis sativa
  • (d)The seeds of Datura stramonium

  Answer(b) The leaves of Erythroxylum coca — cocaine is extracted from coca leaves and acts as a stimulant of the central nervous system. The latex of the poppy capsule yields opium and its alkaloids, and the resin of hemp yields charas.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following statements about heroin is correct ?

  • (a)It is extracted directly from the leaves of the opium poppy
  • (b)It is a semi-synthetic derivative prepared by acetylating morphine
  • (c)It is the principal cannabinoid of the hemp plant
  • (d)It is a stimulant of the central nervous system

  Answer(b) It is a semi-synthetic derivative prepared by acetylating morphine — morphine itself comes from the latex of the opium poppy capsule, and heroin, chemically diacetylmorphine, is made from it. It is a depressant, not a stimulant, and has nothing to do with the hemp plant.