I don't think aspirin has ever been made commercially from willow bark. I suspect that when aspirin began being produced commercially from coal tar, around 1900 or so, its makers (mr bayer) may not have been aware that a similar chemical naturally occured in willow bark. Apparently only <b>after</b> coal-tar aspirin became a commercial success, was it discovered that the willow bark that people from various ethnic groups had used for 1000's of years, for reduction of fever and pain and swelling, contained a substance similar to aspirin.<br><br><br><br>
This is in contrast to morphine. which Fredrick Serturner isolated from opium, and in doing so developed a degree of understanding of morphine's chemical structure. This was in 1805, and it wasn't until about 1940 or 1950 or so that 2 competing chemists, building on the experiments of other chemists, were finally, at about the same time, able to produce morphine from a non-poppy source, and published their similar methods, even tho its structure had been pretty well understood for about 60 years, by that time, and even tho similar, but not identical, chemicals, had been produced from non-poppy sources, experimentally, over the past few years before that.<br><br><br><br>
It wasn't until 195x that morphine-like chemicals began being produced commercially from things other than opium poppies -- from coal tar I think. However today, most opioids are still extracted from poppies -- it's cheaper than making them from coal tar. All commercial morphine comes from poppies. All commercial codeine too. Oxycodone also comes from poppies, butis not present in poppies. It is made commercially from the non-analgesic constitutent of poppies called thebaine.<br><br><br><br>
Fentanyl, used less frequently than morphine, codeine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone, is, I believe, made entirely from non-poppy sources, as is methadone, and also I think meperidine (demerol).<br><br><br><br>
Apparently it is cheaper to make aspirin from coal tar tho, than to extract it from any plant. Aspirin is a simpler molecule. Interestingly, salacylic acid exists in manyl kinds of plants, not just willow bark. Acetylated salacylic acid (aspirin) s gentler on the stomach lining than the salacylic acid which is the chemical that I think exists in a number of plants. I need to check these details out more thoroughly. Morphine, on the other hand, is known to be produced in significant quantity by only one species -- Papaver somniferum. Other plants (such as romain lettuce) produce chemically very similar chemicals, which are however totally useless as an analgesic. Lettuce's opioids don't even enhance morphine's analgesic effect, much less have an analgesic effect of their own.