Morphine Sulfate XR extraction
Say someone has recently came into possession of a large surplus of RD 71 morphine sulfate extended-release 30mg tablets and wanted to perform an experiment with them in order to extract the active ingredient from the retarding agent. According to the MSDS, the ingredients are as follows:
Inactive Ingredients
silicon dioxide, lactose monohydrate, magnesium stearate, stearic acid, magnesium silicate, titanium dioxide, FD&C Blue No. 2, polyethylene glycol 4000, polyethylene glycol 400, D&C Red No. 27
Normally posting these kinds of questions would result in an instant ban from any chemistry related subreddit so I don’t know where else to turn to. Is it safe to assume the PEG is the agent in question? Hypothetically, how would one go about extracting the sulfate from the tablets? Obviously, crushing and dissolving the pulverized powder in H2O would turn the solution into a useless goo. One thought I had was maybe a A/B extraction, converting the sulfate into a freebase form and have the morph precipitate out, filter and turn it into a HCl salt? Or is there a better solvent out there that won’t react with the PEG to help facilitate the extraction process? What is the best approach that would still have a high yield of the alkaloid assuming access to glassware and lab-grade solvents and reagents is immediately available?