There is concern about a relatively new drug that has appeared on the party drug scene in the US and Europe. The drug is pink cocaine and it’s in the news following the death of One Direction singer Liam Payne. Pink cocaine is pink, but not cocaine, and experts are worried because no one is sure what goes into the drug and in what proportions. It is a mysterious drug with unpredictable results and the risk of long-term addiction.
Pink cocaine has been the subject of widespread debate since 31-year-old pop star Liam Payne fell to his death from a third-floor hotel balcony in Argentina.
ABC News and TMZ said they believe initial toxicology reports Payne had pink cocaine in his body at the time of his death. Experts suspected it was pink cocaine, as a cocktail of drugs including ketamine, methamphetamine and MDMA was detected.
Pink cocaine was reportedly found by police in the New York hotel room of music mogul and rapper Sean (Diddy) Combs, who is facing trafficking and sexual abuse charges.
Pink cocaine gets its color from the pink edible dye used in it. Apart from the color, nothing else is standard for the drug. It varies from batch to batch, depending on what the underground chemist has mixed and in what ratio.
Usually sold as a powder and snorted, pink cocaine originated in Latin America in the 1970s. It saw a resurgence around 2010 in Colombia, spread through Latin America and reached Europe, according to The Irish Star.
It costs about $99 per gram, the report said. That pink cocaine is cheap is one reason it’s popular, the New York Times quoted Linda Kotler, an epidemiologist who studies substance abuse at the University of Florida, as saying.
Pink cocaine is also known as tusi, which is a phonetic translation of 2C, a series of psychedelic phenethylamines, writes Joseph J. Palamar, associate professor at New York University, in a 2023 research paper.
Palmar says multiple drug screening studies have found that the majority of pink cocaine samples contain primarily ketamine, often combined with MDMA (ecstasy), methamphetamine, and opioids and/or new psychoactive substances. Some samples may have small amounts of cocaine.
“Ketamine is going to dethrone ecstasy very soon, and tussy is really going to take it up a notch,” Palamar told The New York Times.
Most samples of pink cocaine contain at least one stimulant and one depressant.
Ketamine: A powerful anesthetic with dissociative, sedative and hallucinogenic properties. Ketamine abuse can lead to loss of consciousness, difficulty breathing, and in severe cases, death.
Methamphetamine: A highly addictive stimulant known for its euphoric effects and potential for severe physical and psychological dependence.
MDMA (Ecstasy): A common drug with stimulant and mild psychedelic properties, often associated with feelings of euphoria and increased energy.
“I worry that people think pink cocaine is cocaine, which it’s not. It’s a beautiful pink powder, a mysterious powder. You really don’t know what’s in it,” Palmar told CBC News.
The cause of concern for Palmar is that users who expect the purely stimulating effects of cocaine may end up with the depressant effects of ketamine.
“The tussy phenomenon complicates the drug landscape because it has the potential to confound both users and researchers,” Palmar wrote in his research paper.
So what does pink cocaine do to the user?
“It depends on what’s actually in it … which makes it unpredictable. If a batch contains a lot of methamphetamine, people can experience sympathomimetic effects. If another batch contains a bunch of ketamines, people can experience hallucinations/psychomotor changes, etc.,” explains Josh Trebach, a renowned medical toxicologist.
It’s the mystery of rose powder’s contents and the unpredictability of what it can do to the user that makes it the worst kind of drug, experts say. Only the underground chemist knows what went into the batch of pink cocaine. Dealers don’t know what they’re selling, and consumers don’t know what they’re sniffing. Drug enforcement agencies around the world now have a mysterious pink powder to deal with.
