the dope report

Labspaces.net reports scientists have discovered a substance that breaks down cocaine 100 times faster than the human body, potentially helping the 500,000 people admitted to hospital emergency rooms each year for overdose of the highly addictive, potentially deadly stimulant.

From Latin American Herald Tribune:

Costa Rican authorities seized approximately 3 tons of cocaine being transported by truck … in what appeared to be one of the biggest drug busts in recent years. ... The officials are weighing the drug packages to confirm the amount seized, and if it is confirmed that there are 3 tons, it will be the second biggest drug bust in recent years, surpassed only by the 6 tons found in a homemade submarine that was sailing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Costa Rica in September 2008.

Costa Rica has gone “from being a country for drug transit to a country that is a drug warehouse, where some organizations are operating in collaboration with the big drug cartels,” Security Minister Janina Del Vecchio said this week.

Props to the San Francisco Chronicle for localizing that global story on tainted cocaine we wrote about a few weeks ago. The Chron followed up with local doctors who have seen four cases of illness related to cocaine cutting drug levamisole. Most of these patients are 40 year-old female crackheads.

As reported on TDR before, American coke is showing up with alarming amounts of bovine dewormer levamisole. No one knows why it’s in there, as it doesn’t get you high, and does kill white blood cells, leaving coke users open to secondary infections, just like AIDS patients.

TDR’s guess is the cartels got a bunch of it from China for super-cheap, as supplies of other cutting agents have diminished. Now they have to get rid of it somehow.

Either way, the only powder we’re carving up on New Year’s Eve comes from the clouds. Lake Tahoe has a whole bunch of it for $69 a pop.

You know all that de-wormer Levamisole people keep finding cut into their cocaine? ... You don’t? ... Ok, well not to get all technical but the cartels have started cutting cocaine with an anti-helmitic (that means ‘it kills worms’) called Levamisole. No one really knows why, but suffice to say, if you’re doing cocaine in America, you’re doing a de-wormer.

Ever more gross, Levamisole kills your white blood cells. That means it destroys your immune system, and leaves you open to death by infection just like AIDS. Cocaine can now give you pseudo-AIDS and has killed potentially dozens in the U.S. in 2009, the Harm Reduction Journal reports.

Best of all, there’s no way to test your bag for the cutting agent, aside from a site called Ecstacy Data. They’ve only received one test request from the U.S. – and yes it had pseudo-AIDS-inducing Levamisole in it.

You might be wondering: What’s it going to take to get some pure cocaine in this country?

The answer: work for the Stepan Corporation. They have an exclusive license to import coca leaf, and process it into pure cocaine for medical use while giving sloppy seconds to … you guessed it: Coca-Cola.

There, now you learned something.

[Harm Reduction]

From the Dept. of WTF, New Scientist reports that a brain interaction between cocaine and capsaicin – the active ingredient in pepper spray – may have contributed to the deaths of nine people in police custody in California:

After DJ Am’s death, crack and cocaine is on many people’s minds as a drug not to be fucked with as it can send you to the grave very quickly. Obviously, cocaine is a toxic substance that will ravage your life but now researchers have found that Levasole, a drug used by veterinaries has been linked to 3 deaths and over 100 sicknesses. It is being used by coke dealers as an additive that makes the high more intense thus giving the illusion you are getting high grade coca.

AP

Just when you think you have heard it all in terms of the drug world, South America ups the ante tenfold. Route 36 is the name of the world’s first cocaine bar in La Paz, Bolivia. This movable cocaine lounge has attracted backpackers all across the world to come and stay nearby while patrons basically just do blow, sleep, wake up, and do more blow. The cocaine they are snorting is the Bolivian pure uncut fishscale. Check out this quote from the Guardian piece.

“We had some Australians; they stayed here for four days. They would take turns sleeping and the only time they left was to go to the ATM,” says Roberto, who has worked at Route 36 (in its various locations) for the last six months.”

[guardian.co.uk]

There is good reason why it is considered improper etiquette to snort cocaine with a rolled up banknote. We’ve all heard about how dirty money can be – one study showed that 94% of all bills tested contained disease causing organisms like staphylococcus areus and bacteria that can bring on pneumonia. Now it is known that something else is joining forces with such nefarious microscopic entities on nearly all money circulated in the U.S and Canada – old ass cocaine.