Pink Cocaine Epidemic Hits Cape Town Streets
A new drug has hit the streets of Cape Town.
Known as ‘Pink Cocaine’ or ‘Tusi – it is believed to be a cocaine variant originally manufactured in Spain.
Police discovered the drug in Grassy Park after a tip-off.
Authorities are warning that the drug is extremely dangerous.
A new drug known as Pink Cocaine has found it’s way into Mzansi.
What is Pink Cocaine?
The substance is pink, sometimes smells like strawberries and in Spain goes by different names: tucibi, tusi, pink powder.
Pink Cocaine
Most commonly, it is called pink cocaine and considered a luxury drug for affluent people: a single gram costs 80, 90 and even 100 dollars.
The same amount of ordinary cocaine costs around 60 dollars, according to a report that the Spanish Observatory on Drugs and Addictions (OEDA in Spanish) published this year.
Pink cocaine is neither cocaine nor luxury.
Between 2019 and 2022, Energy Control – an organization that works to ensure the safe consumption of narcotics – analyzed 150 samples of pink cocaine.
It found dye in almost all of them and cocaine in only two.
Most pink cocaine was a cocktail of several cheaper drugs; 44% of the samples contained ketamine, MDMA (ecstasy) and caffeine.
“It’s important to demystify pink coke. In the end, it’s a booming business. They are selling it as something very exclusive, but it is a regular triphasic,” said Berta de la Vega, the coordinator of Energy Control in Madrid as quoted by EL PAIS, Spain.
A triphasic refers to a mixture of ketamine with stimulants such as ecstasy (in this case) or speed, a type of amphetamine.
It functions to counteract ketamine’s depressant effects, and it is easy and inexpensive to make.
A gram of MDMA costs 40 euros (R800), sometimes a little less, ketamine is around 20 to 35 euros (between R400 and R700), and caffeine powder can be purchased online fairly cheaply.
“You take a little bit of each, mix them, add the pink color, a little strawberry smell and, voilà, you sell it for 100 euros. It’s cheaper and safer to buy the substances and mix them yourself,” de la Vega added.