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.
What is Pink Cocaine?
The substance is pink, sometimes smells like strawberries and in Spain goes by different names: tucibi, tusi, pink powder.
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.