“Pink cocaine” is the latest street drug. This team of researchers has been warning the public about it for a year.
death of music star Liam Payne. Sex trafficking charges against Sean “Diddy” Combs. A fatal car accident involving an Instagram model. Many Americans have only recently learned The drug known as “pink cocaine” Horror stories from tons of famous people. They’re late, said Joseph Palamar, associate professor of population health at NYU Langone.
“A lot of people just think it’s this new powder that’s taking off,” Palamar said. “It’s a pretty pink powder and everyone started using it and the ramp really started to pick up around mid-2023.”
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‘The chatter will increase before mass poisonings occur’
When Palamar first heard about pink cocaine, his team immediately scoured Reddit for posts as part of his research on a national drug warning system. The organization specializes in narcotics surveillance and collects data on drugs that may be increasing in prevalence and lethality.
“We looked at other drugs, and we found that … a lot of times, there’s an increase in chatter before a lot of intoxication occurs,” Palamar said.
Palamar explained that there is a community called “Psychonauts” where people use novel drugs or induce “altered states of consciousness” and post about their experiences. Regarding drug use, Palamar equates it to a diary, a reminder of the effects of drugs.
National Drug Alert System
Standing in front of a chart that resembles a stock market rally on Wall Street, Palamar explained how each Reddit post about pink cocaine represents a data point he uses to better predict drug trends and warn the public.
“When we see a trend, we alert everyone we can think of,” he said. “We are raising the alarm with health authorities, academia and users. We want our message to be widely disseminated to prevent use. This is concerning because it is already high and increasing. We already have dozens of people talking about it every day it. ”
The warning system first issued an alert about pink cocaine in February 2023, when researchers noticed a spike in discussion among Reddit users. By the summer, this discussion had almost doubled to more than 30 posts per day.
National Drug Alert System
“It seems like the average chat volume is higher now,” Palamar said. “It’s more stable. We’re not down as low as we were in previous years.”
CBS News reached out to Reddit for comment on the study. A spokesperson said its policy prohibits the purchase or sale of drugs and that most conversations on its message boards are warning other Reddit users about pink cocaine.
A similar trend has been seen with carfentanil, a synthetic opioid that is 100 times more potent than its deadly sister drug, fentanyl. Nearly 80,000 Americans have died from carfentanil-related poisoning in the past two years, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“Don’t play with this stuff…it’s a powerful substance.”
A pink cocaine user who smokes at least once a month agreed to an interview with CBS News without revealing his identity. She said she tested each batch of drugs for the presence of fentanyl, but admitted she didn’t know the ingredients in the drug mix she purchased.
“You never know what’s in there every time,” she said. “You don’t know what’s in it… There are ingredients that make you dance. There are ingredients that make you feel colder. There are ingredients that make you feel more psychedelic.”
These unknowns about substances and doping prompted Frank Tarantino, the special agent in charge of the New York Drug Enforcement Administration, to issue a An urgent warning was issued to CBS News New York.
“When people look for pink cocaine, they think they’re buying pink cocaine, but they’re actually buying a drug that contains fentanyl, and unbeknownst to them, they overdose and die,” Tarantino said. ”
An anonymous user who spoke to CBS News said she found fentanyl in her supply.
“I gave it back,” she said. “This is dangerous.”
Pink cocaine is not cocaine
Pink cocaine is often confused with real cocaine. Tusi is another street name for the substance, often confused with the synthetic hallucinogen 2C-B. It’s neither.
Pink cocaine is a combination of other drugs. It’s pink in color due to added food coloring and sometimes strawberry or other flavorings, according to the National Capital Poison Center.
Officials say it is most commonly used by young people in the club scene. Pink cocaine is usually ingested in pill form or smoked in powder form. Rarely, it is injected.
Data from nearly 1,000 pink powder seizures by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration shows that a CBS News analysis found that 99.5% of the pink powder seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration were a mixture of ketamine and other drugs, which may include Fentanyl.
