Tools
A substance used to deworm livestock has made its way into the local cocaine supply, sickening 10 people in the last five months. According to King County health officials, 10 men and women—all primarily in their 40s and 50s—have been admitted to local hospitals a total of 13 times after they used cocaine possibly tainted with the drug levamisole.
King County Public Health disease-control officer Dr. Bob Wood says health officials don't yet know why the cocaine supply has increasingly become tainted with levamisole. Wood says it's possible the drug is being used to bulk up cocaine during production, and he says there has also been some speculation that the deworming agent "might add to the euphoria people get when they take cocaine." The problem is that levamisole also drops users' white-blood-cell count to zero—essentially causing drug-induced AIDS—making them susceptible to serious bacterial infections. So far, three deaths (in Spokane, New Mexico, and Alberta, Canada) have been linked to levamisole-tainted cocaine.
Stranger Personals
Levamisole only stays in the system for five and a half hours, Dr. Wood says, but that's long enough for the drug to shut down white-blood-cell production and expose users to infection. Antibiotics are used to treat the infections, and doctors have used a drug called Neupogen to jump-start bone marrow into resuming production of white blood cells.
As of late last year, "nearly a third of all cocaine seized in the U.S. is tainted with the drug," the Associated Press reported on August 31, based on a review of Drug Enforcement Administration documents. King County received two reports of sickness in June, six in July, and two in August—the latest case on August 20. Nine of the 10 cases countywide were reported in Seattle, one was found in Shoreline. According to Wood, people who snort, inject, smoke, or "keister" cocaine are susceptible to exposure to levamisole—which is colorless, odorless, and can't be detected except through laboratory testing.
On top of the lack of information about why bad cocaine is entering
the market, health officials also aren't sure where it's coming from.
As Wood says, the health department is limited in its investigatory
powers. "When you get involved in asking questions about who [their]
supplier was, that's something that the health department stays away
from," Wood says. 
2
Well we will just have to collect cocaine samples from all over the earth so we can get a DNA, soil nutrition,Electron microscope image and all that other CSI "Coke Seen Investigator" Stuff going!
Cocaine is classified as a psychomotor stimulant. It is found in Erythroxylon coca, which is a shrub native to South America, particularly Columbia, Peru, and Bolivia. Inhabitants of these regions have been using coca (and its various forms) for at least 2,000 years.
3
Why should we have to worry about Levamisole in cocaine? I mean really, if an individual does cocaine they are automatically going to be risking their life anyways. Personally, I believe that all man made drugs (that includes cocaine, even though it technically comes from a plant, people still add chemicals and all that jazz to the drug making the actual powdered substances “man-made”.) shouldn’t be used at all. If someone wants to get high or messed up or whatever then they should do something that can’t kill you the first time you try it like marijuana or shrooms or something natural and from mother earth. The “natural” kind of drugs are safer than cocaine and heroine and pills because you don’t have all those nasty killer unnatural chemicals added into the drug.
If people want to be stupid enough to snort a line of coke then they should pay the consequences, which may end up being worse the though because of the Levamisole added into the drug. The dangers of drugs are everywhere, therefore everyone should know of them. So what if someone is stupid enough to ignore the faces and do drugs anyways. Let them destroy themselves.
4
It's supposed to say:
" which may end up being worse then though because of the Levamisole added into the drug."
instead of the
and " So what if someone is stupid enough to ignore the facts and do drugs anyways."
instead of faces.
I type sloppy.
Also by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee
RSS
Twitter
Comments (7) RSS