…in general. But, it’s a particularly bad idea to use coke in Washington State right now. Levamisole-tainted cocaine is still around.
Levamisole is a veterinary antiworm drug that also happens to cause some (but not everyone) exposed to it to lose a key part of their immune system—the neutrophils. Neutrophils are responsible for gobbling up fungi and bacteria that happen to find their way into you. For some unlucky people exposed to levamisole, they lose all of these cells, becoming neutropenic and exposed to all sorts of horrible bacterial and fungal infections. (This is a different sort of immune deficiency than found in AIDS from HIV, nastier in some ways.)
While quite a few people respond to emergency medical care, and regain these crucial immune cells, not everyone does. Because not everyone exposed to levamisole gets this reaction, seeing others use cocaine without getting sick is no way of being sure you’ll be safe.
This is the time to quit the coke.
(Why is Levamisole in the cocaine, anyways? For similar reasons why melamine found its way into wheat gluten from China. Levamisole, beyond being toxic to the immune system, acts a little like cocaine in the brain—fuddling with dopamine receptors.)
This post was originally published yesterday, but we’ve moved it up.—Eds.
Even though I don’t do coke, this story still freaks me out…in that there is a (apparently) readily available substance out there that can permanently kill your immune system. It reads like some sort of sci-fi bio weapon.
I’d be just as worried if my anti-worm medication was cut with cocaine. That stuff will kill you!
I miss my years on Capitol Hill, the stories you’ll never know.
Well, I don’t think it’s quite so bad as all that but there are certainly more risks now with street cocaine than there were 5 years ago.
My hypothesis as to why it’s being used as a cutting agent is that it turns into levamisole freebase in the same process as cocaine turns into crack, and then turns back into hydrochloride with crack. It’s not uncommon for cocaine and crack users/dealers to perform an acid/base/acid wash on their cocaine stash in order to wash out impurities and cutting agents. If levamisole base passes through and is present in crack, then less weight is lost in the coke-crack conversion and the end product would seem ‘purer’ than if the cuts were something that didn’t pass through in the conversion.
Newspaper articles and that CDC report both indicate that at least some of the patients seen were crack users so that adds some credence to the speculation.
I ran through the numbers to see what kind of user might likely be at risk.
Cancer patients treated with 100-130mg/day reported 10% with agranulocytosis, the immune disorder brought on by levamisole.
10% of street cocaine is levamisole by weight (per CDC quoting unpublished DEA data).
Eightball is 1/8 oz is 3.5g. 3.5g of cocaine therefore has 350mg levamisole.
So someone who uses a gram or more daily, or even every other day has a 0-10% chance of agranulocytosis or other levamisole-related problems.
People with auto-immune disorders are particularly at risk. Reports also indicate that females are more likely to be affected, possibly due to generally higher rates of auto-immune disorders.
If you regularly use cocaine and start to experience flu-like symptoms, skin rashes or lesions, nausea, coughing, etc, please see a doctor and be very honest about your use so they can diagnose you quicker. There have been a handful of deaths from this, and dozens of expensive hospitalizations. This disorder can be reversed with drug therapy if diagnosed properly and quickly before you get really bad secondary infections.
—
NaFun
DanceSafe
Great post NaFun! Good info.
Another reason to avoid coke. Thanks. I’ll stick to marijuana for the ‘high’ i get once every year or two. Tapping into laconic stupidity fits me better than being a chatty cathy.
Whoa. Did not know. Thank you.
I don’t want to come off as pro-cocaine but hasn’t there always been some sort of non-peer reviewed “scare” about drugs? It seems like just yesterday that I was hearing about pot being covered in dangerous pesticides or full of powdered glass, or being dangerously stronger than before, or killing your sperm, blah, blah, blah.
NaFun, you’re my hero.
@1 There are lots of easy to get substances that cause all kinds of things in a small minority of people! Hell there are plenty of things at the grocery store that will kill the vast majority of people who take them.
This just seems like another reason to legalize drugs. At least then we can have regulation and an openness that gives people an idea of who they are buying from. I mean mean you shouldn’t do coke, but doing so should be a safe as possible.
Sure, that’s the best reason not to do cocaine…indigestion.
Can’t think of any others. Nope. Naddaone.
@8 Yeah. As frightening as this is, I really don’t believe any of these reports since DARE conditioned me to disbelieve anything “educators” or the police told me about “illegal” drugs.
@8 and @12: Reputable public health agencies are reporting this, read the CDC alert that Golob linked to. This isn’t a scare tactic per se, people are actually getting sick and dying. The news articles are pretty much full of “OMG drug dealers are evil and drugs are bad cuz look at the cutting agents, mmmkay?! but the story is a lot more complicated than that.
@8, 12 and 13: Yes and yes. Levamisole is for real as NaFun notes. But 8 and 12 are also right. Somewhere north of 95% of what gets reported as the dangers of drugs (and coke in particular) are utter horseshit.
The text book example being the crack “baby” crap of the mid-80s. Even though the report has been completely repudiated by the medical and research community (by its main author no less), it has become an article of faith in the public and much of the credulous hack press.
And the obvious follow-up to my own comment is:
Duh, dude. The ill effects of levamisole have nothing to do with cocaine, but everything to do with coke’s legal status and the war on drugs. If cocaine was legal, it wouldn’t be cut w/levamisole.
Same as w/heroin being cut w/fentanyl, or wound botulism and heroin, or anthrax and heroin (currently an issue in Europe). One and all are artifacts of the legal status of the drug and totally unrelated to the drug itself.
NaFun: You rock. I will be sharing your comments with my friends who sniff.
In the words of Johnny Cash:
Come on you’ve gotta listen unto me lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be
Isn’t this basically what happens when drugs are illegal and not regulated by the market or Government?
This is a great example of a completely unregulated free market at work–the kind of thing Michael Medved and other wing nuts advocate. In theory, this problem would solve itself–dealers who sell a product kills the customer would go out of business. Here we see the other possible outcome–the market has decided that a 10% mortality rate is acceptable.
Just wait until they start cutting it with clozapine. You’ll get the double wammy of blunted drug effects with netropenia.
For further information on cocaine, levamisole, and other cutting agents used in street cocaine please see this Erowid article:
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/cocaine/…
Don’t Drink and Drive.
Quit the Coke.
Limbaugh and Beck are Idiots.
I’m Your Mother.
Breaking news: drugs are dangerous.
#thinningtheherd
Where do they get the Levamisole? That doesn’t sound like something you can buy by the case at Costco. Shouldn’t it be fairly easy to trace something like that?
@24 it’s widely used in farm animals and can be bought by the case at weed/feed stores in agricultural areas. They’re probably getting it wholesale in South America since the levamisole is present in cocaine before it reaches the US border.
Breaking news: those Twitter hashtag things only work on Twitter.
Really good info, Jonathan and NaFun. I stopped doing cocaine before most of you were born, thank goodness (shit is bad news). But it’s nice to hear some real facts amid the noise.
Yeah, all the police reports early on in this which were stating that they didn’t know why this was being cut in- uhh, it’s readily available via agricultural subsidies and initiatives that we send to S.America. It’s an agri-med, it blends in well, and it withstands the basing process. Seems like a no-brainer to me. I agree that this is what happens when we make things illegal and push them off to the black market. If things were legal and regulated, we’d not be having this issue. I have to wonder if this is an issue up in Canada and such as well? Europe? Is this going to be a worldwide issue, or just here in the states?
@19 actually no, because no one can file a class action lawsuit against the cocaine cartels for damages like we can with Toyota. Testing equipment is usually listed as drug paraphernalia and is against the law to own or sell in most cases. Cocaine is this dangerous BY LAW.
Whenever I mess with my Dopamine receptors, I prefer a dark haired beauty to be around while I’m coding a mate for a computer generated bird.
This is a real threat to anyone who uses cocaine.I know because it happened to me.10 days in the hospital,almost died.Not fun,most of my organs were infected.It was very painful.I will never touch coke again no matter what.
It happened to me ,10 days in the hospital,every organ infected,still might need heart surgery,the tests are not in yet on that.My point is DONT DO COKE, if not levamisole something they cut it with will kill you or at least change your life in terrible ways.