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.
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. 
Oh jeez, why can’t they just legalise, regulate and tax the heck out of these things like they do booze? Pandora’s outta the damn box. People are gonna make this stuff and people are gonna take it, whatever you do …
Its so hard to find out where Cocaine comes from?
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.
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.
Sorry about my typos.
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.
That Indie Kid made a great point. Shes sexy.
Because there totally aren’t natural plants that will kill your fool ass. Loco weed, belladonna, those can kill ya; oh yeah–peach and cherry pits, and that’s not even to mention almonds (see what I did there?) contain cyanide. And there’s very little “natural” about most marijuana these days. Aside from the fact that YES, additives CAN go into your dime bag, modern marijuana is astronomically more potent than the stuff sold back in the 70s. Dose is everything. A 5% solution of a drug may make you go into happy la la land, but a 20% solution of it might make you into the girl who thinks it’s a rad idea to beat the hell out of someone. Nearly all of the marijuana sold these days is the result of intensive breeding to increase its effects. It’s about as natural as Monsanto tomatoes.
So when was the last time someone on marijuana beat the hell out of someone? Go on, show us that you’re not just making stupid comments with no basis. Show a scientific study that correlates THC to violent behavior.