Cocaine users warned

Cocaine users may start mooing for real if they continue using the drug these days. A warning released on 9-21-09 indicated cocaine was found to contain the drug levamisole, an anti-parasitic drug used by veterinarians. Officials at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services agency, (SAMHSA), are warning cocaine users about the life-threatening adulterant that has already started to take its toll on drugs abusers.

Levamisole is a drug used chiefly to treat cattle, sheep, goats, swine, and chickens suffering from nematodes, (parasitic worms). The worms are also showing a resistance to this drug making it's continued use questionable for these animals. However, some industrious drug dealers have latched onto the substance, and are using it to cut cocaine.

A Internet search pulled up the company, Hebei New Century Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., selling this drug online in the form of tablets, liquid injectables, and as water-soluble granules. For a drug dealer, these water-soluble granules would be an ideal chemical to step on the cocaine. Another company, Hebei Kangning Co., Ltd, also supplies the drug from overseas. Could one of these companies be a source for the drug dealers?

Levamisole was once approved for use in humans to treat cancer and some autoimmune diseases, but was pulled for that use. Drug dealers probably know this, and felt confortable enough to start cutting cocaine with it. Heroin is probably next on the list. It is always a challenge in finding cheap sources of adulterants to "expand" the drugs with so they can bring in a larger profit. And let's face it, the money is the most important factor in drug dealing, not the addict's health. 

As the US and state governments make it harder and harder to obtain some of the chemicals required in the illicit drug manufacturing businesses, dealers will continually find ways to step on these drugs as they wind their way through many middlemen, stretching, drawing, sifting out every last cent of profit before the drug eventually becomes nothing but a shadow of its original self. By the time it hits the streets of America, in many instances, the drug might contain everything from RAID to crushed up B complex vitamins.

According to SAMHSA, "20 confirmed or probable cases of agranulocytosis (a serious, sometimes fatal blood disorder), including two deaths, associated with cocaine adulterated with levamisole," have been reported. "Levamisole can severely reduce the number of white blood cells. This is a very serious illness that needs to be treated at a hospital. If you use cocaine, watch out for:

• high fever, chills, or weakness
• swollen glands
• painful sores (mouth, anal)
• any infection that won’t go away or gets worse very fast, including sore throat or mouth sores -skin infections, abscesses -thrush (white coating of the mouth, tongue, or throat) -pneumonia (fever, cough, shortness of breath).” (SAMHSA)

If you have any of these symptoms and use cocaine, take your behind to the hospital before it is too late.

For those of you using cocaine, or crack cocaine, (yes it has been found in crack also), levamisole has been found in about 1/3 of the cocaine tested so far. If you like those odds, then you're comfortable with gambling also. This is not your mother's cocaine, or cocaine that was on the market years ago. Today, these drug dealers care nothing about you, or anyone else. They march to a different beat, a beat so methodical, and mechanical that no room exists for humanity.

 If you or a loved one needs help with any type of drug problem, contact these sites depending on where you live. SEMCA (Wayne County residents), CARE (Macomb County residents), PACE (Oakland County residents), Drug Free Detroit (City of Detroit residents).

In the flow...

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(Photos Wikimedia Commons - Public Domain)

Cocaine users warned by Michael Velardo, aka Crash Test Addict is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.