"YOU HAVE NO ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE CONSUMING"

Vue Discovers That You Can't Always Get What You Want When Buying
Drugs On The Street

In this day and age, practically everything we consume is scrutinized
with a skeptical eye for additives. We buy organic and local food, we
drink bottled water, we read alternative independent newspapers. But
when it comes to our stash, well, that's another story.

According to Richard Laing-an analytical specialist in clandestine
drug labs for Health Canada and manager of the laboratory responsible
for drug seizure analysis for Western Canada, including Edmonton-local
drug users should be wary. On the phone from his Burnaby office, Laing
rattles off a list of chemicals and additives commonly found added to
the major illegal drugs, ranging from the harmless (including
dimethylsulfone, a nutritional supplement often found in
methamphetamine) to the addictive (such as crystal meth, which shows
up in many other drugs such as marijuana and cocaine) to the downright
deadly (like strychnine, sometimes found in heroin).

The worst drug for containing nasty additives? Ecstasy, by far,
explains Laing. "Ecstasy is cut with almost anything," he said. "We've
seen MDMA [the pure, unadulterated form of ecstacy] containing crystal
meth, ketamine [a horse tranquilizer], PCP, as well as caffeine and
all kinds of sugars. All kinds of stuff."

Laing also sees analogues of MDMA, including PMA and PMMA, being
passed off as ecstasy. "These are related to ecstasy but they don't
give the same effects," he explained. "The dosage level you need to
get high for these drugs is very close to the actual overdose dosage."

This isn't to say that other drugs are even close to pure. Cocaine in
particular is often cut with local anesthetics novocaine and
lidocaine. These anesthetics mimic cocaine's numbing effect on mucous
membranes rather than simply adding to the net weight of the drug like
sugar, another popular impurity. However, Laing notes that a rising
trend is for coke to be cut with the cardiac drug diltiazem, medically
used to treat hypertension. Diltiazem is thought to counteract the
cardiac effects of cocaine, which can pose headaches for doctors
trying to treat cocaine overdoses. Parallel to this development, Laing
observes a marked shift in how users are getting their high from the
drug.

"Ten years ago, we saw 90 per cent [of users doing] coke-now it's
somewhere around 50 to 55 per cent crack," he said. Crack's ascent in
popularity in Canada could have serious societal impact, as Laing
lists cocaine as the second-most popular recreational drug, right
behind marijuana.

Obviously, at the most basic level, a dealer's incentive to adulterate
their product is clear: more weight equals more profit. However, this
phenomenon has many facets to it, and can be a revealing glimpse into
the complex, ever-changing world of the illegal drug trade. The
harsher the penalties for selling or possessing a drug, the more
likely a dealer is to try to cut as much as they can into it, and the
less likely a user is to question what it is they are getting into.

Conversely, Laing sees the opposite effect, when a drug suddenly
becomes easily available at higher purity, as just as deadly.

"Users have a certain concentration that they are accustomed to using.
'Hotcapping' is when they get a much higher purity, and that can cause
an OD," he explained. "In the mid-'90s, we had an incident where
heroin went from 12-14 per cent to almost 60 per cent in around four
to five months. Over the next six to eight months, it caused 600
overdose deaths in BC. People hear that the pure stuff is out there,
and they want to try it."

Dr David Cook, professor of Pharmacology at the University of Alberta
and specialist on drug pharmacology for AADAC, observes that dealers
will cut their drugs with "whatever they can get away with.

"People will say, 'I trust my dealer,'" Cook said, "but if you really
do think that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you."

Cook explained that many dealers are lacing marijuana with crystal
meth in the hopes of getting their clients addicted. "I suspect that
the reason meth is being cut into pot is that if people like it,
they're more likely to become addicted to it," he said. "If I'm
dealing drugs, clearly there's an advantage to getting my client
addicted to it."

Cook's views are echoed by Sgt Ian Sanderson, drug and organized crime
awareness service coordinator for the Alberta RCMP.

"The bottom line is that it is for criminal profit," said Sanderson.
"The traffickers are not generally users, so they don't care what's in
them."

Mixing drugs together may make sense from a dealer's economic
perspective, but drug interactions remain dangerously-though
understandably-an unknown area of pharmacology.

"Every drug that works in the brain interacts with every other drug
that works in the brain," Cook explained. "We simply don't know
everything that's going on, because we can't do the studies."

For instance, cocaine and alcohol consumed together react in the liver
to form cocaethylene, a synthetic cousin of cocaine. Cocaethylene
lasts longer in the body, and some studies have shown that it is more
toxic than cocaine, particularly to the heart.

Cook also warned that the people conducting these quasi-experiments
rarely have any background in the pharmacology they're screwing around
with, citing the case of the "Frozen Addict" as an example.

In 1982, a group of amateur chemists tried to synthesize analogues of
the narcotic opiod Demerol and were spectacularly unsuccessful. Cook
explains that instead, the chemists made a compound called MPTP, which
was found to efficiently attack dopamine receptors in the brain,
rapidly giving users symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

"You could tell exactly how far this drug had been distributed because
you never ever see people in their 20s with Parkinson's," said Cook.

Interestingly, this case did not end entirely in tragedy-subsequent
research on MPTP led to the discovery of Levo-dopa, the current
popular treatment for Parkinson's patients.

Cook says the presence of deadly contaminants in recreational drugs
raises the thorny issue of legalization.

"If you grow your own tomatoes, you know there's no pesticides in
them. Likewise, I'm not a great champion for legalization of
marijuana, but if people were permitted to grow their own, it would
make a difference in the impurities in it," he said.

However, Cook admits that it's an extraordinarily difficult issue, and
there are many complicating factors outside of the drug's chemical
components. Sgt Sanderson agrees, citing the cash crop of marijuana as
an example.

"Marijuana use doubled between 1994 and 2004 in Canada; the perception
of the harm of the drug went down during that time," he said. "The
majority of marijuana that is grown here doesn't stay here in Canada.
If you legalize it, is that going to go away?"

Sanderson also noted that exported marijuana is often exchanged for
cocaine, crystal meth and guns.

Yet, as pharmacology professor Cook points out, in some cases,
legalization has been tried-and has worked.

"We already do it with opiates [like] methadone and heroin," he said,
explaining that in the UK doctors have been able to prescribe heroin
to addicts since the 1920s. In doing so, Cook states that the
government has removed any profit incentive for the dealer.

"There's no point in getting an addict, because you've just lost a
customer," he said, adding that this has led to low levels of heroin
use in England.

However, Cook is hesitant to extend his argument to all recreational
drugs. "The difficulty with other agents is that people have tried to
look at if you can do this effectively and the results aren't
particularly encouraging. Methamphetamine and cocaine doesn't seem to
work; the drugs have considerable physiological impacts by
themselves," he said. "The idea that all we've got to do is give the
drugs to the addict is too simplistic."

"We've tended to overstate the risks of drug abuse," Cook admitted,
"but the one universal problem which is true of any uncontrolled
substance, with no governmental control over the content, is that you
have no absolutely no idea what you're consuming."