Crack is one of the most vicious drugs ever invented. A perverted form of cocaine, cut with anything, it’s now getting a lot nastier. The new form, “Paco”, is cut with benzene, which makes it more addictive and much more dangerous to smoke.
Crack’s deadliness comes from the oxides it creates. One of those is sodium oxide, from cutting the coke with bicarbonate of soda. That produces sodium oxides, which are chemically highly charged, and can bond with anything.
You might as well be smoking grenades.
Sodium is an actual explosive, under some circumstances. Great for the nervous system. Sodium is also a fundamental body chemical. The body uses a variety of sodium compounds, so it has receptors, which cause addiction, and are responsible for the violent hit from crack.
Oxides generally have to be removed from the body, because they’re dangerous. The body has substances called “oxidases”, which break them down.
But if you’re pouring them into your system by the ton, the body suffers. The physical effects are what cause the "shriveling" effect of crack.
One of the reasons for crack’s erratic effects is that it’s a chemical scattergun, and you can’t quite be sure what the mess of oxides will do, and what they’ll bond with.
“Paco”, because it includes benzene and kerosene, is a new level of danger, because petrol compounds are much worse for carbon oxides. The body also has receptors for some carbon oxides, and that’s why it’s so addictive.
However, many carbon oxides are also super-poisonous. Carbon monoxide is the classic. With relatively pure carbon, burning it creates a lot more oxides.
So this is what’s now roaming the streets of South America. Paco is made from low-grade coke, bulked up with additives.
Drugs have a tendency to make poor people a lot poorer, and as this
New York Times article explains, there’s a sort of sickening familiarity with the situation:
“
Paco is highly addictive because its high lasts just a few minutes — and so intense that many users smoke 20 to 50 cigarettes a day to try to make its effects linger. Paco is even more toxic than crack cocaine because it is made mostly of solvents and chemicals like kerosene, with just a dab of cocaine.
The surge in lower-quality cocaine hitting the streets has resulted from a crackdown by both governments on the chemicals needed to transform cocaine paste, or pasta base, as it is called, into powder form.”
So it’s a high maintenance addiction. With that come the social problems.
“
Mrs. Acuña, a soft-spoken Paraguayan native, is battling paco’s spread to save the barrio, but also to save her family. Tragedy first struck in August 2001 when two drug dealers shot and killed her 16-year-old son, David, one week after he was believed to have witnessed a murder. The dealers are now in prison for his death.
A few years later Mr. Eche, her eldest son, and her younger son, Leandro, 20, became addicted to paco. That was when she helped form a Mothers of Paco support group.”
See what I mean about familiar… The area’s a no-go zone for the cops. The miniscule police station in their area, and lack of police resources mean that there hasn’t been much of a police presence in the barrio. The Moms are trying to deal with armed dealers.
This stuff’s so bad one guy couldn’t even hold a job at his mother’s diner.
The NYT article is full of incidents and situations, including “market forces” in Europe rejecting the low grade cocaine, which has led to all this R&D to create Paco.
The fact is that you can’t get addicted to things where there isn’t a natural receptor in the body.
The chemistry isn’t that complex.
Drug law enforcement has become more like a ritual post-mortem than law, socially.
Now a few questions for the fine purveyors of drug wars, legal and illegal:
1. Where’s all the morality and high sentiment for these people?
2. Where are all the damn social engineers?
3. How many people are actually being helped by policies? Is there a number?
4. Does the phrase “credibility of law enforcement” mean anything?
One possible measure of social failure is the number of human wrecks in a society. We have here some Moms from one of the poorest areas on Earth doing more than “international law enforcement” has ever attempted.
Maps, anyone?
