Almost every bag of cocaine, ecstasy, and heroin that is sold on the streets is cut with additional products in order to bulk out batches to increase a dealers profit. In the less extreme instances, white powders such as cocaine and heroin are cut with baking soda or sugars such as sucrose or lactose.
However, it is commonplace for drugs to be cut with cheaper drugs or medication that produce a similar effect for users. Lidocaine can often be used to cut cocaine as it is a dental product that produces the same ‘numbing’ feeling that is a side effect of cocaine but does not produce the high. As well as this lidocaine is also a dangerous substance when taken in unmeasured quantities as it can cause convulsions.
Another worrying cutting agent used is phenacetin, a discontinued pain killer that was once used in the US. This substance is considered to most likely be cancer-causing and is unsafe for humans to breathe in, let alone ingest nasally or orally. Despite the drug being outlawed in the States, that is not to say a dealer may source the product outside of the country and use it to maximise profits on sales.
One toxic substance that can be held to account for multiple deaths is PMA, or PMMA. This can be sold in place of MDMA as it is cheaper than the latter substance, however it is more toxic and has a more delayed effect. This is dangerous within rave culture as recreational users will urge themselves to consume more as they have not felt the desired high when expected and could potentially consume potent amounts.
Another problem with ecstacy, namely pills, is not the cutting agents used but the increased strengths of the pills. In the UK, for example, the average ecstasy pill in the 2000s largely contained 50-80mg of the psychoactive substance, but recent years have seen this increase to an average of 125mg, and in some instances ‘super pills’ containing well over 200mg of MDMA have been documented. This correlates with the recent surge in deaths at British music festivals this year alone with young adults dying as a result of abnormally strong drugs. As ecstasy pills do not all contain the same amounts of the substance as one another they cannot be taken in the same doses as each other and have to be taken with precaution. One person could take multiples of one pill without dire consequences but take less of another and could be in danger from doing so.
Drug testing kits are encouraged not to prevent drug use but to promote more responsible and safe drug use. These can test for particular cutting agents and the strength of pills and powders. However these cannot be entirely relied upon as new chemical compounds are being formed to create new cutting agents that cannot be tested for until they are identified as one. This issue will never be able to be counteracted with testing kits as they cannot test for the unknown. This also encourages new substances to be developed which have unknown effects in the short and long term.
Arguably, these cutting agents are what makes drug consumption truly dangerous. Without these, use of drugs could be calculated and the effects that substances have on a person would be more certain, as is the case with alcohol consumption. Long term drug abuse is evidently very damaging to a person’s health, however the occasional recreational use is made just as deadly with these lethal concoctions of outlawed medicine and cheap alternatives.
By Cerys May