Cocaine Poeder

Cocaine was isolated in 1859 by Albert Niemann, a doctoral student at Gottingen. While isolating the substance from coca leaves, he was able to name the substance. His dissertation, published in 1860, was titled On a New Organic Base in the Coca Leaves. In 1884, an ophthalmologist named Karl Koller would use cocaine to anaesthetize his patients during eye surgery, making it the first local anaesthetic to be used in medicine.

Cocaine is sold by the gram. According to the Dutch testing service DIMS, 5.2% of everything submitted to their service in 2023 contained cocaine, averaging 51.70 euro per gram. Half of the samples submitted at these prices were between 50 and 60 euro per gram. The percentage of cocaine samples that contained an adulterant dipped to 26% in 2023 from the 36% of the previous year.

Users report feeling increased energy and a confident feeling after taking the drug. The EU Drugs Agency states that users experience euphoria, suppression of appetite, and the plasma half-life of the drug is 0.7 to 1.5 hours. These short and narrow effects are the reason for the drug's presence in circulation for a century and a half.

Cocaine is the only substance in this catalogue that is still a medicine. It is used topically during surgery to the nose and tear ducts (though largely superseded by lidocaine and tetracaine), but is still available in pharmacies as a controlled substance preparation of known strength.

Where cocaine bought on the street is the subject of concern and uncertainty in purity, the average purity of cocaine samples from the Dutch samples tested in 2023 was 72%. The cuts DIMS names are levamisole, phenacetine and caffeine.

While levamisole has been linked to agranulocytosis (the destruction of white blood cells that protect the body against infection), and vasculitis (which damages tissue), levamisole induced vasculitis affects the skin in 91% of cases, with the remainder affecting the kidneys (21%), the ear, nose and throat region (15%) and lungs (10%).