Through a crop-eradication strategy, the U.S. sprayed Mexican marijuana fields with paraquat, a highly toxic weed killer. The technique scared many U.S. marijuana users, who, as a health precaution, stopped smoking the plant's Mexican strain.53 Still, the government had targeted the wrong drug. It was U.S. cocaine use that was on the rise, not marijuana. Displaced marijuana dealers, though, would observe the new trend. With smuggling networks and distributors already in place, cocaine became their new line of business. Now, the planes that once flew bales of marijuana to the U.S. would transport tons of cocaine over the Mexican border into California and over the Caribbean Sea into Florida. Now, the U.S. dealers who once distributed pounds of marijuana would move kilos upon kilos of cocaine.54
What Is Marijuana Laced With Crack Called To Succeedl
Smoking cocaine-not new. During the 1970s, smoking basuco, coca paste in cigarettes laced with marijuana or tobacco, was common in South America. And the instant, powerful high outdid the euphoria that came from snorting cocaine. Basuco contained harmful chemicals like kerosene and sulfuric acid, which were used to process the coca leaf into paste form. But it was also cheap.68 At about fifty cents a cigarette, basuco became popular among poor users, especially street youth. In fact, an official Colombian count in 1983 revealed the existence of over six hundred thousand basuco users under the age of eighteen-a national crisis.69
There has been more than one fentanyl overdose in our district this year, and our school nurse had to show all of us school administrators where the NARCAN kits are in case we encounter a student who is passed out from an overdose. We have many students who get high and come to school every day, dazed and slobbering with the high percentage of THC (the main psychoactive compound in marijuana) available through dispensaries. We have intelligence that fentanyl-laced marijuana and Percocet have been sold in the city park across the street from our school. In fact, a student and a father even took on and fought an adult male who was distributing laced weed in the park.
The differences that people think of when they think about crack and cocaine are mostly myths. Or, they say more about what people think about smoking a drug versus other forms of ingesting. This has nothing to do with the actual chemical properties of the two drugs, which are exactly the same.
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