Cocaine Awareness...

Cocaine

(crack, coke, white gold, blow, toot, flake, happy dust,

nose candy, snort, and snow, etc.)

Cocaine comes from coca plant found in South America.  It is a very dangerous drug that is highly addictive, unpredictable, and very costly.  Like all the other drugs listed on this site, Cocaine ruins lives very day across the U.S.  The highly addictive nature of this substance drains bank accounts, pulls apart families and destroys users physically.

Cocaine will not make you a status symbol, enhance your self worth and confidence, improve your school or work performance, or improve you in any other way.  IT WILL DESTROY YOUR LIFE COMPLETELY!  

As with other drugs, when cocaine is combined with other narcotics or alcohol it becomes even more deadly.  

Cocaine is generally sold on the street as a hydrochloride salt - a fine, white crystalline powder known as coke, C, snow, flake, or blow. Street dealers dilute it with inert (non-psychoactive) but similar-looking substances such as cornstarch, talcum powder, and sugar, or with active drugs such as procaine and benzocaine (used as local anesthetics), or other CNS stimulants such as amphetamines. Nevertheless, illicit cocaine has actually become purer over the years; according to  figures, in 1988 its purity averaged about 75%.

Cocaine in powder form is usually "snorted" into the nostrils, although it may also be rubbed onto the mucous lining of the mouth, rectum, or vagina. To experience cocaine's effects more quickly, and to heighten their intensity, users sometimes inject it.

Cocaine hydrochloride can be chemically altered to remove other substances. The process, called "freebasing," is potentially dangerous because the solvents used are highly flammable. The pure form of cocaine that results ("free base") is smoked rather than snorted. The drug commonly called "crack" is a crude form of free base that has become popular in recent years.

How cocaine effects users:

Can cause sharp and sudden changes in breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate leading to death.

Can cause nausea, insomnia, fever, vomiting, convulsions, severe anxiety, and acute weight loss.

Snorting cocaine over time will cause irreversible damage to nasal tissue and the septum

(wall separating the nasal cavities)

Other effects are breaks with reality, paranoia, hallucinations, sensations of snakes or bugs crawling on them ("coke bugs") , severe dependency, depression, confusion, cardiac arrest (heart attack leading to death), and cocaine poisoning.