What in the world is pink cocaine?

On October 16, Liam Payne, a former member of One Direction, fell from his third-floor hotel room and died. Within days, headlines in TMZ, ABC News, and the Guardian announced that he had “pink cocaine” in his system.

On August 10, 24-year-old Instagram model Maecee Marie Lathers killed two people in a car crash in Miami. Topless, vomiting, and screaming, Lathers told police officers that she was under the influence of a drug called “tusi,” a pink powder that’s gaining popularity in the US. A toxicology report later found that while she hadn’t been drinking, there were several other drugs in her system — but nothing called tusi.

“Tucibi” — also called tusi or pink cocaine — is a Spanish phonetic play on 2C-B, a California-born synthetic psychedelic originally popular amongst Gen X psychonauts and ravers seeking a euphoric, trippy high. However, despite either of its names, pink cocaine rarely contains 2C-B or cocaine at all.

In the 2000s, 2C-B made its way from European nightclubs to Colombia, where it devolved into something else entirely: a pink powdered cocktail of every type of party drug you might find at Coachella. It’s essentially a Gen Z speedball: Rather than blending cocaine and heroin, pink cocaine mixes ketamine with stimulants like MDMA and even caffeine. It can also include a chaotic sprinkling of methamphetamine, DMT, and oxycodone, among other substances.

Largely through artful cartel marketing portraying tusi as pretty, fun, and accessible, this blend of cheap drug leftovers has become the substance of choice for Colombian DJs and Mexican rappers, a wolf in sheep’s clothing for European ravers, and a source of confusion for everyone else. Tusi is making its way across the world, and it’s increasingly important that potential users know what it is. 

The global war on drugs was originally organized around the production and trafficking of plant-based drugs like cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. But in recent years, drug manufacturers have turned to synthetic drugs like MDMA, ketamine, and fentanyl, which are easier to mass produce and smuggle across borders. Pink cocaine is everything new all at once — easy money for producers, a cheap Instagrammable high for users, and a massive headache for law enforcement. 

The biggest problem: like playing a game of Russian roulette, only luck decides whether you’ll have fun — or die.

How 2C-B became tucibi 

2,5-dimethoxy-4-bromophenethylamine, or 2C-B, was first synthesized in the 1970s by Californian biochemist and psychonaut Alexander Shulgin, who is best known for introducing MDMA to the world of psychotherapy. Of the over 100 psychedelics Shulgin created, 2C-B was his favorite — in his words, “one of the most graceful, erotic, sensual, introspective compounds I have ever invented.”

The effects of 2C-B are often described as an MDMA-LSD hybrid, giving users both a heightened, vibrant sensory experience and a feeling of euphoria and openness. In many ways, Shulgin viewed 2C-B as a counterpart to MDMA, which has been touted for its therapeutic potential for 40 years, well before it became popular as a club drug. Not only are the two drugs chemically similar, but their psychoactive effects complement each other. “Once the MDMA has shown you where your problems are,” Shulgin wrote, “the 2C-B opens up the emotional, intuitive, and archetypal area of your psyche to help you solve them.”

Anecdotally, many people report that 2C-B’s psychedelic effects are relatively mild and short-lived. Trips last a few hours, unlike the full-day trip provided by LSD. Like other hallucinogens, 2C-B generally doesn’t cause a next-day hangover, according to users interviewed by Vice. It can also have less fun side effects like anxiety, nausea, headaches, or elevated heart rate, any of which can get dangerous in situations where users are dancing — and likely not drinking enough water — in crowded, hot spaces.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, 2C-B was legally manufactured and sold in adult bookstores and dance clubs as a libido-enhancing drug. That changed when the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) listed 2C-B as a Schedule I drug in 1995, pushing it underground, where it remained a relatively niche drug for rave-goers.

But over the past decade, it’s become an increasingly popular party drug in Latin America, Europe, and the US. The 2019 Global Drug Survey of over 120,000 people from more than 30 countries reported that darknet purchases of 2C-B and other drugs have been on the rise since 2014.

In the early 2000s, wealthy young people smuggled small amounts of 2C-B from Europe to Colombia, where it quickly became popular in Colombia’s elite club scene. By 2012, models, politicians, and actors were shelling out 130,000 pesos (about $71 at the time) for a gram of 2C-B — over 10 times the price of cocaine. “The media positioned it as an elite drug,” said Julian Quintero, a sociologist, drug researcher, and director of the Technical Social Action Corporation (ATS), a Colombian drug policy nonprofit. “Very few could access it.”

While 2C-B was considered high-class, it wasn’t much to look at. It was usually sold as a plain-looking pill or an off-white, bitter powder that hurts to snort. To make the drug more appealing, narcos started mixing the powder with sweet pink food coloring. Soon, demand outpaced the supply of 2C-B available in Latin America, so Colombian dealers cut the powder with cheaper, longer-lasting, and more abundant European imports like MDMA and ketamine.

People began calling the pink powder “tusi,” a Spanish spelling of the English pronunciation of “2C.” In the early 2010s, Quintero said, tusi still reliably contained about 10 percent 2C-B, mixed in with the MDMA and ketamine. But by the mid-2010s, the 2C-B component disappeared. 

Removing the priciest ingredient, Quintero told me, was the “magic formula.” Today, a gram of tusi costs $10, not $100, making it accessible to just about anyone who can afford a night out.

Joseph Palamar, a drug use epidemiologist at New York University and deputy director of the National Drug Early Warning System, said that the homophones — “tusi” and “2C-B” — initially confused old school ’90s ravers, who only knew of the original 2C-B and likely thought that’s what they were taking. But, he said, “new school people probably don’t know the difference.”

“Those who use cocaine represent the old. Those who use tusi represent the new”

Calling the powder “pink cocaine,” or polvo rosa, has even less to do with the drug’s contents. “The name ‘pink cocaine’ is one of many fantasies invented by the police to name things they don’t understand,” Quintero said.

Much of polvo rosa’s rise in the club scene can be attributed to its Instagram-ready aesthetic. “The fact that it’s a pretty color draws a lot of people in,” Palamar said.

It’s a brilliant marketing strategy: transform a bland-looking, expensive, exclusive synthetic drug into an Instagram-worthy accessory that almost any partygoer can afford — simply by changing just about everything in it. If tusi had a standard recipe — something potential users could make informed decisions about — this wouldn’t be as big a deal. But as tusi became more popular, the color told users increasingly little about what they were ingesting.

“The thing is,” Palamar said, “anyone could dye any powder pink.”

The initial rise of tusi in Latin America was part of a broader trend: Coca and opium production declined between 2007 and 2012 for a number of factors, including increased seizures of heroin exported to the US and evolving drug preferences. At the same time, the production and trafficking of synthetic drugs like 2C-B, MDMA, and ketamine grew. La Empreza, a street gang claiming to be the first to make and sell tusi in Colombia, told Vice in 2022 that in addition to MDMA, ketamine, and caffeine, their recipe for the drug includes synthetic methamphetamines, LSD, and fentanyl, among other chemicals.

A batch of tusi is essentially made by tossing assorted drugs into a pan, adding a dash of pink food coloring, and stirring the mixture by hand. This isn’t even a great way to make a salad — the dressing won’t be evenly distributed across the greens, and some bites will wind up with more toppings than others. When mixing a powder and liquid drug salad, it’s nearly impossible to ensure that each dose of the final product will contain the same ratio of ingredients. When preparing non-toxic food, perfectly even distribution isn’t usually a concern, but a gram of powder that may contain a mystery dose of a powerful sedative like ketamine — or even the far deadlier fentanyl — is dangerous.

The fact that tusi is so easy to make doesn’t just make it risky — it’s making it more popular. Because tusi is synthetic, lacks a standard recipe, and doesn’t require special equipment beyond kitchenware to make, nearly anyone can prepare it themselves. “Tusi not only emerged as a new drug for a new generation, but also popularized the idea that you can make your own drugs at home,” Quintero said.

As of a couple years ago, tusi was the fifth most popular drug in Colombia. Pink cocaine has become synonymous with Colombian guaracha, a style of electronic house music often referencing the drug in the lyrics. In the song “Magia Rosa” by DJ Goozo, Massianello, and NesBunny, featured vocalist Paulette sings: “Quiero magia rosas que me ponga poderosa.” In English, this roughly translates to “I want pink magic to become powerful.” 

Quintero told me that the rise of tusi paralleled the rise of reggaeton, guaracha, small-scale drug dealers, and sexual tourism to Colombia, lending the drug a distinct cultural ethos for a younger generation. “Those who use cocaine represent the old,” he said. “Those who use tusi represent the new.”

Perhaps nowhere outside Colombia is tusi more celebrated in pop culture than Mexico. While tusi isn’t often mentioned by the Mexican government or mainstream news media, it frequently appears in corridos tumbados — a genre of Mexican regional music blending the vibrant accordions, plucky bass lines, and quintessential trumpets of traditional corridos with hip-hop and reggaeton. Peso Pluma, a 25-year-old Mexican rapper, skyrocketed to global stardom last year with the love song “Ella Baila Sola,” a collaboration with regional group Eslabon Armado.  

But a large swath of corridos tumbados are considered narcocorridos, or songs centered around the plight of cartels or drugs. Three of his songs — “Lady Gaga,” “Rosa Pastel,” and “Las Morras” — mention using pink cocaine as part of a glamorous lifestyle, and music videos for those three songs alone have racked up over 500 million views combined. (Sometimes, the glamorous lifestyle isn’t so glamorous: Peso Pluma had to cancel and reschedule concerts last year because of death threats from a cartel.)

Europe, home to hard-partying tourist destinations like Ibiza, isn’t a stranger to trippy, risky drugs. Combinations of ketamine and MDMA have been trending among festivalgoers across the world lately, priming the club scene for tusi’s arrival. 

The drug first arrived in Europe sometime within the last decade or so. Claudio Vidal, a director at Energy Control, a drug harm reduction nonprofit in Spain, told me that while the first big pink cocaine drug bust happened in 2016, Energy Control first analyzed samples of pink powder in 2011. 

In 2022, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported tusi popping up at music festivals in Austria, Switzerland, and the UK, in addition to party scenes in Spain and Italy. That same year, a survey of nearly 1,500 recreational drug users at European EDM festivals found that about 20 percent had tried tusi in the last 12 months. And this summer, pink cocaine started to gain traction in US states like New York and California for many of the same reasons it blew up in Colombia: it’s relatively affordable, theoretically fun, and pink.

But, Vidal said, we don’t know enough yet to tell exactly where tusi is most popular, or who exactly is using it. The biggest challenge in studying pink cocaine is that, despite its rising prevalence in pop culture, it’s hard to rigorously study a drug that’s largely defined by what it isn’t. “We do not have enough data,” Vidal said.

How dangerous is it, really?

Given the lack of research examining pink cocaine specifically, no one knows how many people are having bad reactions to it yet.

Drugs like ketamine and MDMA are unlikely to cause physical dependence — people aren’t generally using these substances to relieve withdrawal symptoms, like one might if they were addicted to opiates. That doesn’t mean they can’t create a kind of psychological dependence — as Palamar said, “A lot of people become accustomed to their world on ketamine,” which can make it hard to stop using it.

Vidal hasn’t seen a tusi-related spike in demand for treatment at addiction treatment centers in Spain — at least not yet. More research will be necessary to see whether tusi users aren’t checking into treatment centers because they don’t have a substance use disorder, or because they’re avoiding treatment out of fear, stigma, or something else.

But that may change as tusi itself changes. In its 2023 report, Energy Control found that Colombian manufacturers were starting to add addictive substances like benzodiazepines to batches of tusi. Quintero suspects they are also adding opioids like heroin, morphine, and oxycodone “with the aim of creating dependency.”

Cases of pink cocaine being contaminated with fentanyl have yet to be reported in the US, but that hasn’t stopped Palamar from worrying about it. Over the past several years, potentially fatal doses of fentanyl have been found in samples of fake prescription pills, methamphetamine, and cocaine. Given its rising popularity, it’s reasonable to think that pink cocaine could be next.

But, at least for now, the biggest risks with pink cocaine don’t seem to be addiction or fatal overdose. Taking a mystery drug cocktail — especially if it’s mixed with alcohol on a night out — can get someone far more intoxicated than they planned for.

Unlike opioids, which can cause severe, potentially deadly respiratory depression, “pink cocaine and the things that are in it generally don’t stop people from breathing, which is good,” said Maryann Amirshahi, a DC-based ER doctor and co-medical director of the National Capital Poison Center. The most risky thing, Quintero said, “is that young people making it at home don’t know chemistry, and are adding any substances or medications they find in their houses.” 

Imagine going to a rave for your friend’s birthday. (For the sake of this thought experiment, you’re in your mid-20s, you’ve all been drinking, and you’ve vowed to dance until the sun comes up.) While waiting in line for the bathroom, a kind stranger offers your friend a pink powder, saying it’ll be fun. She goes for it, assuming it’s an upper. Before too long, she’s throwing up and struggling to stand — and she winds up spending the rest of her birthday spaced out on a couch.

If someone uses a stimulant like cocaine or MDMA (which, despite being commonly labeled as a psychedelic, is an amphetamine derivative), it can cause side effects ranging from mild nausea to something as potentially deadly as heart failure. Still, people generally remain tethered to reality.

Palamar cautioned that being exposed to ketamine, a powerful drug that numbs pain and warps perception, after drinking is nothing like trying a little cocaine.

“It’s not a happy drug,” he said. “If you do enough of it, you feel like you’re on another planet.” While it doesn’t stop breathing, it does dramatically reduce one’s awareness of their surroundings, especially when mixed with alcohol — which increases the risk of doing something embarrassing, getting injured, or being sexually assaulted.

Of course, as we probably all learned in high school drug education, the best way to minimize these risks is to not do drugs. But if you’re going to use drugs, Palamar urges users to act with intention: Know what your drugs are made of, and dose with caution. All of the experts I spoke with strongly discourage people from trying unknown blends like pink cocaine, because intentional, risk-minimizing use is basically impossible.

The biggest thing to worry about with pink cocaine is accidentally taking too much ketamine. If you think you might be exposed to ketamine, don’t drink, and don’t place yourself in unfamiliar social situations without support. “You’ve got to be around people you trust,” Palamar said, “because you could become very vulnerable.”

One common misconception is that mixing uppers and downers, like MDMA and ketamine, will balance each other out. “The problem is, you can’t always time that,” Amirshahi said. If the downer lasts longer than the upper, “you may end up on the floor in a coma,” she said. Vice versa, and you risk experiencing an “emergence reaction” — a psychotic break upon leaving the “k-hole,” an intense out-of-body experience brought on by high doses of ketamine. “You don’t know how much or what you’re getting, so it’s really hard to titrate, or make that balance.”

Although according to experts, the risk of accidental fentanyl exposure appears relatively low in the US, it’s potentially deadly and worth taking seriously. You don’t have to be a professional chemist to run basic drug safety tests — harm reduction organizations like FentCheck and DanceSafe work with bars, nightclubs, and festivals to distribute relatively low-cost drug tests to potential users. Low-cost paper fentanyl test strips can detect fentanyl in drug samples. They work like at-home Covid-19 antigen tests, where you place a nasal swab on a strip of paper and wait for a line to appear if the virus is detected. For a fentanyl test, instead of a nasal swab, you’d add a few milligrams of your drug of choice. While these tests are relatively effective, they don’t work as well when MDMA is present, and can report false positives when testing an MDMA-containing drug blend like pink cocaine.

Liquid reagent kits, like those provided by DanceSafe, contain chemicals that change colors in the presence of a range of different drugs. However, Vidal cautions that these tests also don’t work very well on tusi. Because the reagent usually provided for ketamine also reacts to MDMA, if both drugs are present (as they usually are), it’s hard to interpret the results. And as a general rule, Amirshahi recommends always having naloxone, an opioid overdose-reversing nasal spray, on hand — and being prepared to administer it.

In Spain, Vidal said the drug is continuing to evolve — not just chemically, but aesthetically. Powders with other colors and flavorings — not just pink — made of the same general stuff are also being marketed as “tusi.”  

Pink cocaine appears to be riding on the back of ketamine’s meteoric rise in popularity, mostly because it’s cheap and easy to make. But it may also be the case that pink cocaine offers both social capital and a means of escape. With this powder, anyone can project an image of enviable glamour on social media, and take an affordable trip to another planet, if only for a couple hours — at least, that’s the image cartels are projecting. In reality, it’s a bottom-of-the-barrel powder that’s not that special. It’s just pink.