What are the Odds It’s Laced?
What are the Odds It’s Laced?
🧪A drug has been adulterated or “laced” when it contains other active drugs, often unknown to the user. While drugs can be cut with harmless substances such as sugar, lacing specifically refers to the addition of other psychoactive drugs🧐
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🚔 Illicit drugs are often laced by drug suppliers to increase their profits by cutting together an expensive drug with another cheaper & stronger drug. Decreasing a drug’s purity can increase the supplier’s volume while decreasing the cost of production. Good for their business, bad for the user’s health⚖️
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🤑Lacing a drug with another chemically stronger drug that’s more addictive also results in more repeat customers for drug dealers. This is because users may start to become addicted to the laced drug they didn’t realize they have been doing. Great for the supplier’s business, bad for the user’s health💵
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⚠️Potential lacing is one of the biggest dangers of any illegal drug. Even if a user understands the potential dangers of a specific drug they intend to try, anything becomes possible if a new, unknown substance is unknowingly introduced. Additionally, adding a stronger drug to any substance can significantly lower its lethal dose, increasing the potential for an overdose👊
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💀For example, fentanyl is commonly used as a lacing agent due to its high strength and low cost. Dealers use it to make cocaine, counterfeit prescription pills, and MDMA feel more euphoric for users, but Fentanyl is deadly in extremely small amounts. Deaths following cocaine use are rapidly increasing, largely due to an increasing frequency of fentanyl lacing in cocaine more than cocaine use itself increasing☠️
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🍸While legal substances such as alcohol and prescription pharmaceuticals are always pure, illegal drugs are much less likely to be. Street cocaine is, at most, only 30-60% pure when it enters the USA. Then it passes through an unknown number of hands that may each decide to cut it and increase their profits before it’s sold to the user🥴
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🔬The best way to the dangers of laced drugs is to test all unregulated drugs before using them. Inexpensive test strips can easily rule out dangerous contaminants✅
