Famous for exporting a majority of the world’s cocaine, Colombia has also grappled with a drug crisis within its own borders, as basuco, a cheap and highly addictive byproduct of cocaine production, floods its poorest neighborhoods. When smoked, basuco delivers an intense but short-lived and anxiety-inducing high, leaving users scrambling for their next hit.
Key Takeaways:
- Basuco is mostly residuals from coca paste that’s meant to be processed as cocaine. Coca paste scraped from the bottom of the barrel is cut and extended with substances that typically create a stronger high than crack or cocaine.
- When consumed, basuco creates a quick burst of euphoria, only to be quickly replaced by dysphoria. Many users also experience paranoia with hallucinations and quickly develop an addiction to the substance (15 days within repeated consumption).
- Around 1.2% of the population of Colombia has used basuco at least once. Ninety percent of users are the two lowest socioeconomic groups in the country.
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What is basuco?
Basuco is the Colombian street name for coca paste or cocaine base paste, an intermediary substance produced during cocaine production, usually scraped from the bottom of the barrel after the pure drug has been extracted.[1]
How is basuco made?
Cocaine base paste is made by dissolving coca leaves in water and then treating them with substances including diesel, gasoline, chloroform, ether, sulphuric acid, kerosene, or even liquid from car batteries.
Cocaine base paste contains between 40 to 91% cocaine, unrefined and unpurified, as well as various toxic substances used in its production, including benzoic acid, methanol, and kerosene.[4][5] Herbicides applied to coca leaves have also been detected in samples.[2]
It’s a yellow-white, pasty powder, which is often cut and extended with:
- talcum powder
- ground-up bricks
- cornstarch
- Ajax bleach powder
- quinine
- lactose
- clay
- brown sugar
- stimulants such as amphetamines or caffeine
- substances like lidocaine or benzocaine that replicate the local anesthetic effects of cocaine[3]
Basuco is smoked rolled in cigarette papers, often with tobacco or cannabis. It may be smoked out of improvised pipes, often made from plastic such as PVC or metal, or inhalers devised from soda caps, car antennas, and lightbulbs.[2]
Street price of basuco
Hits of basuco—each known as a chasqui, lágrima, or medio and ranging from 0.1 to 0.5 grams—can be bought for as little as 20 cents to $1, giving it a reputation as the “world’s cheapest drug.”[1][6]
For comparison, the cost of a gram of cocaine in Colombia is around $4, considerably lower than when it reaches the US.
Names for basuco
Basuco, the name for the drug in Colombia, is derived from the Spanish word for trash (basura) and, by some accounts, means “dirty trash of cocaine.”[1]
Names for cocaine base paste vary by country and include:[2]
- pitillo (Bolivia)
- baserolo (Ecuador)
- paste de coca (Peru)
- pasta base or base (Chile, Uruguay)
- paco (Argentina)
Other slang names include:[3][5]
- little devil
- freckles
- crazy anxiety
- sasuki
- cocaína de los pobres (poor man’s cocaine)
- palo rosa (when mixed with heroin or opium)
- Marciano (Martian, when mixed with cannabis)
- mono (monkey, when mixed with tobacco)
English-speaking users may call it bazooka.[7]
Related: What types of cocaine are there?
What are the effects of basuco?
When smoked, the psychoactive substances in basuco pass through the blood-brain barrier very quickly, hitting the central nervous system within five seconds. There, it’s believed to act similarly to cocaine, by preventing the re-uptake of the neurotransmitter dopamine. It produces a burst of euphoria and a high reportedly stronger than that of both cocaine and crack cocaine.
This flood of dopamine also produces:
- a lowering of inhibitions
- hyperexcitability
- accelerated thinking
- alertness
- confidence, sociability
- sensory (especially auditory and olfactory) hypersensitivity[2]
- a sharp rise in heart rate and blood pressure
However, the euphoria is fleeting, lasting just two minutes before being replaced by dysphoria, with symptoms including distress, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, apathy, sexual indifference, and a desire to keep using. To stave off this dysphoria, users take repeated hits, often forgoing sleep and eating.[1][2]
Related: How long does cocaine stay in your system?
Experience of paranoia with basuco consumption
Nearly all users of basuco also experience paranoia, including the feeling that they’re being spied on or followed. These delusions may be accompanied by visual, auditory, or tactile hallucinations. This paranoia usually subsides within 60 to 90 minutes but in chronic users can last up to two or three days.[2] Users often mitigate the paranoia by drinking beverages of industrial alcohol, fruit choice, and other psychoactive substances such as MDMA.[1]
Basuco addiction and long-term effects
Physical dependence and addiction to basuco develop quickly—reportedly within just 15 days of repeated consumption.[1] Withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, sweating, trembling, psychomotor agitation, abdominal pain, and fecal urgency, which abate when another hit of the drug is taken.[2]
Continuous use of basuco can produce persistent psychosis and other complications including brain and nerve damage, aggression, cardiovascular problems, tooth and gum decay, burns, and respiratory disorders.[2][3]
Basuco appears to be more addictive than cocaine. A population-level survey of Colombians conducted in 2013 found that 78% of those who had used basuco in the previous year were considered “problem users,” compared to just 60% of those who used cocaine.[8]
Where is basuco used?
The abuse of cocaine base paste follows the spread of mass cocaine production. Today, cocaine base paste abuse is concentrated in Colombia, mirroring the country’s position as the world’s largest cocaine exporter. Julian Quintero, director of Colombian non-governmental organization Technical Social Action (ATS), told The Lancet that basuco is “the diabolical son of narcotrafficking.”[1]
It began in Bolivia and Peru in the 1970s, first in the capital cities and then spreading to other towns and rural areas. Within a few years, cocaine base paste abuse had spread to Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and cities in Mexico along the U.S. border.[9]
Basuco users in Colombia
It’s unknown how many people abuse Basuco in Colombia. A 2013 survey of 30,000 Colombians found that 1.2% had used basuco at least once in their lives, with 0.21% having taken it in the previous year. By that estimate, 49,000 people in Colombia regularly take basuco, 45,000 of them are men. Ninety percent (90%) of basuco users are in Colombia’s two lowest socioeconomic brackets.[10]
Is basuco in the US?
Cocaine base paste has never been widely abused in the U.S. In the late 1980s, amid fears about the crack epidemic, law enforcement reported seizing what they believed was basuco in New Jersey and connected it to local Colombian communities. However, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) dismissed these claims, and in the 35 years since there have been no credible reports of the drug circulating widely in the U.S.[7]
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