Black cocaine
Black cocaine is a mixture of regular cocaine base or cocaine hydrochloride with various other substances. These other substances are added
Since the result is usually black, it is generally smuggled as toner, fingerprint powder, fertilizer, pigment or metal moldings. The pure cocaine base can be recovered from the mixture by extraction or acid-base extraction using common organic solvents such as methylene chloride or acetone. A second process is required to convert the cocaine base into powdered cocaine hydrochloride.
It was reported that in the mid-1980s Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet ordered his army to build a clandestine cocaine laboratory in Chile where chemists mixed cocaine with other chemicals to produce what Pinochet's former top aide for intelligence Manuel Contreras described as a "black cocaine" capable of being smuggled past drug agents in the US and Europe.
Black cocaine was detected in Bogota, Colombia in May 1998. In 2008, a new type of black cocaine was discovered by police in Spain. It had been manufactured into rubber-like sheets and made into luggage.
