The death of music star Liam Payne. Sex trafficking allegations against Sean "Diddy" Combs. A deadly car crash involving an Instagram model. Many Americans have only recently learned of the drug known as "pink cocaine" from a deluge of celebrity horror stories. Joseph Palamar, an associate professor of population health at NYU Langone, would say they are late to the party.  

"A lot of people just think it's this new powder that's going around," Palamar said. "It's a pretty pink powder, and everyone's starting to use it, when it really started increasing was around mid-2023."   

The death of music star Liam Payne has thrust "pink cocaine," sometimes also called Tusi, into the national spotlight. The National Drug Early Warning System predicted its rise back in 2023.   Getty Images

"The chatter increases before a lot of poisonings occur" 

When Palamar first heard of pink cocaine, his team immediately scoured posts on Reddit as part of his research for the National Drug Early Warning System. The organization specializes in narcotics surveillance and collects data on drugs that could rise in popularity and lethality.  

"We've looked at other drugs, and what we found ... is that a lot of times the chatter increases before a lot of poisonings occur," said Palamar.  

Palamar explained there's a whole community called "Psychonauts," in which people use novel drugs or induce "altered states of consciousness" and post about their experiences. For drug use, Palamar equated it to a diary to alert people to the effects of drugs.

National Drug Early Warning System research shows how each Reddit post about "pink cocaine" represents a data point it uses to better predict drug trends and warn the public.  National Drug Early Warning System

Standing in front of a chart that resembles a stock rally on Wall Street, Palamar explained how each Reddit post about pink cocaine represents a data point he uses to better predict drug trends and warn the public. 

"When we detect a trend, we alert everybody we could possibly think of," he said. "We alert departments of health, academics, people who use. We want to spread our information pretty widely in order to prevent use. It's concerning because it's already high, and it's increasing. We already have dozens of people talking about it per day." 

The warning system first issued an alert on pink cocaine in February 2023, when researchers noticed a spike in chatter from Redditors. That chatter nearly doubled to more than 30 posts per day by the summer. 

The National Drug Early Warning System sent out its first warning about "pink cocaine" in February 2023. National Drug Early Warning System

"It appears that the chatter on average is now higher," Palamar said. "It's more consistent. We don't have dips as low as previous years." 

CBS News reached out to Reddit for a comment on the research. A spokesperson said its policies ban the buying or selling drugs, and most conversations on its message boards are warning other Reddit users about pink cocaine. 

Similar trends emerged with carfentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times more potent than its lethal sister-drug fentanyl. Nearly 80,000 Americans have died from poisonings linked to carfentanyl in the past two years, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse.  

"Don't play with this stuff... It's a powerful substance." 

One pink cocaine user, who takes the drug at least once a month, agreed to speak with CBS News without revealing her identity. She said she tests each batch for fentanyl but admits she doesn't otherwise know the contents of the drug mixtures she's buying. 

"You don't know what is in it every time." she said. "You don't know what is inside ... there are the ingredients that make you dance. There are ingredients that can make you feel more chill. There are ingredients can make you feel more trippy." 

Those unknowns — about the substance and the high — pushed Frank Tarantino, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency in New York, to issue an urgent warning to CBS News New York. 

"When people are seeking pink cocaine and they think they're buying pink cocaine, they're actually buying a drug that's laced with fentanyl and they have no idea and they're overdosing and dying," Tarantino said.  

The anonymous user who spoke to CBS News said she has found fentanyl in her own supply.  

"I gave it back," she said. "It's dangerous." 

Pink cocaine is not cocaine 

Pink cocaine is often confused for real cocaine. Tusi, the other street name for the substance, is often confused for the synthetic psychedelic 2C-B. It's neither.  

Pink cocaine is a combination of other drugs. It is pink in color due to the addition of food coloring, and sometimes strawberry or other flavoring, according to the National Capital Poison Center.  

Officials said it is most commonly used by young people in the club scene. Pink cocaine is usually either ingested in pill form or snorted as a powder. Rarely, it is injected. 

An analysis by CBS News found 99.5% of pink powder seized by the Drug Enforcement Agency is a mixture of ketamine and other drugs, which can include fentanyl, according to DEA data from nearly 1,000 seizures. 

The substance is pink, sometimes smells like strawberries and in Spain goes by different names: tucibi, tusi, pink powder. Most commonly, it is called pink cocaine and considered a luxury drug for affluent people: a single gram costs 80, 90 and even 100 dollars. The same amount of ordinary cocaine costs around 60 dollars, according to a report that the Spanish Observatory on Drugs and Addictions (OEDA in Spanish) published this year. But pink cocaine is neither cocaine nor luxury. Between 2019 and 2022, Energy Control – an organization that works to ensure the safe consumption of narcotics – analyzed 150 samples of pink cocaine. It found dye in almost all of them and cocaine in only two. Most pink cocaine was a cocktail of several cheaper drugs; 44% of the samples contained ketamine, MDMA (ecstasy) and caffeine.

“It’s important to demystify pink coke. In the end, it’s a booming business. They are selling it as something very exclusive, but it is a regular triphasic,” said Berta de la Vega, the coordinator of Energy Control in Madrid, Spain. A triphasic refers to a mixture of ketamine with stimulants such as ecstasy (in this case) or speed, a type of amphetamine. It functions to counteract ketamine’s depressant effects, and it is easy and inexpensive to make. A gram of MDMA costs 40 euros ($42), sometimes a little less, ketamine is around 20 to 35 euros (between $21 and $37), and caffeine powder can be purchased online fairly cheaply. “You take a little bit of each, mix them, add the pink color, a little strawberry smell and, voilà, you sell it for 100 euros. It’s cheaper and safer to buy the substances and mix them yourself,” de la Vega added.

Last summer, Energy Control launched the Tusi: Know What You’re Taking (#TusiSabesLoQueTeMetes) campaign, an initiative to raise awareness about the substances one consumes and the risks of buying one drug while thinking it is something else. That is especially true for mixtures that combine drugs. Some of the samples the organization analyzed even contained crushed acetylsalicylic acid, or common aspirin. De la Vega warned that “if someone does not know what they are taking, it is harder to control the desired effects.” There are more negative consequences: the lows are exacerbated, and the highs are diminished.

In tusi’s case, the risk depends on the proportion of substances in the mixture as well as the other drugs with which it is taken. For example, if a person snorts pink cocaine that has a high ketamine content and also drinks alcohol, that will enhance the depressant effects of both substances, which can lead to loss of coordination, sedation and blackouts. If ecstasy is the main ingredient, taking it with alcohol causes dehydration and increases the risk of heat stroke.

Ignacio, a 25-year-old who lives in Madrid, said that whenever he has taken tusi, his friends have given it to him, so he hasn’t had to pay 90 euros per gram. Before trying it, he was not sure what it was; from what he had heard, it was “a potpourri” of drugs. He asked several acquaintances who regularly did pink cocaine and found out that it was different each time: “Who knows what it contains or what it is made of. The only constant is the color,” he pointed out.

The drug is also always expensive. Ignacio doesn’t usually see pink cocaine that often because it is pricey, he said, but he does not consider the drug to be exclusive to “affluent environments.” Ignacion has “seen it a lot in electronic music venues, especially festivals or big clubs, the same places where one sees other drugs.” He wouldn’t categorize it as a trendy drug, although a few years ago, it was practically never seen, and in the last few months, he has come across it several times at parties. For Ignacio’s friends, at least, it is easy to acquire. They buy it from “ordinary dealers” who sell different drugs, including tusi. Given how costly the substance is, Ignacio was surprised that his friends’ usual dealer gave them “a little bit” on two occasions. When they contacted the dealer to buy pills, he gave them a bag of the pink stuff for free.

Sources at Spain’s National Police say that, until now, it had been “seized mostly in small quantities.” Pink cocaine is routinely sold and consumed in individual bags alongside larger stashes of other drugs, such as cocaine, hashish or heroin. At this point, the sources add, trafficking of the drug is not alarming.

However, last Wednesday, the police announced that they’d broken up a group that was trafficking pink cocaine, as well as ordinary white cocaine, intended for distribution in Malaga, in southern Spain, and the capital Madrid. The drugs were transported by air and arrived in suitcases at Spain’s Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport from Latin America, where the network had collaborators to circumvent inspection of the luggage that contained the drugs. The authorities arrested seven people and seized 24 kilos (almost 53 lbs) of cocaine and 120,000 euros (almost $128,000) hidden in a suitcase at Barajas Airport.

When they searched the homes of the organization’s members, the police confiscated another 26 kilos (57 lbs) of cocaine, along with nearly eight kilos (17 lbs) of pink cocaine, 110,000 euros ($117,320) in cash, nine high-end vehicles and a firearm with 500 cartridges. On October 21, the police also seized pink cocaine and other drugs and arrested 21 people who were distributing it in vehicles configured to store packets of drugs.

Tusi can be purchased in different ways. One common method is popularly known as “telecoke,” a system in which it is delivered to your home: you send a message asking for the drug and quantity you want, it is taken to the address you indicate, you pay and that’s it. But there are also people who sell another substance under the name pink cocaine; it has the same color and is sold at similar prices, but it is completely different from the pink powder that results from mixing several drugs.

This other pink cocaine’s scientific name is 4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenylethylamine, a substance that belongs to the psychedelic phenethylamine family. Alexander Shulgin first produced it in the United States in 1974, and the drug’s effects resemble LSD and ecstasy but are weaker and less stimulating. It is also referred to as nexus or trippy pills. “It is very important to distinguish between the two. The media has used the terms tusi and 2-CB interchangeably. They are not [the same]. 2-CB is a different substance,” De la Vega explained. The OEDA report notes that it is the “third most consumed new psychoactive substance” after ketamine and spice, a synthetic cannabinoid.

María Elena Cogollo, of Spain’s Civil Police drug analysis group, explained that consumption of the drug hasn’t become problematic yet. She noted that “it’s a drug that’s mainly consumed in electronic music venues, nightclubs and parties and raves, primarily in Madrid, the Levant and the Balearic Islands.”