NEWS

Fruit of the Poppy

(the truth about cocaine)

Two years ago I read a very interesting novel titled Fruit of the Poppy by Robert Wilder. It was basically about the drug trade between the United States of America and Mexico and how the Feds, The Drug Enforcement Agency and the Mexican authorities are combating it.

It was intriguing and made me go deeper into the drug trade to understand what happens in the underworld laboratories. Now, two years later, after reading it for the twelfth time and meeting shady characters with tattoos on faces in dark corridors I have unearthed the following facts about the quality of the stuff my friends snort up their noses in the name of fun.

In South Afrika you are the most fortunate dope fiend if what you snort has 40% of the pure cocaine. Here I’m talking about uncut-cocaine. Most of the stuff that local drug users shove up their nostrils has as high as 30% and as low as 8% cocaine, which means that you often get high out of your own imaginations and overdose out of phobia.

Now the trick with those who get it straight from the cocoa leaf is to prepare the drug for consumption. I guess you have wondered why someone would be arrested with a mere 500 grams of coke on a 16 hour flight from Buenos Aires. Or someone with 13 stuffed condoms from Lagos.

Okay, I am going to give you the 411 on what goes into that line you do when you are with your friends and how that messes up your respiratory system and cause that painless bleeding that comes with a torn membrane after some time of shoveling the demon up there.
The following products are used to mitigate the killing element of pure cocaine and maximise profits.

1. Grand-Pa – this is the old time favourite since it gives the impression that it has remedial qualities. It heals your headache, doesn't it? Remember that cocaine was previously prescribed as medication by mind-doctors like Sigmund Freud.

2. Washing Powder – now if it can wash your jeans it can clean your conscience. Who said backroom laboratory workers don’t have a sense of humour?

3. Powdered Milk – this is what made many people prefer to lick it instead of snorting. I guess some people opted to put it in their Rooibos instead of dirtying up their whistle nostrils.

4. Chalk – this must be the all-time favourite for teachers on drugs. A box of chalk wouldn’t last that long in a school full of fiend-teachers, no wonder some schools in one province are running big budgets on teacher support material.

5. Crushed Bottle – this is straightforward lethal. There are allegations that one local musician who some few years ago passed away might have snorted stuff cut using a crushed bottle. They usually go for the transparent ones, like the Coke and vodka ones. Glass is made from sand, and now imagine that stuff, which can not even be digested by your system stuck somewhere in your appendix.

6. Baby Powder – Here the joke is to take it back to kindergarten. And since the Johnson&Johnson powder is tasteless it merges very easily with the cocaine for improved digestion.

7. Talcum Powder – I know most of you don’t know this one which is actually a toilet powder. It is made of talc and is scented to improve the ingestion on your nose

8. Blue Death – an ant killer, white in colour (found in a blue cardboard container) and used in gardens

9. Cockroach Killer – when you draw a line across a wall with this chalk the following morning you will find a heap of dead roaches. And this is what it does to your conscience, it dies immediately it comes into contact with cocaine cut with it.

10. Ant Killer – this works more like blue death, but interesting enough it is white and jells well with the cocaine.

11. Rattex – it might be greyish, but when the demon has spoken, it’s hard to say ‘no’. Rattex kills rats in one bite.

12. Human Residue (Ash from the Urn) – someone went the extra mile by using her mother’s ashes to cut coke when she felt the urge. This was after she snorted those ashes alone and felt the ghost in them.

Now before you do a Ferrari on that line R60 single line or R450 sachet, ask yourself ‘what did they use to cut it this time?’ Like they say in Fruit of the Poppy, it’s not the addiction that should worry you a lot, but what you do during your withdrawal stage.