Freebase Cocaine: High Bioavailability with Increase in Potency

Abstract

During the late 1960s, American cocaine smugglers travelling in South America noticed some of the local populace of Peru and Colombia smoking a substance identified to them as cocaine. When word of this reached the US, several users experimented with smoking cocaine hydrochloride sprinkled on cigarettes, and quickly discovered that street coke literally goes up in flames. What was wrong? The smugglers had disregarded an important point: the Peruvians were smoking Coca Paste (“Pasta”), which contains alkaloidal cocaine (cocaine base). While cocaine base melts already at about 98ºC, cocaine hydrochloride (street cocaine) melts at 195ºC with decomposition. The task then was to find a way to perform a little “reverse chemistry”, that is to turn cocaine hydrochloride back into cocaine base. The process to accomplish this was already in use by some skilled users who wanted to “purify” their cocaine by turning it into the base in order to remove diluents and cuts. Then they promptly turned that base back into cocaine hydrochloride. It was when someone put two-and-two together that cocaine “freebase” was born.

Freebasing in the first place is the creation of smokeable cocaine, and the only difference between the base and its salt is that the hydrochloric acid is removed in the base form. To put it in other words, the cocaine base is “freed” from the hydrochloric acid, hence the term “free base”. Its really just alkaloidal cocaine, or cocaine base, the step in the illicit refining process just before the production of “crystal”. The base form is soluble in ether but not in water. The salt form is soluble in water but not in ether. The base form is smokable but not snortable or injectable. The salt form is snortable or injectable but not smokable. The difference between the base and the salt is also seen in the onset and the intensity of effects. Thus, taking cocaine orally produces effects within 15 min, and intranasally (“snorting”) within 3–5 min. An intravenous administration, however, will kick-in within 30–45 s, while smoking (cocaine base) takes only 7–10 s (Fig. 25).