Once isolated and dried into an organic form, cocaine appears as a white, crystal-like powder – though it’s unlikely you’ll find pure, uncut cocaine on the street. On the street, cocaine comes in one of two forms: a hydrochloride salt form and a base form. In order to manufacture the salt form, the drug has to be neutralized with an acid solvent. The final product appears in powder form (the hydrochloride salt).
This form may be either snorted – as is – or dissolved in water for intravenous use. The base form of cocaine includes any manufacturing process that doesn’t use acid as a neutralizer. Drug dealers or “distributors” usually cut a batch of cocaine with other additives. This helps to thin out the batch, which means a dealer has more of the drug to sell. Depending on the type of additive used, the final product can appear off-white or pinkish. The texture of the drug also changes depending on the type of additive used. Cocaine Additives Additives used with cocaine come in the forms of adulterants and substitutes.
Adulterants are typically used to stretch the amount of cocaine while substitutes work to mimic some of the effects of actual cocaine (at a cheaper cost than cocaine itself). Additives used to cut cocaine may include a range of materials, some of which may include: Adulterants • Laundry detergent. • Boric acid.