What is Pink Cocaine, emerging as a big link between Diddy and ...

Right after former Syracuse University basketball player Brendan Paul's name popped up as a ‘drug mule’ in the ongoing lawsuit against Diddy, the rapper's ex-girlfriend Yung Miami was also roped into the accusations. On Monday, Sean Combs' on-off girlfriend was linked to transporting the illicit drug, commonly known as Pink Cocaine.

The only constant ingredient of Pink Cocaine is its pigmented colour, which is commonly obtained from food colouring.

According to the updated Rodney ' Lil Rod ' Jones lawsuit, formally known as Caresha Rameka Brownlee, the City Girls member reportedly transported the pink-tinted substance (tusi or tucibi) for the hip-hop mogul in April 2023. It states Brownlee carried the drug from Miami to the Water Music Festival in Virginia for her ex, “but Brendan Paul (his alleged drug mule) forgot it.”

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Although Diddy has denied all accusations listed in the $30M lawsuit, the recently amended clause makes it apparent that Jones “personally witnessed Mr Combs do a few lines of coke in his dressing room.”

As the news takes over social media, the so-called Pink Cocaine has quite intrigued netizens, who can't stop wondering when the illicit drug turned pink from white. The truth is far from what the misnomer claims the trendy party club narcotic to be.

Colloquially also referred to as ‘Pink Snow,’ this drug is actually not a type of cocaine, despite its name. The synthetic substance is a drug concoction called tusi, whose roots trace back to Latin America and Europe until its eventual booming popularity in the US, according to the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Use.

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The name ‘Tusi’ phonetically translates ‘2C’, “a series of psychedelic phenethylamines". However, this concoction rarely constitutes 2C series drugs. Merely called ‘Pink Cocaine’ since it's generally seen in the pink powder form, the synthetic preparation essentially contains ketamine, usually combined with “3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA/ecstasy), methamphetamine, cocaine, opioids, and/or new psychoactive substances.” Multiple studies revealed this composition making up the majority of tusi samples.

Reminiscent of strawberries' fragrance, the pink powder is deemed a ‘luxury drug’. Concerned with problems related to drug consumption, Energy Control analysed 150 samples of Pink Cocaine between 2019-22. The astonishing results revealed almost all of these were filled with dye, with cocaine in only two of these samples. It also exposed the drug as a brew of multiple cheaper drugs, with 44% of the samples containing ketamine, ecstasy and caffeine.

Berta de la Vega, an Energy Control coordinator in Madrid, informed how the cocktail of drugs was put together: "You take a little bit of each, mix them, add the pink colour, 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.”

Despite its name, ‘tucibi,’ pink cocaine is not THE ‘2C-B’. In layman's terms, the unpredictable concoction is a mixture of cheaper drugs and pink powder. Ohio Recovery Centre also explained, “Tucibi is often neither cocaine nor the psychedelic drug known as ‘2C-B’ or Nexus.” The haphazardly concocted potpourri's only constant is its colour.

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American chemist Alexander Shulgin first produced 2C-B, not to be confused with tusi or tucibi, in the 1970s in the US. Other common names for the pink powder are toonies, bromo, nexus, spectrum or trippy pills, with most of these as mere misnomers due to the complicated and varying chemistry of the synthetically produced drug.

Since many consumers go into buying the drug not knowing the actual composition of the synthetic drug - believing it to be a form of cocaine - negative consequences amplify. As a result, controlling the desired effects is alarmingly tricky. Tusi or pink coke isn't always concocted with the constant proportion of substances.

If the mixture contains a higher concentration of ketamine, combining its consumption with alcohol could result in enhanced sedation and blackouts. On the contrary, if ecstasy is the prime inclusion, its combination with alcohol amplifies the risk of heat stroke due to dehydration. Other side effects include increased blood pressure, seizures, hypothermia, hallucinations, distorted perception and more.