I have never been to an upstairs party, but I know some of the guests.
You must move swift, so no one sees you walk up the stairs or move towards the bathroom in a small group.
Your mission: find the right room. Try every door handle. All the bedrooms are locked. Now what? The bathroom line is long. You’ll wait.
Two or maybe three of you – male or female – finally get inside the bathroom. Shut the door. Lock it. No one sees you now. No one knows.
California cornflakes. Rich man’s crack. Yeyo. Call it what you will – cocaine is a dangerous drug that some students at this school meddle with – not knowing that the ultimate price could be death.
Out of 100 FU students age 18 to 21 interviewed, 60 percent said they have used cocaine at least once in their lifetime. Of that 60 percent, 17 percent said they had used cocaine in the past month, 83 percent declined to answer due to privacy issues. The preferred method of use was snorting.
Cocaine use by college students has varied over the past 10 years from a low of 2.0 percent in 1994 to a high of 5.4 percent in 2003 (University of Michigan, Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975 to 2003, Volume II: College Students and Adults Ages 19 to 45, 2004).
Nationwide, 6.6 percent of all cocaine users were age 18 to 25 and 2.2 percent of those admitted to using within the past month (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2004).
Cocaine is the second most illicitly used drug in the U.S. and is Connecticut’s biggest drug threat, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Dec. 2004. The state of Connecticut is a major transit and destination area for the drug since it surfaces the shoreline, runs through several major highways and is the middle point for states such as New York and Massachusetts.
In 2002, 6.39 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds in Connecticut admitted to using cocaine within the last year and ranked as the highest age group to use within the past year (ONDCP, 2003).
In addition, cocaine is an extremely expensive drug. Powdered cocaine sold for $20,000-$30,000/kg, $600 to $1,100/oz and $50-$90/g in Connecticut in 2003, according to the ONDCP. If your average book bag weighed 80 lbs in powdered cocaine, that would be equivalent to a $1,090,909.20 value.
Do not let that amaze you. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency seized 23.8 kg of cocaine in 2003. That is equivalent to 52.36 lbs.
The DEA’s drug seizures of cocaine has progressively increased since 1998 with 34,448 seizures to 61,594 in 2002.
In 2002, 21.2 percent of all Connecticut drug convicts were arrested for powdered cocaine possession.
Pure cocaine is hardly ever sold on the streets. Street cocaine is usually diluted with fillers such as cornstarch, sugars and baby laxatives. It is also mixed with similar acting ingredients like procaine or benzocaine or with stimulants such as amphetamines.
The actual cocaine content of these street compounds usually ranges from 5 to 35 percent. Sometimes the compounds do not have cocaine in them at all.
Cocaine is a central nervous system stimulant, the most powerful found in nature. Most often seen in the form of cocaine hydrochloride, a white, crystalline powder, it is extracted from the leaves of the coca plant, Erythroxylon coca, found in the Andes Mountains in South America.
Cocaine poses a great risk to your health. It is a potent local anesthetic that interferes with the action of chemical neurotransmitters that convey impulses to nerve centers in the brain.
It constricts blood vessels and deadens feeling in the area of application, resulting in a numbed nose feeling when sniffed. It also suppresses the appetite.
At the same time, it is a fast acting central nervous system stimulant. Sniffing cocaine gives a short-lived high that is accompanied by feelings of increased energy, mental alertness and altered sensory awareness.
It reduces the perceived need for food and sleep and postpones the symptoms of fatigue momentarily.
The most common way of using cocaine is by sniffing it into the nose. The drug takes three minutes to take effect after snorting.
A riskier technique is to dissolve cocaine in water and to inject it by needle. This takes effect in approximately 20 seconds. This technique also puts the user at a higher risk for infectious diseases such as hepatitis and HIV/AIDS.
Smoking cocaine is the fastest way to obtain a high. This method created an intense high that takes effect in less than 10 seconds. Addiction will result in just a few weeks.
Overall, the effects from the high last about 30 minutes or less and feelings of depression may result. After trying cocaine for the first time, the user will never obtain that same intensity of the first euphoric feeling again.
Physical symptoms include a faster heartbeat and breathing, increased body temperature and blood pressure, dilated pupils, sweating and pallor. Large doses may lead to bizarre, erratic or violent behavior.
Restlessness, irritability, anxiety, loss of appetite and sleep, hallucinations of touch, sight, taste or smell are also common side effects.
Cocaine can produce respiratory arrest, seizures, cardiac arrest and high fever in cocaine users, which may be fatal. Chronic users can experience a cocaine psychosis, which is a condition where euphoria is replaced by restlessness, extreme excitability, sleeplessness and paranoia.
Cocaine leads to strong psychological dependence and addiction. Since regular users become severely depressed when they stop using cocaine, they need the drug to regain some form of pleasurable effects and to reduce the depression.
Prolonged cocaine snorting can result in ulceration of the mucous membrane of the nose and can damage the nasal septum enough to cause a collapse. Cocaine related deaths are often a result of cardiac arrest or seizures followed by respiratory arrest.
Regular users frequently complain of hyperactivity and need sedative drugs, including alcohol and opiates (like heroin or oxycontin) to relax them. This pattern of drug abuse can be fatal.
When cocaine is mixed with alcohol, the dangers are compounded greatly and cause a major chemical interaction. The liver combines cocaine and alcohol to make a new substance, cocaethylene, which intensifies cocaine’s effects and increases the risk of sudden death (National Institute on Drug Abuse 2003).
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