How to make cocaine

Interesting video of jungle based cocaine factory. (via Neatorama)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Joel Johnson

This is the sort of urban homesteading I can get behind. Buy local! Use local!
Takuan

gee, imagine if the US government took one percent of the Waronsomedrugs Industry payroll and purchased the entire coca crop direct?
THElonewolf

man, poor guy would be pissed if he knew people were paying $50 for a gram in new york. i’ve heard a gram is about $2 in Peru, so he probably makes less than a dollar per…
- Anonymous
  
  in england it is about 50 pounds a gram which is about 70 to 80 us dollars pretty expensive
Takuan

http://www.slate.com/id/2201622/
zuzu

I don’t understand why they are processing this substance with gasoline. Not that health is the main consideration if you are taking cocaine, but wouldn’t gasoline add extra toxicity to the plant itself? It is scary to think what is added to the drugs/pharmaceuticals that people take.

Gasoline acts as an organic solvent. It’s cheap and easily available (compared to, say, acetone), and as has been said, will dissolve the cocaine from the cellulose / plant matter. c.f. separation science, leaching

The gasoline is subsequently separated from the cocaine prior to its distribution for consumption. (Although there’s perhaps legitimate concern for the lack of good manufacturing practices.)

But yeah, one can only wonder what would happen if the US spent a few million dollars building infrastructure in Colombia instead of trying to jail every single drug user in the US.

Or, legalizing cocaine and eliminating the profiteering from cartels competing with governments in the armed gang protection racket. c.f. Zero Crime Bill

Strangely enough the objection he says on the spot is the fact that he has to siphon gasoline all the time, which makes him feel sick.

This was exactly my concern when I watched him do it.

Its interesting that this is such a complex process, how a person was able to determine the procedure as to create a highly potent drug from just a mild version you would get from the coca leaf.

The chemistry involved is not actually very complex. (No more than why soap works.) The fact that it seems that way epitomizes the failure of whatever education system you were raised in.

But the ingenuity of people always seems to come forward when there is a problem at hand.

Necessity is the mother of invention.
zuzu

The fact that it seems [complex] epitomizes the failure of whatever education system you were raised in.

Or “success”, depending on your assumption of the actual goal of schooling. :p
Drew from Zhrodague

Yah, can we have a recipe for meth? Perfect for the oncoming recession’s recession, as #1 mentioned.

Maybe this time I won’t be so broke!
Takuan

no need to be brusque.

drugs now are about money,nothing else. This because the people you let run your life only care about money – and the power over you money will buy – along with your addiction.

there was never any need for all the`sickness and death. Even the cocaine could have been safe and pure and controlled with education and reasonable profit. Ethanol has long been with us and still kills millions – and fails to kill tens or even hundreds of millions. We evolve.
zuzu

no need to be brusque.

Sorry if it came off that way. To be clear, I’m assuming TheMindFantastic is in no way stupid; I was never making a personal attack. I was underscoring how more often than not, educational systems blunt people’s intellectual capacity — out of some combination of ignorance and malice on behalf of the educators and social policy makers.

I don’t always agree with John Dewey, but I believe he was correct with regard to experiential education — that you can learn much chemistry just from cooking a meal, for example.
frankieboy

So it looks like the guy did a small batch to show them how it’s done. I’ll bet that whole concrete box is full of the mash for a production run. Can you imagine what a mess it must be, breathing in all the fumes and dust? I wonder how many guys they have in there grinding it down by foot? Did they mention how old the farmer is?
The whole policy on drugs is wrong on so many levels, it could make you crazy with anger and grief if you think about it too much. The greed, hypocrisy, the futility, corruption, waste of human life, from the farmer scraping around in the jungle to the users screwing up their lives; to the governments undermined, to the scumbags on both sides of the law who profit. On it goes. A tragedy. “The war on drugs”, what a bitter joke.
FoetusNail

I don’t understand the need to siphon the gasoline. Once the the water sulphuric acid solution removes the coca from the gasoline let the mixture stand. The water and gasoline will separate; the gasoline will float on the water/acid solution. The water could then be drained from the bottom of the container, until all that remains is the gasoline. Using a container with a cone shaped bottom and a transparent hose, would make it very easy to drain the water from underneath the gas.
zuzu

Bolivia profiled on Vice Magazine’s VBS.tv

Yah, can we have a recipe for meth? Perfect for the oncoming recession’s recession, as #1 mentioned.

Rhodium, Erowid, Lycaeum

I imagine there’s a huge underground market for 4-methyl-5-phenyl-2-amino-oxazoline, if you’re a competent chemist and willing to risk Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

Support cognitive liberty and morphological freedom!

Also, keep the learning of chemistry interesting!
Anonymous

“Even the cocaine could have been safe and pure and controlled with education and reasonable profit.”

See how helpful education is when you’re jonesing at 3 am.
The Lizardman

Like most things the real money is in the ditribution though
stiles679

excellent…next time I’m in inpatient rehab in timbuk 2 I will remember this process ;)
Anonymous

I watched this and noticed that the final steps are excluded. This kind of sucks, I used to have a video from limewire that went through the full process as well as relative measurements and whatnot. But it kind of sucks that the last steps are left out, especially when you can find them other places online (although not with such good graphical production). If this was an attempt to stop someone from making cocaine…c’mon. If you’ve already gone through the trouble of smuggling in seeds and growing plants, then you could find it easily elsewhere. If you were looking at this video, like I, to see the green leaves turn into white powder, you’ll be disappointed. Thanks anyways though.
wolfiesma

I don’t understand why they are processing this substance with gasoline. Not that health is the main consideration if you are taking cocaine, but wouldn’t gasoline add extra toxicity to the plant itself? It is scary to think what is added to the drugs/pharmaceuticals that people take. At least my twice daily energy drinks are pure and natural.
btb

How dirty does the rag have to be in the filtering process, and what is the appropriate category of filth to apply to the rag beforehand?
Cunning

Never mind the bottom draining container, can you imagine what this guy could do with a small chipper and an industrial mixer? Seems amazing that authorities would deploy an entire army to protect the cocaine but spend nothing to ramp up production. But perhaps I can’t see beyond my first world perspective…
lf

re #10:

he explains in the video (in spanish): “..La gasolina lave la hoja. Sale la gasolina con la coca y la hoja queda sin coca. Despues del agua y acido sulfurico, lavan la gasolina. La gasolina queda sin coca y la coca se va con el agua y acido.”

ie: “The gasoline “cleans” the leaf. Out comes the gasoline with the coke, and the leaf is left without cocaine. Then, the water and sulfuric acid clean the gasoline (from the mixture). The gas is left without coke and the coke goes with the water and acid.”

One is left to assume that the acid evaporates off with the water, but i’m not a chemist.
Pakkal

One of the American girls asks: “do you like your job?”. He says no. Strangely enough the objection he says on the spot is the fact that he has to siphon gasoline all the time, which makes him feel sick.

But yeah, one can only wonder what would happen if the US spent a few million dollars building infrastructure in Colombia instead of trying to jail every single drug user in the US.
Anonymous

It is better to eat a dinner of herbs where peace is.Than to kill a stalled ox where there is hatred. Proverbs 15-17 Bible. Peter Carlos Hinds.
Anonymous

Hold on – It’s kind of hard to see the screen with all the fumes – how much gasoline was I supposed to put? (hey, actually I’m getting kinda high already – I wonder if I’m done)
themindfantastic

Its interesting that this is such a complex process, how a person was able to determine the procedure as to create a highly potent drug from just a mild version you would get from the coca leaf. But the ingenuity of people always seems to come forward when there is a problem at hand.
Takuan

they don’t give tours of the industrial facilities.
Seancho

That guy aint no humble coca farmer. Those dudes are tour guides on the infamous Cuidad Perdida archeological trek in the mountains above Santa Marta, Colombia doing a little show for the tourists. Shell out an extra $10 a head and they put on the coca lab show for you. (and get you high, if you want)

Poor coca farmers barely scrape out an existence in a country where many get by on a couple bucks a day. These guys are making far better cash guiding tourists on $250 treks, with tips and their unofficial drug tour side business.

Of course the cops, army, paras and everybody else gets their cut. Its all very well known. I doubt that lab ever produces any real cocaine. Not that other ones a farther back in the sierra dont.

Its a dicey area to go trekking in.. there are real guerilla back in those mountains. Few years back a group of tourists like the one in the video got an involuntary 3 month extention to their tour when they were marched off into the mountains by the real cocaleros.

The guides are fun guys to drink with…plenty of wild stories. Here they are kicking back in town between tours, note the exact same ‘farmer’ guy in the vid:

http://www.pbase.com/p0gue/image/40618468
Takuan

once upon a time you just chewed a bit of leaf with lime paste – and no one died.
curtismayfield

the intro music for lonely planet is bangin! It almost blew my speakers!
grimatongueworm

I spent time in Peru in 2007. There is a very active movement among indigenous peoples to educate the outside world about coca. It is used in everything from coca flour, medicines, soaps, clothing, not just for cocaine production.

I’m sure the U.S. government is paying big dollars to have Peru continue to try eradicate coca.

That would be like telling farmers in the south they can no longer grow tobacco, or farmers in Kansas they can no longer grow corn or wheat.
dbarak

Now I know how to survive the coming recession. Thanks for the tip Boing Boing! ; )
Takuan

have to keep prices up.