Cocaine combined with capsaicin, an active ingredient in pepper spray, can be deadly, if research in mice is any indication.
In the early 1990s, anecdotes of people dying after being doused with pepper spray puzzled researchers, until autopsies revealed many were on cocaine at the time. To look for a link between the two substances, a research team injected cocaine, capsaicin or both at once into the abdomens of several groups of about 30 mice. Injections allowed them to control the dose of capsaicin the mice received, which wouldn’t have been possible if the mice were simply sprayed [New Scientist]. Equal doses of cocaine plus capsaicin killed about half the mice, compared to cocaine alone, which killed just a few. And a dose of cocaine high enough to kill half the mice on its own killed up to 90 percent when combined with capsaicin.
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Almost one-third of the cocaine seized in the United States is tainted with the livestock deworming medication levamisole, according to Drug Enforcement Administration documents the Associated Press received.
Levamisole, which can give users a more intense high, weakens the immune system, and has killed at least three people and sickened 100 in Canada and the United States. What’s more, physicians remain largely unaware of the tainted drugs, leaving them helpless to diagnose or treat those affected. “I would think it would be fair to say the vast majority of doctors in the United States have no idea this is going on,” said Eric Lavonas, assistant director of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver, where as much as half of the cocaine is believed to contain levamisole. “You can’t diagnose a disease you’ve never heard of” [Associated Press].
Because of the particular distribution mechanism of cocaine, it may be difficult to get the warning out to people at risk. “It’s not like you can put [a warning] on the bottle” [Associated Press], says Lavonas.
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Image: iStockphoto
When a honeybee is given a dose of cocaine, it gets overexcited about poor-quality food and performs overenthusiastic dances to communicate with its hivemates, according to an odd new study that got bees hooked on drugs. The research found similarities between honey bees and humans, in that they are both are driven by rewards and both have their judgment altered by cocaine. “This is the first time that it’s been shown that cocaine has been rewarding to an insect” [Reuters], says study coauthor Andrew Barron.
After a honeybee has been out foraging for food, it returns to the hive and tells the other bees what it found by means of a “waggle dance” that describes the location and quality of the food source. But after dabbing low doses of cocaine on the bees’ backs before they went out, the researchers observed that when they returned they were more likely to dance for their nest mates, and performed particularly vigorous routines explaining where the food was located [The Guardian]. They performed these exuberant dances even when the food source that the researchers provided was a weak sugar water solution that didn’t merit the hive’s attention.
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