Talk:Lacing (drugs)

Formaldehyde
I'm unsure if the CEASER citation for the use of formaldehyde to adulterate cannabis suffices for me. For one, besides this link, I can't find any other information. For two, the page doesn't cite it's sources on the formaldehyde part. I have sent an email to CEASER to ask them where they got their information on this. It would appear to be misinformation, perhaps a product of regan-era propaganda. Also, the cite doesn't even seem to state this formaldehyde is for increasing the weight of the cannabis, but rather that it's for additional effects. This, obviously, is wrong. Formaldehyde has no psychoactive effects, none. The confusion seems to lie in the fact that "embalming fluid" and "formaldehyde" are also common street names for phencyclidine (PCP). If formaldehyde ever has been used in such a way, it was more than likely the unfortunate mistake of someone who didn't realize the "formaldehyde" they'd heard of used was actually PCP. 67.158.68.251 (talk) 19:01, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

This needs a better page name. --Nessup 03:11, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Lacing is the common name for adulteration or dilution of a substance. This page is not very substantial and should be extended. It is OK to merge lacing with the page on drug adulteration but lacing should be a subset not the other way round

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Inert chemicals are cheap, non-psychoactive, and readily available chemicals that are often mixed with many street drugs such as cocaine and heroin. They are mixed in to bulk up the original product to make it appear as if there is more than there actually is, so they can generate more profit. The inert chemicals that are picked to be mixed in usually have some characteristics of the original product. Examples of this includes cutting procaine into cocaine

The above paragraph doesn't make a lot of sense, as procaine is not inert by any stretch of the imagination. However, I cannot think of a suitable example to replace it with. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.27.173 (talk) 17:28, 5 February 2008 (UTC) Procaine might not be inert, but it definitely is not psychoactive. The paragraph just needs some slight editing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Astral Zen (talk • contribs) 15:08, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Improvements
The article is quite POV, has lots of weasel words and does cite any references. We should add more references and remove the POV parts. Any suggestions? -- Panoramix303 (talk) 17:55, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Unsubstantiated Claims
I removed a number of citation needed statements that have gone unsubstantiated in this article for a long time. There is no evidence to suggest that marijuana is "rarely" adulterated, and in fact other parts of this article suggest that lead adulteration has lead to illness in a few confirmed cases. Also, I know this is not good enough to use to talk about methamphetamine lacing of marijuana in the main article, but I personally know two people who consumed cannabis laced with methamphetamines, and had a very unpleasant experience as a result of it.

Fireemblem555 (talk) 07:33, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I did my best to replace existing uncited statements with general statements that lead the reader to look further into the topic, but without necessarily making unsubstantiated claims.Fireemblem555 (talk) 08:03, 7 January 2010 (UTC)


 * This edit wasn't very helpful.. "It is important to note however that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." ???


 * I think this article was much more informative with most of the tagged statements left in. -- &oelig; &trade; 12:31, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I was "being bold", and although parts of what I changed are debatable, most of my edits removed dangerous incorrect information, and information that directly conflicts with itself within the article. It's not perfect, but overall the article is better. Fireemblem555 (talk) 06:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Candidate for Locking
This article has very large sections that are written unprofessionally, and contain unsubstantiated claims. I also expect to find an edit war happening soon. I would like to suggest that editing privileges for this article be locked unregistered guests.Fireemblem555 (talk) 07:36, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Fentanyl in Heroin
I do not think it is correct to use the term "most notable" when describing the sale of fentanyl as heroin. Fentanyl is rarely sold as heroin, and when it is it almost always makes the news due to the high number of deaths. I will rephrase it to be more appropriate for wikipedia.Fireemblem555 (talk) 07:42, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Formaldehyde in PCP
I could find no evidence to suggest that formaldehyde is frequently used to lace PCP, the most I found was an isolated incident in a single area.Fireemblem555 (talk) 07:45, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Psilocybin Mushrooms
This section was written entirely without citation, and makes conjectures about the purity of psilocybin mushrooms that differ greatly from what I could find on the internet. Unfortunately AADAC was the best source I could find. Although I have a deep distrust of AADAC, I'll have to take it over some random person on the internet.Fireemblem555 (talk) 07:50, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * From a biological standpoint, 'shrooms would be very different to adulterate. Sure, you could soak dried champignons or porcini in a psilocybin solution, but that's not really lacing. Porcini would also be easily recognizable to shroomers I would persume (they are easily recognizable to anyone with above-average knowlegde of fungi). Also, since the potency of the drug itself is not standardizable, I'd rather want to see very "hard" sources for adulterated 'shrooms. Perhaps PubMed has simething.


 * The bit about "blue" - you'd better rm this too. It applies to fresh material only, and AFAIK not to all species.


 * In cases such as this, I usually outcomment (with ) rather than deleting the offending sections, as much is salvageable. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:11, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Test Kits
I did some editing to make the test kits section neutral, and I also removed a statement referring to MDMA as a closely related chemical to ecstasy, as MDMA is the active ingredient in Ecstasy.Fireemblem555 (talk) 07:55, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Created a whole new introduction
I created a small reasons for lacing section to replace the unverifiable section that was found above. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fireemblem555 (talk • contribs) 08:00, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Cannabis adulterants
I had to research the topic recently, and found that there were extensive discussions on German forums. Not an ideal source, but as it seems there is much "expert" knowledge at hand, at least within the scope of the article (which might at the most basic simply list adulterants and provide a small explanation if necessary). Following the discussions (e.g. http://forum.hanfburg.de/fhb/showthread.php?t=251098]) since 2007, it seems that in Central Europe at least (i.e. the Dutch-supplied market) Cannabis adulterants are by no means rare and may occasionally achieve market saturation thesde days.

Most commonly mentioned are:
 * talc
 * fine sand/grit
 * ground glass
 * lead sulfide(?)/lead acetate (presumablyLead(II) acetate; has hospitalised some already; you may try news.google.de searching Blei + Haschisch/Marihuana/Cannabis, I think I once saw a report on German Yahoo News.)
 * birdshot (Cannabis-seed sized, also seems to have poisoned some people)
 * sucrose solution
 * hair spray
 * Brix+ (basically a hi-tech variant of the preceding two. Marketed as an "organic" yield enhancer, but clearly designed to give a heavy sugar-coat or increased sugar content - hence the name - and coat this with some plastic polymer to hide it and give more realistic "resin" crystals)

Don't know if this is usable, but for discussing illegitimate practices performed with an illict substance, I'm not sure a quality peer-reviewed source is available. there might be books on drug adulterations, but as it seems adulteration of Cannabis is increasing in extend and sophistication.

See also this impressive document. Mentions the London market having "suffered tremendously with sweetbud and gritweed" - sucrose and grit adulterations as it seems. The stuff documented seems to be Brix+ed, judging from that stuff's ingredient list and my chemistry classes, and from the fact that it is not "sweetbud". See also here: Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:54, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

This is probably the best we can get. Almost NPOV, almost scholarly. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:10, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Meth-Cannabis Assertion is Highly Questionable
The assertion that methamphetamine laced cannabis is found in British Columbia is quite possibly propaganda built out of self-reporting addicts/psych patients claiming they've only had pot but testing positive for meth (obviously, they are likely just lying). As far as I've been able to see, there's no material evidence whatsoever in BC or elsewhere of laced methamphetamine cannabis other than the hyperbolic article cited which is essentially a police press release.

The reason given for this lacing is to create addiction, but freebasing meth would not go unnoticed by a cannabis smoker whether by taste, effect, or duration. This would lead to significant backlash against a 'pot dealer' and not people coming back for something that many people already are happy to buy regularly. The premise is just absurd! I think the claim should be removed unless there's better evidence. 76.115.123.180 (talk) 23:09, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Laced marijuana
Does laced marijuana harm brain? In india its laced with battery water Amitanshu123 (talk) 09:38, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Lacing versus cutting
The article should be clearer about lacing (adding active ingredients to produce a different effect) versus cutting (adding inactive ingredients to "stretch" the drug) -- the examples include examples of both. pne (talk) 14:55, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Merge proposal
Support the August proposal to merge Cutting agent to here. Synonyms, best discussed in one placed, particularly given the poor referencing of cutting agent. Klbrain (talk) 17:29, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Support the merge proposal, particularly if we are careful to pay heed, as mentioned in a prior comment section, to separate the meanings of cutting for economic purposes and lacing for psychoactive purposes. Joyous! | Talk 20:44, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ Klbrain (talk) 12:18, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

"Street drugs" table out of place
Is the #Street drugs table a mistake? It looks as if it were partially copied from List of polysubstance combinations: only some of these instances of adulteration, many of which have no source. Most of these look like just polysubstance combinations, e.g., "ketamine&mdash;LSD&mdash;THC": I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I doubt ketamine is ever sold adulterated with LSD and/or THC.

I don't want to simply remove every row without a source because some seem "plausible" (e.g., "PCP&mdash;gasoline"), but barring any input I am going to selectively remove rows. Kimen8 (talk) 03:27, 23 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I think this article's scope should be narrowed/maintained at "adulteration" of drugs (in the sense of the end-user not being aware of the adulteration (as we use as the definition in the first sentence of adulterant)). We already have pages for poly drug use and a large table on list of polysubstance combinations. In general parlance, lacing refers to adulteration proper, and not to drugs "combined" ahead of time by the seller before it reaches the end user; that is, the end user is not informed the drugs are laced.
 * Given this, I am going to remove the table I referred to previous. I am also going to look at adjusting the wording of the section. Kimen8 (talk) 15:49, 24 March 2024 (UTC)