Levamisole is a cutting agent in cocaine that has been showing up more and more in the past five years. This year the FBI is saying that they're seeing levamisole in as much as 70% of the cocaine they seize and test. Too much levamisole can cause a condition called agranulocytosis. Agranulocytosis is when a type of white blood cell called neutrophils are decimated, leading to secondary bacterial and fungal infections. Think of it as a chemical-induced AIDS. Symptoms can be sores and other infections that don't heal, skin discoloration, lung ailments, diarrhea, and worse, Untreated it can kill. Hospitalizations can be long and costly.
And we have a testing kit on the way.
A little over a year or so ago, I started to read a lot of stuff about cocaine cut with a livestock deworming medicine called levamisole. I live in Seattle, and there was a poster from the King County Department of Public Health on a corner utility pole talking about it. DanceSafe board member Dominic Holden wrote a piece for The Stranger's blog, SLOG, back in June of '09 where you can see a copy of the poster.
I started wondering if there was a way to test for the presence of levamisole in street cocaine, and in early September 2009 sent some emails out to some folks in the harm reduction community in an attempt to find someone with the requisite chemical knowledge. Earth Erowid forwarded me an email from a mutual acquaintance, Dr. Mike Clark at Harborview in Seattle. We also found that we had the same idea at the same time, of getting a levamisole sample at the EcstasyData.org lab. We were now working on a field test kit AND had our first levamisole/cocaine sample tested at the lab by the 15th of September.
Dr. Mike had realized that levamisole was already used in labs as an alkaline phosphatase inhibitor, and emailed a drug policy list just a few days previously about it. We started talking. Using that info, he started looking into enzyme research from the 70s. With DanceSafe funding the acquisition of the chemicals and other supplies, what he came up with is a relatively simple test. In one chamber we have a control, and in another we test our cocaine. The control will turn yellow since no levamisole is present to stop the action of the alkaline phosphatase. the reagent in the other chamber will stay clear if levamisole is in the cocaine, and will turn yellow if there's none present. He worked the amounts such that the kit will detect as little as .05% levamisole. I picked up a proof-of-concept prototype a week after New Years Day, 2010.
In February, The Stranger's science columnist, Jonothan Golob, put up a snarky post about the continuing levamisole/cocaine story on SLOG, and I commented on it with some facts and speculation.
Stranger writer Brendan Kiley saw my comment and contacted me via email shortly thereafter, and we started discussing the issue. I got him in contact with Dr. Mike and showed him some info on state law surrounding testing kits, some speculation I'd seen on various drug user forums, and other stories I'd seen around the internet on the subject. The idea of testing Seattle's cocaine supply started to gel, and we had multiple meetings with various folks from the harm reduction and drug policy arenas in Seattle to formulate a plan.
I'll be giving a talk about the process, or more likely appearing on a panel regarding our kit, at the 8th National Harm Reduction Conference in Austin, TX in November. Hopefully we'll have our results back by then. The hope is that city and county public health agencies will be interested in large-scale versions of the kits to cheaply and easily track the levamisole content in street cocaine seized by local law enforcement or brought in by users. This could radically change the story about the levamisole, and I'm pretty thrilled to have been a part of it.
