Question - What is so-called “black cocaine”?
Answer- The cited article notes “The disguising of illicit materials to facilitate their trafficking is not something new; narcotics are no exception. Drug smugglers, for example, have been very active at finding new ways of modifying and/or masking various drugs to avoid their detection. Such an example is black cocaine, which is a mixture of cocaine base and/or cocaine hydrochloride with other substances carefully chosen to specifically hide the physical characteristics of the cocaine and interfere with its detection. Once the black cocaine reaches its destination, it must then be treated chemically in order to extract the cocaine from the mixture. Several seizures of black cocaine have been made around the world, which include: religious icons made of black cocaine, black cocaine as a dark solid hidden in items such as a hammock, black cocaine as a powder in toner cartridges, as an industrial dye, and as an ingredient in plastic materials. (Binette MJ and Pilon P. Detecting black cocaine using various presumptive drug tests. 2013 Microgram Journal 10(1):8-11. https://www.dea.gov/documents/2013/01/01/detecting-black-cocaine-using-various-presumptive-drug-tests-microgram-journal; accessed October 2019)