Cocaine Facts

• Chances are pretty good that cocaine can be found in your purse or wallet. Cocaine hydrochloride is very stable. It binds closely to the ink in in paper currency. FBI chemists have discovered that traces of cocaine can be found on almost every dollar bill in the United States. Hence most Americans handle cocaine every day of their lives.
  
• Cocaine is a $35 billion illicit industry now exceeding Columbia's #1 export, coffee.
  
• Up to 75% of people who try cocaine will become addicted to it. Only one out of four people who try to quit will be able to without help.
  
• Each day 5,000 more people will experiment with cocaine.
  
• 1 in 10 workers say they know someone who uses cocaine on the job.
  
• Texas is a distribution and transshipment area for cocaine that is transported (via passenger vehicles & tractor-trailers) to destinations throughout the United States. Illicit transporters favor the exploitation of the commercial trucking industry to move bulk (multi-hundred kilogram) quantities of cocaine. Smaller loads are routinely seized from privately owned vehicles or from couriers utilizing public transportation.
  
• There are basically two chemical forms of cocaine: the hydrochloride salt and "freebase."
  
• Cocaine is classified as a Schedule 2 Controlled Substance under the federal Controlled Substances Act and is illegal in most circumstances.
  
• The negative side effects of habitual cocaine use that was responsible for coining the phrase, "dope fiend".
  
• In 1994, cocaine-related episodes comprised 28% of all emergency room drug-related episodes.
  
• Street names: blow, 'caine, coke, cola, freeze, snow (powder), base, rock (crack), blizzard, sleet, white lady, nose candy, soda, snow cone, blanco, cubes.
  
• In Texas, 200-300 cocaine overdose deaths are reported each year.
  
• The number of Americans that use cocaine weekly has remained steady at around a half million since 1983 according to the 1993 Household Drug Survey; 582,000 (0.3% of the population) were frequent cocaine users in 1995 (frequent meaning use on 51 or more days during the past year.
  
• Cocaine raises body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure. Even one use causes heart palpitations or cardiac arrest.
  
• Cocaine is psychologically addictive and research indicates possible physical addiction.
  
• Young single people are the most frequent users of cocaine, with male users outnumbering female users two to one.
  
• Adults 18 to 25 years old have a higher rate of current cocaine use than those in any other age group.
  
• Cocaine is a drug extracted from the leaves of the coca plant (Erythroxlon coca) which grows in South America.
  
• Cocaine users will lose interest in their family, sex, jobs, just about everything, except using more cocaine.