It is bright pink and smells sweet. But the party drug tusi can be fatal

After the death of One Direction star Liam Payne, the drug is receiving attention.

David Ovalle
| Washingtonpost

Miami — It’s bright pink, like cotton candy. It even smells sweet. But there is danger in the mind-altering powder also known as pink cocaine or tusi.

The party drug drawing attention for its alleged connection to music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs – and the recent death of former One Direction star Liam Payne – typically does not contain cocaine. Instead, market-savvy drug dealers concoct the brightly colored powders from a number of substances, often illegal ketamine mixed with ecstasy, law enforcement officials say.

Traffickers may try to expand their activities beyond the party scenes of major cities like New York and Miami. Officials warn that users may not be fully aware of the risks of ingesting unknown substances, including ketamine, a powerful anesthetic that is already emerging as a prescription drug and led to the death of actor Matthew Perry.

In Miami, the risks were underscored in August when a social media model was arrested on charges that she got so drunk on tusi that she killed two people in a car crash. In addition, the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office is reviewing a series of deaths involving ketamine in pink powders, including the case of a man who became so paranoid and excited that he jumped from a hotel balcony.

“These powders can be very misleading. They are a nice pink color and often have a nice sweet aroma,” said Diane Moore, chief of toxicology at the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office. “But people don’t really know what they’re using.”

The rise of tusi in nightclubs in South Florida, New York and elsewhere complicates an increasingly unpredictable drug supply in the United States. Fentanyl, the synthetic opioid manufactured in clandestine Mexican labs and smuggled north, remains by far the country’s most dangerous drug, even as fatal overdoses appear to have declined. Unbeknownst to some fentanyl users, dealers are mixing it in with other synthetic drugs that can be easily purchased online, such as powerful opioids known as nitasenes or the tranquilizer xylazine.

A senior Drug Enforcement Administration official warned that traffickers are taking advantage of the misconception that club drugs are safer. Tusi, the official said, is a “kind of kitchen drug.”

“If you look at the lab results, they’re throwing everything at it — which is just kind of reflective of where we are in the drug market,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the agency’s intelligence.

Versions of the drug emerged more than a decade ago in Colombia, where drug dealers called it tusi as a phonetic translation of 2C, a class of psychedelics discovered in the late 1970s. These psychedelics became popular in the American club scene in the 1990s and were sometimes sold as ecstasy or MDMA.

Today, tusi rarely contains these psychedelic drugs, says Joseph J. Palamar, an epidemiologist at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine who studies drug use. Instead, dealers appear to be taking advantage of the confusion and growing interest in psychedelics.

“I consider it a marketing scheme by drug dealers,” said Palamar, author of an article last year in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse warning about tusi.

Dealers dye the powders. Depending on the mix of uppers and downers, the effects can be unpredictable, especially if consumed with alcohol, Palamar said.

An electronic music enthusiast from New York in her late 30s who uses tusi when partying on weekends says the drug improves the music and lighting on the dance floor.

“The energy feels good. It doesn’t take that long, and you’re not stuck the next day,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear she could lose her job at the company.

But she worries about consuming a batch that is too potent or contains an unknown substance. “There are so many types,” she says. “People make it in different ways.”

The drug has already achieved celebrity fame.

Multiple media outlets reported this week that Payne, who died after falling from a balcony in Buenos Aires on October 16, had multiple drugs in his system, including “pink cocaine.”

A March lawsuit alleged that Combs arranged the transportation of Tusi across state lines. Combs was arrested in September on sex trafficking charges, including administering ketamine to women, although Tusi is not named in the federal indictment. A federal prosecutor told a judge that bags of pink powder were found in Combs’ New York hotel room when he was arrested.

Confusion about the drug arose in the case of Maecee Marie Lathers, 24, of Miami Gardens, who described herself as a model in social media posts. Early on Aug. 10, police and prosecutors said, she plowed her white Mercedes-Benz into two vehicles crossing an intersection near downtown Miami, resulting in two deaths.

She ran away, but was apprehended by witnesses, an arrest report shows. According to police reports and body camera footage, officers found her lying on the sidewalk, bloodied and partially naked, screaming incoherently. Lathers said she was under the influence “and that she was from the future and had a crystal ball,” according to an arrest report.

Lathers is charged with driving under the influence, among other crimes, and has pleaded not guilty. A police and prosecutor’s arrest report incorrectly refers to the drug as “2C,” the decades-old psychedelic drug. A toxicology report released through a public records request showed Lathers had ketamine and MDMA in her blood.

The report revealed the alarming presence of another drug: fentanyl. It was unclear whether the tusi Lathers suspected of being ingested was laced with fentanyl or if the opioid was consumed alone. Her lawyer declined to comment.

The test results illustrate the risk of drug dealers adding cheap fentanyl to batches sold as tusi, a potentially deadly combination if users have no opioid tolerance.

“I have been warning about this possibility for some time,” Palamar said. “Fentanyl ending up in the Tusi stockpile could be disastrous.”

Palamar is working with the Center for Forensic Science Research & Education, a nonprofit toxicology organization that runs an early warning program that researches new drugs, to test the saliva of New York clubgoers to understand what’s in the drugs that they use.

Toxicologists from the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office have found brightly colored powders at death scenes linked to four suicides and four accidental overdose cases, the latter including famed DJ Erick Morillo, found dead in his Miami Beach home, and aspiring singer Laura Camila Lozano Sterling, found dead in a luxury hotel in Miami Beach.

A ninth death involved a 28-year-old Chicago-area man who had been using pink powder and drinking with friends on the balcony of a Miami Beach apartment. According to reports from medical examiners, he suddenly became paranoid – convinced someone was trying to kill him – and climbed onto the balcony before plummeting more than 50 feet. His death was ruled an accidental fall.

They all tested positive for ketamine, and most had MDMA and other drugs in their systems. More deaths may be linked to tusi. Toxicologists have identified about 50 other deaths involving ketamine and MDMA since 2018, but have seen no evidence of pink powders.

Ketamine, a drug commonly used to numb pain during surgery and which has state and federal restrictions, has been used recreationally for years. Its legal use has increased in recent years, amid a boom in the number of clinics and telehealth providers specializing in the drug’s potential to provide quick relief to people suffering from depression.

The drug causes feelings of euphoria and sedation, but can also be stimulant, medical experts say. At higher doses, the effects of ketamine can be severe.

“People who take large amounts of ketamine have problems with paranoia, delusions and hallucinations,” says Robert Freedman, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, who has studied the drug’s effects.

Law enforcement officials are concerned that cheap foreign-produced ketamine could fuel the U.S. tusi market.

In recent years, federal agents at Miami International Airport have regularly arrested suspected smugglers from South America caught with premixed pink tusi hidden in bags or clothing. Sometimes those couriers get off planes that are “quite fueled” with the drug, said Anthony Salisbury, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations’ South Florida field office.

“You look at their phone and they have little pink crystals because they were sniffing on the plane,” Salisbury said.

The DEA has warned that Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel – which has flooded the United States with fentanyl – has the ability to import large quantities of ketamine from China to manufacture tusi. This year, a Coast Guard cutter found tusi among cargoes of cocaine in the waters off the coast of Mexico and Central and South America.

Salisbury said researchers are concerned that because premixed tusi from South America is expensive (about $100 per gram), domestic dealers could make their own batches with cheap ketamine and MDMA purchased through the mail abroad.

That appears to be happening in New York, according to New York City Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan, whose office recorded at least 40 seizures of ketamine or ketamine mixtures in 2023 and the first half of 2024 — stemming from 24 prosecutions. believe that illegal ketamine was used to prepare colorful mixtures that were also seized in some cases.

“There’s nothing that I’ve seen that indicates it comes” from legitimate supplies prescribed by doctors or used by veterinarians, Brennan said. “Most likely it will be imported.”