CBS News
Chaos unfolds in Haiti as Caribbean leaders call an emergency meeting Monday
PORT-AU-PRINCE- Police and palace guards worked Saturday to retake some streets in Haiti’s capital after gangs launched massive attacks on at least three police stations.
Guards from the National Palace accompanied by an armored truck tried to set up a security perimeter around one of the three downtown stations after police fought off an attack by gangs late Friday.
Sporadic gunfire continued Saturday, and one woman writhed in pain on the sidewalk in downtown Port-au-Prince with a gunshot wound after a stray bullet hit her in the leg.
The unrelenting gang attacks have paralyzed the country for more than a week and left it with dwindling supplies of basic goods. Haitian officials extended a state of emergency and nightly curfew on Thursday as gangs continued to attack key state institutions.
Caribbean leaders issued a call late Friday for an emergency meeting Monday in Jamaica on what they called Haiti’s “dire” situation. They have invited the United States, France, Canada, the U.N. and Brazil to the meeting.
Members of the Caricom regional trade bloc have been trying for months to get political actors in Haiti to agree to form an umbrella transitional unity government.
But average Haitians, many of whom have been forced from their homes by the bloody street fighting, can’t wait. The problem for police in securing government buildings is that many Haitians have streamed into them, seeking refuge.
“We are the ones who pay taxes, and we need to have shelter,” said one woman, who did not give her name for safety reasons.
Another Port-au-Prince resident, who also did not give his name, described the massive attacks Friday.
“They (the gangs) came with big guns. We have no guns and we cannot defend ourselves. All of us, the children are suffering,” said the man.
CLARENS SIFFROY/AFP via Getty Images
So far, efforts to broker a solution have been unsuccessful. Caricom, the 15-nation Caribbean bloc, said in a statement late Friday that “the situation on the ground remains dire.”
The Caricom statement said that while regional leaders remain deeply engaged in trying to bring opposition parties and civil society groups together to form a unity government, “the stakeholders are not yet where they need to be.”
“We are acutely aware of the urgent need for consensus to be reached,” according to the statement. “We have impressed on the respective parties that time is not on their side in agreeing to the way forward. From our reports, the situation on the ground remains dire and is of serious concern to us.”
“It is vital that this engagement be at as high a level as possible to send a clear message of unity between Caricom and the international community as we work together to provide the critical support to the Haitian people at this time of crisis for them,” said the statement.
In February, embattled Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry agreed to hold general elections by mid-2025, and the international community has tried to find some foreign armed force willing to fight gang violence there.
Caricom has also pushed Henry to announce a power-sharing, consensus government in the meantime, but the prime minister has yet to do so even as Haitian opposition parties and civil society groups are demanding his resignation.
Henry, a neurosurgeon, was appointed as prime minister after the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise.
It was unclear whether Henry would be in Jamaica. The prime minister had traveled to Kenya to push for the U.N.-backed deployment of a police force from the East African country to fight gangs in Haiti. A Kenyan court, however, ruled in January that such a deployment would be unconstitutional.
Henry, who is facing calls to resign or form a transitional council, remains unable to return home. He arrived in Puerto Rico on Tuesday after he was unable to land in the Dominican Republic, which borders Haiti. The Dominican government said he lacked a required flight plan as they closed their country’s airspace with Haiti.
CLARENS SIFFROY/AFP via Getty Images
On Saturday, the office of Dominican President Luis Abinader issued a statement saying that “Henry is not welcome in the Dominican Republic for safety reasons.” The Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, has closed its land border.
“Given the current situation, the presence of the Haitian prime minister in the Dominican Republic is not considered appropriate,” according to the statement, adding “this decision reflects the firm position of the Dominican government to safeguard its national security and stability.”
The statement described the security situation in Haiti as “totally unsustainable” and said it “poses a direct threat to the safety and stability of the Dominican Republic.”
The statement predicted “the situation could deteriorate even further if a peacekeeping force is not implemented urgently to restore order.”
CBS News
“Pink cocaine” is the latest street drug. This team of researchers has been warning the public about it for a year.
The death of music star Liam Payne. Sex trafficking allegations against Sean “Diddy” Combs. A deadly car crash involving an Instagram model. Many Americans have only recently learned of the drug known as “pink cocaine” from a deluge of celebrity horror stories. Joseph Palamar, an associate professor of population health at NYU Langone, would say they are late to the party.
“A lot of people just think it’s this new powder that’s going around,” Palamar said. “It’s a pretty pink powder, and everyone’s starting to use it, when it really started increasing was around mid-2023.”
Getty Images
“The chatter increases before a lot of poisonings occur”
When Palamar first heard of pink cocaine, his team immediately scoured posts on Reddit as part of his research for the National Drug Early Warning System. The organization specializes in narcotics surveillance and collects data on drugs that could rise in popularity and lethality.
“We’ve looked at other drugs, and what we found … is that a lot of times the chatter increases before a lot of poisonings occur,” said Palamar.
Palamar explained there’s a whole community called “Psychonauts,” in which people use novel drugs or induce “altered states of consciousness” and post about their experiences. For drug use, Palamar equated it to a diary to alert people to the effects of drugs.
National Drug Early Warning System
Standing in front of a chart that resembles a stock rally on Wall Street, Palamar explained how each Reddit post about pink cocaine represents a data point he uses to better predict drug trends and warn the public.
“When we detect a trend, we alert everybody we could possibly think of,” he said. “We alert departments of health, academics, people who use. We want to spread our information pretty widely in order to prevent use. It’s concerning because it’s already high, and it’s increasing. We already have dozens of people talking about it per day.”
The warning system first issued an alert on pink cocaine in February 2023, when researchers noticed a spike in chatter from Redditors. That chatter nearly doubled to more than 30 posts per day by the summer.
National Drug Early Warning System
“It appears that the chatter on average is now higher,” Palamar said. “It’s more consistent. We don’t have dips as low as previous years.”
CBS News reached out to Reddit for a comment on the research. A spokesperson said its policies ban the buying or selling drugs, and most conversations on its message boards are warning other Reddit users about pink cocaine.
Similar trends emerged with carfentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times more potent than its lethal sister-drug fentanyl. Nearly 80,000 Americans have died from poisonings linked to carfentanyl in the past two years, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
“Don’t play with this stuff… It’s a powerful substance.”
One pink cocaine user, who takes the drug at least once a month, agreed to speak with CBS News without revealing her identity. She said she tests each batch for fentanyl but admits she doesn’t otherwise know the contents of the drug mixtures she’s buying.
“You don’t know what is in it every time.” she said. “You don’t know what is inside … there are the ingredients that make you dance. There are ingredients that can make you feel more chill. There are ingredients can make you feel more trippy.”
Those unknowns — about the substance and the high — pushed Frank Tarantino, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency in New York, to issue an urgent warning to CBS News New York.
“When people are seeking pink cocaine and they think they’re buying pink cocaine, they’re actually buying a drug that’s laced with fentanyl and they have no idea and they’re overdosing and dying,” Tarantino said.
The anonymous user who spoke to CBS News said she has found fentanyl in her own supply.
“I gave it back,” she said. “It’s dangerous.”
Pink cocaine is not cocaine
Pink cocaine is often confused for real cocaine. Tusi, the other street name for the substance, is often confused for the synthetic psychedelic 2C-B. It’s neither.
Pink cocaine is a combination of other drugs. It is pink in color due to the addition of food coloring, and sometimes strawberry or other flavoring, according to the National Capital Poison Center.
Officials said it is most commonly used by young people in the club scene. Pink cocaine is usually either ingested in pill form or snorted as a powder. Rarely, it is injected.
An analysis by CBS News found 99.5% of pink powder seized by the Drug Enforcement Agency is a mixture of ketamine and other drugs, which can include fentanyl, according to DEA data from nearly 1,000 seizures.
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