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.”  

“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.

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. 

“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.