Pink Cocaine / Tusi

About

Pink Cocaine, also known as Pink Snow or Tusi, is a slang term used to refer to a drug cocktail that contains a mixture of ketamine, ecstasy and meth, which is most commonly found in a pink-dyed powder form. The substance has been known since 2010 but gained viral attention in mid-October 2024 after an autopsy on former One Direction singer Liam Payne reportedly found pink cocaine in his system at the time of his death. Memes and jokes related to the pink substance appeared on Reddit, TikTok and X / Twitter over the next few weeks as discourse emerged in late 2024.

History

According to a BBC^[1] article posted on October 15th, 2024, the original psychedelic form of "pink cocaine" dates back to 1974 and was first synthesized by American biochemist Alexander Shulgin. However, the modern variant known in Latin America as "Tusi" emerged around 2010 in Colombia and is a knockoff, combining several other substances, including MDMA, ketamine and 2C-B (example below).

On August 1st, 2024, Fox News New York uploaded a video explaining what pink cocaine^[2] is and why the new drug is getting so popular in the United States and Europe. The video (seen below) garnered over 635,000 views and 5,800 likes in three months.

Liam Payne's Autopsy

On October 21st, 2024, several news outlets revealed that former One Direction member and singer Liam Payne had multiple drugs in his system at the time of death, including cocaine, benzodiazepine, crack and "pink cocaine."

The news was shared on X^[3] by the account @PopBase that same day (seen below), amassing roughly 41 million views and 49,000 likes in a day.

Online Reactions

The news about Liam Payne having multiple drugs in his system before falling from his third-floor room in a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, quickly sparked a debate on the topic in late October 2024, specifically about pink cocaine.

For example, on October 21st, 2024, X^[4] user @irissirens posted a surprised woman reaction GIF over the news about the drugs found on the singer's system, writing "cocaine pink cocaine and crack." The tweet received more than 135,000 views and 1,600 likes in a day.

On the same day, X^[5] user @guelelei posted a Colombian version of the Brazil Mentioned meme, replying to a tweet about Liam Payne's autopsy. The tweet (seen below) received roughly 5,200 likes and 355 reposts in a day.

Online Presence

Content related to the popularization of pink cocaine has been widely debated on the internet since the early 2020s. For example, on June 4th, 2022, Vice posted a video to its official YouTube^[6] channel titled "The Pink 'Cocaine' Wave," delving "deep into Medellin’s underworld to find out, in a journey that takes us to the cartel queen who started it all." The video amassed over 6 million views and 165,000 likes in two years.

Search Interest

External References