Same situation here, have known people that did (some may still) and was definitely huge in the bars and private clubs in the 80s.
On a more recent note, close to 20 years or so. There use to very a cool dive bar not far from me, Vinnie and a few other Bird board members have been there with me. During the 70s, 80s and 90s it was pretty wild . Jim, the owner was a friend of mine, locally connected, (the CPA he used, who was right next door was dating the sheriff) . After Jim died, his two sons ran it, and literally ran it into the ground. Between serving their underage friends, ignoring the locals who kept the doors open and brought drugs out in the open. I was sitting next to Tyler one time and a friend of his comes in the bar, now it was a U bar, and yells ACROSS the bar, "Tyler, need a Bump?". Well I started spending much less time there and a longtime friend who is in law enforcement saw me at the club and pulled me aside. He said they were watching the bar and I should avoid it until he tells me otherwise, which I did.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1678725112.jpg

It smells like brake fluid.

I doubt the recipe is on the Net and IDT I want to search it. But didn't they soak the leaves in acetone and then distill the solution? Or just let it evaporate and scrape up the residue? Seems like there was one more step (np pun).

Anyway, acetone would not leave much of an odor.

Somebody please post the "Taxi - Rev Jim and Latka's cocaine cookies" clip :).

Broke my nose in college .... infirmary doc used cocaine liquid on a swab to totally numb it.....

'twas never my thing ... "it enhances yer personality" ... and I was an azzhole :D

Cocaine numbs the gums as well.

Going to want to go with a non polar solvent for the extraction from the coca leafs. acetone is the last step for purification.

"...but that's no reason to throw me in hell, cause I didn't use the cocaine to get high, I just like the way it smells"

From the song 'Conversation with the Devil' by Ray Wylie Hubbard

I remember reading somewhere about Elvis' minions using this to wake him out of his drugged-out haze when he needed to get up & going :(

It doesn't, but never waste an Apoc Now clip.

<iframe width="640" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xdzoIHJBGt0" title="Smells like Victory" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

In a world of stupid endeavors I tried to make my own, doing cocaine is a bus I am happy to have missed.

Heaven?? Just sayin....

there are many factors like what it was cut with or production method (solvents). i don't buy that it can be smelled while being smuggled through a port of entry as the packagers go to great lengths to seal the product. pretty good read here https://www.thewoodsatparkside.com/how-is-cocaine-made-the-cutting-agents-may-surprise-you/

i have not done it in 20 years or so, but it always seemed to smell a bit different. what I do recall is I had to take a dump as soon as i got my package in my pocket. it also from time to time would make me throw up, especially if I had just eatin a meal.

im old now and know better. it was fun at the time i guess.

It smells a bit like a sweet solvent, little bit like hoppes9 but thats probably not the actual cocaine, but the production process leftovers...

You do get it more as fresh off a brick than old stuff that has passed to many hands and was repackaged

Yeah, but that's because you were going to use the top of the toilet tank...

Interesting, that's some more info than I'd previously had. I know that the bar manager that I worked with/for at the one place where it was ubiquitous (really, strangely widespread and open) would leave work on Sat night (Sun morning) and not infrequently, when he and I would show up for work Tue afternoon, he wouldn't have slept or eaten since before the last time that I saw him.

It has been fascinating to watch the series as they move to different countries, and catch smugglers, and people with fake passports. Evidently Albina is a real hub of citizens trying hard to get out of the country and into Ireland or Great Britain.

One lady had what looked like the meat sold at the deli, and she had 5 or 6 of them in her luggage. They were in the plastic net wrapping, and inside that was vacuum packed with labels and all real enough looking. They sliced open the meat, and inside was a kilo of coke in each one. Off to jail for 6 to 12 years for her.

Lots of people bring in food from home. Weird plants and meats. New Zealand tries hard to protect the island from invasive plants and insects. It is amazing what people try to bring in.

And they show the cargo and mail operations. The dogs are amazing at whet they can catch my smell. Some dogs are trained to smell cash, but most are drug dogs. They had one package that was packed in a large pot, filled with coffee, inside that was a double layers vacuum packed tubs of peanut butter, inside that was a plastic jar, vacuum sealed, and inside that was MDMA. The dog caught that he as he walked past. The shipment was worth over a million bucks on the street.

The "one or two" times I was around it, I thought it had a very distinctive smell. Maybe it was the chemical for processing it or what it was cut with but it's so distinctive that anytime I smell that small, the memory comes in.

People who use it have a very distinct odor.

Kinda sour.

If you are smuggling it you are probably also using it.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1678804995.jpg

I have continued to watch the series on Nat Geo, "To Catch a Smuggler". Various countries have people try to bring drugs through the airports or on shipments. Of course they only show the ones that were caught.

One thing the inspectors regularly do is sniff the laundry, or large insulated winter coats.

They do a test and the swab turns blue. The purer the cocaine the brighter the blue. Cut coke has just a pale blue color, and the very pure compressed bricks are vivid blue.

One of the inspectors opened a suitcase and made a face like she smelled something unpleasant. One of the other inspectors said that has a strong odor, and she said it is a weird sort of bad mustard smell. They tested it and it was almost pure uncut cocaine.

Smugglers have figured out how to liquefy in and put it in bottles of shampoo or face cream of about any liquid. They can mix is with a rubber, and apply it as a layer to make it look very convincingly like the inside of luggage.

The most astonishing thing are the drug sniffing dogs. At the US - Mexico border a dog alerted on the back of a car. They took it back for further inspection and could not find anything in the car, so one inspector dropped the gas tank, siphoned off some gasoline, and looked inside the tank. There were multiple packages floating in the gas. They were shrink wrapped in multiple layers of heavy plastic to protect the coke for the gasoline. So floating in gasoline, in the rear of a car wrapped in multiple layers of plastic the dog could smell it. Dogs are just amazing. And all he wanted was to get the play with his toy and the handler.

My Lab has a nose that won't quit, and came from a first rate breeder of over 500 pups over 30 years. Champion stock .... a lot of them became search & rescue sniffers or drug dawgs .... her nose, athleticism and stamina are simply amazing :).

If a smuggler tries to hide a tennis ball inside a suitcase full of cocaine .... she'll find it :D

Cocaine was (maybe still is) often cut with a powdered baby laxative. Wouldn't have any effect if still in the package though...you'd have to snort it to get that 'cleansing' effect.

I only smelled it once, but didn't inhale .
I always thought it had tinge of kerosene, or some industrial solvent