Currently watching Narcos, and I can’t stop thinking about how they just came up with “Let’s add gasoline and other chemicals to the coca plant leaves”
I know how the coca plant had/has “positive” medical effects, but what about the modern powder?
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It’s basic extraction chemistry. You use solvent (whatever is cheap and available like gasoline) to extract compounds poorly soluble in water like alkaloids. Then you add water and acid to turn the alkaloid to a water soluble salt. The compound then dissolves in the water phase and becomes more concentrated. Wash impurities, filter, etc etc until its pure enough to sell.
If you have a proper chemistry lab and access to high quality chemicals its much more efficient though. Hard to get that in countries where cocaine is produced though so they improvise.
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