basuco

But basuco cut across all classes like a brush fire.

Today they seemed more wired on basuco than Matthew had ever seen them.

And if it's not basuco, then we have the flow of cocaine to concern ourselves with."

Many townspeople also became addicted to basuco, which can be rolled into cigarettes and smoked.

They call it basuco, filthy stuff, not good enough for export, and too many of my workers indulge."

The drug is known as basuco.

Townspeople say the guerrillas have summarily executed basuco users.

Peasants working in cocaine refining and shipping were paid partially in basuco.

"When I see someone who grows too thin, I think it is the basuco again.

"Do you know what basuco is?"

They die from the basuco.

The effects of the drug, known here as "basuco," or base of coca, are similar to those of crack.

Researchers and users say a gram of basuco, which can be used to make up to eight cigarettes, sells for as little as $2.50.

Like crack, basuco is cheaper than refined cocaine, but its use becomes so incessant that the poor turn to crime and the wealthy plunge into bankruptcy.

"When our snitches out on the street tell us things are happening, that basuco is available," Mr. Asbell said, "we have to believe it.

The purported basuco, he said, has been selling for $350 an ounce on the street, compared to an average of $550 for high-grade cocaine.

The paste, known as "basuco" in Colombia, is widely used in Peru, Bolivia and Venezuela.

"Very simply," he said, "we don't want the public to be under the impression that the New York-New Jersey area is facing a basuco epidemic."

A few swigs of rum, followed by basuco, a cheap and plentiful by-product of cocaine processing that would make them crazy out of their minds.

These were the times that made Matthew most nervous, when teenage boys with raging hormones, automatic weapons, and basuco racing through their brains started arguing over a girl.

Anthony J. Iurato, Hackensack's police chief, said that recent undercover operations had netted less than a gram of what was believed to be basuco.

But officials said the public has been upset by the growing number of urban youths addicted to basuco, a smokable and poisonous form of cocaine that can cause brain damage.

In the last two years, a form of cocaine known in Spanish as basuco and in English as bazooka has become common in the area, a police official said.

"Basuco is already a problem in Manaus," Mr. Barrouin said, "and it has also been found in Mato Grosso."

According to Ronnie Lonoff, director of Fair Oaks Hospital's National Substance Abuse Hot Line (1-800-Cocaine), the hot line has yet to receive a call for basuco abuse.