What Is Toosi Drug? Pink Cocaine Ingredients and Risks

Tusi, sometimes spelled “toosi” or “tucibi,” is not a single drug but a wildly unpredictable mixture of substances sold as a brightly colored powder, most often pink. Despite being marketed on the street as “pink cocaine” or as a product related to the psychedelic 2C family of chemicals, the powder almost never contains cocaine as its primary ingredient and rarely contains any 2C compound at all. Drug-checking services across multiple countries consistently find that tusi’s main ingredients are ketamine and MDMA, often cut with stimulants, opioids, or newer synthetic substances that users have no way of identifying on their own.

What Tusi Actually Contains

The name “tusi” is a phonetic Spanish rendering of “2C,” referencing 2C-B and its relatives, a class of psychedelic drugs originally synthesized by the chemist Alexander Shulgin. The implication is that the pink powder delivers a 2C-style psychedelic experience. In practice, analysis after analysis shows otherwise. Drug-checking services in multiple countries have identified ketamine and MDMA as the two most common ingredients, with additional substances like synthetic cathinones, cocaine, methamphetamine, and amphetamine mixed in at varying ratios depending on the batch, the region, and presumably whatever the producer had on hand.¹

A case series from the Miami-Dade medical examiner’s office illustrates the gap between the label and the contents. Fourteen colored powders, mostly pink and often with a sweet or fruity smell, were submitted for forensic analysis. Every single sample contained ketamine. Most also contained MDMA. Beyond that, the grab bag included cocaine, methamphetamine, oxycodone, alprazolam, the synthetic cathinone eutylone, and even over-the-counter antihistamines like diphenhydramine and loratadine. None of the fourteen powders contained 2C-B.²

That case series is not an outlier. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has seized roughly 960 tusi samples since 2020. Of those, only four were confirmed to contain 2C-B, the compound most buyers assume they are getting.³ In other words, the name is essentially a branding exercise. The pink color, the fruity scent, and the association with an exotic-sounding psychedelic create a perception of a premium, designer product. The reality is a low-cost concoction of whatever substances are locally available.

Where Tusi Came From and How Far It Has Spread

Tusi first surfaced in Colombia around 2010 and initially circulated within Latin American party scenes before migrating outward. Its use has since been documented across the United States, Australia, parts of Southeast Asia, and Europe, with Spain showing particularly high prevalence.⁴ Surveys in Spain and Colombia have noted increases in first-time use and in polysubstance use patterns that include tusi.⁵

The drug goes by a remarkable number of street names depending on the region. In addition to “pink cocaine” and “tucibi,” it has been sold under labels like “cocaina rosada,” “Eros,” and “Venus.” The variety of names compounds the confusion for both users and authorities, because none of these labels tell you what is actually inside the powder. A batch sold as “Venus” in one city may have a completely different chemical profile than a batch sold under the same name elsewhere.

Australia offers a sense of the scale the trade has reached. In 2024, Australian authorities seized 133 kilograms of tusi. Lab analysis of the seized material showed ketamine purity ranging from about 7% to 51%, and MDMA purity ranging from roughly 16% to 33%.⁶ That enormous range in a single seizure underscores the core problem: even within one shipment, potency and composition can swing wildly from bag to bag.

Why the Mixture Is More Dangerous Than Its Parts

Taking any single recreational drug carries risk. Taking multiple drugs simultaneously, without knowing which ones or in what doses, multiplies that risk in ways that are difficult to predict. The specific combination of ketamine and MDMA, the backbone of most tusi batches, is a pharmacological concern in itself. Animal research has found that ketamine alters the way MDMA affects brain chemistry. At certain doses, ketamine decreased the dopamine surge triggered by MDMA while amplifying its serotonin effects, a pattern that researchers flagged as potentially neurotoxic.⁷

Methamphetamine, another common tusi ingredient, adds its own layer of concern. Laboratory studies on human liver cells have shown that when methamphetamine and ketamine are combined, the interaction is synergistic or additive across several measures of cellular damage, including oxidative stress and DNA damage. The mechanism appears to involve methamphetamine speeding up ketamine’s metabolism, which together provoke greater oxidative stress than either drug would alone.⁸ This is cell-culture research, not a human trial, but it points to a biological basis for the heightened danger of mixing these substances.

Then there are the ingredients that users rarely even know about. The Miami-Dade samples mentioned earlier contained oxycodone, an opioid, and alprazolam, a benzodiazepine. Either of those, combined with a central nervous system depressant like ketamine, can suppress breathing to a dangerous degree. Eutylone, a synthetic cathinone found in some tusi batches, has been linked to overdose deaths in the United States and is far more potent by weight than MDMA, meaning a user who treats a eutylone-laced batch like an MDMA product could easily take a dangerous dose without realizing it.

The Polysubstance Problem for Hospitals and First Responders

One of the practical consequences of tusi’s unpredictable composition is that treating someone who has taken it is genuinely difficult. Emergency physicians rely on recognizing patterns of symptoms to guide treatment: stimulant overdose looks different from opioid overdose, which looks different from a dissociative crisis. When all three categories of drug are active in the same person at the same time, the clinical picture can be confusing and the standard protocols for any single drug class may not apply cleanly.

Case reports and toxicology analyses indicate that the harms associated with tusi use stem largely from these polysubstance mixtures rather than from any single component. Yet the way morbidity and mortality data are typically recorded focuses on individual drugs detected, meaning the specific combination effects of tusi as a product tend to get lost in the data.⁹ A death attributed to “ketamine and MDMA toxicity” in an autopsy report may in fact be a tusi-related death, but it would not be tagged that way in most databases. This makes it hard to track how many people tusi is actually harming or killing.

For first responders, the safest assumption when encountering someone who has taken pink powder is to treat for multiple drug classes simultaneously. That may mean addressing stimulant-induced agitation, monitoring for opioid-related respiratory depression, and managing the dissociative effects of ketamine all at once. The presence or absence of fentanyl is a constant concern, though it is worth noting that the Miami-Dade case series found no fentanyl in its samples.¹⁰ That does not mean fentanyl is never present in tusi, only that its inclusion is not universal. The lesson is the same one that runs through every analysis of this drug: you cannot know what is in any given batch.

Who Is Using Tusi and Where

Tusi has a strong association with nightlife, particularly electronic dance music scenes. A survey of the New York City EDM nightclub-attending population estimated that about 2.7% of adults in that scene had used tusi in the past year. The study found that Hispanic individuals had significantly higher odds of past-year tusi use compared to white individuals. People who had also used ecstasy, ketamine, or 2C-series drugs in the past year were far more likely to report tusi use as well, suggesting that tusi sits within a broader polysubstance pattern rather than being anyone’s sole drug of choice.¹¹

An interesting detail from the same study: participants who reported tusi use were more likely to test positive via saliva for cocaine, ketamine, MDMA, methamphetamine, and synthetic cathinones. That objective biological confirmation matters, because it shows the polysubstance exposure is not just a matter of what people say they took but of what their bodies actually contain after a night out. It also reinforces the finding that tusi is rarely a standalone experience. It tends to appear alongside other drug use, making it even harder to isolate its specific effects.

The drug’s appeal seems partly aesthetic and partly social. The bright pink color, the sweet smell, and the association with an upscale party scene give tusi a kind of brand identity that sets it apart from substances sold as anonymous white powders. In some markets, it is positioned as a luxury product and priced accordingly, despite the fact that its ingredients, primarily ketamine and MDMA, cost far less than what the “pink cocaine” label implies.

Why the Name Keeps Fooling People

The gap between what tusi is called and what it contains creates real consequences beyond marketing deception. If you believe you are taking 2C-B, a psychedelic with relatively well-understood effects at known doses, you might feel confident about the experience you are signing up for. But what you are actually ingesting could be a dissociative, a stimulant, an opioid, and a benzodiazepine in unknown proportions. The expected timeline, the physical sensations, and the safety margins are entirely different.

The “cocaine” part of “pink cocaine” adds another layer of confusion. Users who think they are getting a cocaine-based product may dose accordingly, expecting a short-acting stimulant rush. Instead, they may get a ketamine-dominant experience, complete with dissociation and motor impairment, possibly layered on top of stimulant effects that push the cardiovascular system in the opposite direction. Surveys in Colombia and Spain have highlighted widespread misclassification of tusi’s contents even among people who use it regularly.¹²

The naming problem extends to law enforcement and public health. Because tusi is not a single chemical, it does not fit neatly into scheduling categories designed for individual compounds. Ketamine, MDMA, methamphetamine, and cocaine are all separately controlled substances, but “tusi” as a branded mixture does not have its own classification. A seizure of pink powder might be prosecuted based on whichever individual controlled substance the lab identifies, but the product-level pattern of production and distribution can be harder to target.

Drug Checking and Harm Reduction

For people who encounter tusi in social settings, the most practical tool available is drug checking, where a sample is submitted to a testing service that identifies its chemical contents. These services, sometimes available at festivals or through community health organizations, have been the primary source of data on what tusi actually contains. Their findings have been remarkably consistent across countries: ketamine as the base, MDMA as the most common secondary ingredient, and a rotating cast of additional substances that varies by batch.¹³

Fentanyl test strips, which have become common in some harm-reduction settings, are useful but limited in the context of tusi. They can tell you whether fentanyl is present, but they cannot identify ketamine, MDMA, methamphetamine, synthetic cathinones, or benzodiazepines. A negative fentanyl strip result on a tusi sample still leaves you ignorant of everything else in the powder. More comprehensive testing, using reagent kits or ideally spectrometry-based services, provides a fuller picture but is far less widely accessible.

The colored-powder trend has also complicated testing in another way. Tusi is not the only substance being sold as a colored powder. Other colors, including blue and purple variants, have appeared in some markets, and their compositions are equally variable. The visual branding that makes these products distinctive on the street makes them no easier to analyze without proper equipment. Color tells you nothing about chemistry.

The Analytical Challenge

From a forensic and laboratory standpoint, tusi presents genuine technical difficulties. Standard field-testing kits used by law enforcement are designed to detect individual known substances. A kit that turns blue for cocaine will confirm the presence of cocaine but say nothing about the ketamine, MDMA, or eutylone also in the sample. Crime labs using more sophisticated instruments can identify multiple components, but the sheer variability of tusi means that every sample is essentially a new puzzle.¹⁴

The wide purity ranges found in the Australian seizure, where ketamine content swung from under 7% to over 50% across samples from the same haul, illustrate why even experienced users cannot calibrate their doses.¹⁵ A person who has taken tusi before and felt fine has no reason to assume the next batch will behave the same way. The composition might be entirely different. This is not like varying purity in a single-ingredient drug, where more or less of the same substance is present. With tusi, the active ingredients themselves change from one purchase to the next. You could go from a ketamine-heavy batch that causes sedation and dissociation to a methamphetamine-heavy batch that produces intense stimulation and cardiovascular strain, with no external indication of the switch.

Tusi Versus Actual 2C-B

Real 2C-B does exist, and it has its own pharmacological profile distinct from everything typically found in tusi. It is a phenethylamine psychedelic that produces visual and sensory effects at relatively low doses. It has a decades-long history in underground use and a reasonably well-documented safety profile at standard doses, though it is a controlled substance in most countries.

The irony is that the street product named after 2C-B almost never contains it. Among the 960 DEA-seized tusi samples, only four had any 2C-B at all.¹⁶ This matters because the risk profiles are fundamentally different. A person taking a known dose of 2C-B faces a set of risks that have been studied and at least partially characterized. A person taking tusi faces a mystery box. The subjective effects might overlap at times, since ketamine can produce altered perception and MDMA can enhance sensory experience, but the pharmacology, the duration, the overdose thresholds, and the drug interactions are nothing alike.

People who genuinely want 2C-B and believe tusi is the way to get it are not just being misled about a brand name. They are exposing themselves to an entirely different set of chemical risks than the ones they think they are accepting. That disconnect between perceived and actual risk is one of the most dangerous features of the tusi market, and it is one that the colorful packaging and exotic naming are specifically designed to obscure.