New York City has a new menace: a pink “mystery powder” that is one of the most dangerous drugs on the market, made popular by its association with the disgraced Diddy.
Law enforcement sources and experts have told The Post that it is linked to a dangerous Venezuelan gang.
The synthetic drug concoction known as “tusi” or “pink cocaine” has popped up in a growing number of recent narcotics busts. An Upper East Side woman allegedly openly sold it on a messaging app, sources said.
Ray Donovan, former chief of operations for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, stated that “It is a cheap club drug.”
Tusi is a phonetic play on “2C,” a group of psychedelic drugs popular in the nightlife set — said Joseph Palamar, an associate professor of population health at NYU Langone who recently published a study on the pink powder.
Pink cocaine, contrary to its name, is not just a variant of cocaine but a term used to describe a variety of synthetic drugs that can cause hallucinogenic effects. These substances are often found in the form of a pink powder and may contain a mix of drugs such as ecstasy (MDMA), ketamine, amphetamine, 2C-B, and sometimes even cocaine.
The drug is known for its potential to be highly addictive and carries significant health risks, including the risk of overdose. Substances sold as pink cocaine are unregulated, making their content unpredictable and use extremely dangerous.
“It’s the new mystery powder to hit nightclubs,” Palamar said. “I think everybody’s concoction is going to be different from the next person’s.”
The candy-colored drug is associated with the notorious Tren de Aragua gang from Venezuela that accused NYPD cop shooter Bernardo Raul Castro Mata, 19, said is smuggling guns into migrant shelters, according to authorities.
Jason Savino, the NYPD’s assistant chief of detectives, told Fox 5 last week that the gang has expanded into trafficking tusi. Police sources told The Post that Tren de Aragua-linked crooks are peddling tusi on Roosevelt Avenue street corners, a notorious open-air drug and prostitution market in Jackson Heights.
NYPD sources said that tusi has another street-level nickname because of its association with a jet-setter: the “Diddy Drug.”
Dealers could also mix fentanyl — a synthetic opioid commonly cut into cocaine and heroin, and linked to 200,000 overdose deaths in the last few years — into already loosely defined tusi concoctions, an NYPD source said.
“We want to raise awareness, because that’s the next thing — it’s just a matter of time we see fentanyl make its way in there and it gets stepped on too many times,” Savino, the NYPD official, told The Post this week.
Ex-DEA official Donovan agreed: “It is not big yet, but the concern is that it will catch fire.”
