Cocaine Abuse Information, Cocaine History

Crack Abuse Information

Evidence suggests that users who smoke or inject cocaine may be at even greater risk of causing harm to themselves than those who snort the substance. Cocaine smokers may suffer from acute respiratory problems including coughing, shortness of breath, and severe chest pains with lung trauma and bleeding.Smoking crack cocaine can also cause particularly aggressive paranoid behavior in users.

An added danger of cocaine use is when cocaine and alcohol are consumed at the same time. When these substances are mixed, the human liver combines cocaine and alcohol and manufactures a third substance, cocaethylene. This intensifies cocaine's euphoric effects, while also possibly increasing the risk of sudden death.Most cocaine-related deaths are a result of cardiac arrest or seizures followed by respiratory arrest.

Cocaine is a powerfully addictive drug. Compulsive cocaine use seems to develop more rapidly when the substance is smoked rather than snorted. A tolerance to the cocaine high may be developed and many addicts report that they fail to achieve as much pleasure as they did from their first cocaine exposure.

During 2002, emergency departments (ED) nationwide reported 42,146 crack mentions to the Drug Abuse Warning Network. Crack accounted for 21% of the total cocaine mentions during the year. The number of crack ED mentions has increased from 33,789 in 1995, but has decreased from 46,964 in 2001.

Treatment

Crack cocaine represented 72% of all primary cocaine admissions to treatment in 2004. From 1994 to 2004, the number of admissions to treatment in which crack was the primary drug of abuse decreased from 220,614 in 1994 to 184,949 in 2004. The crack admissions represented 13.2% of the total drug/alcohol admissions to treatment during 1994 and 9.9% of the treatment admissions in 2004. The average age of those admitted to treatment for crack cocaine during 2004 was 38 years.