“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat
Video translation is as follows:
Reporter: Calavera, a well known drug dealer in Medellin agreed to let us into his clandestine kitchen of Tusi. A drug cocktail that has become popular even among minors. He has been selling this mixture for five years and is accountable to La Oficina. One of the criminal organizations that controls micro-trafficking in the capital of Antioquia.
Calavera: That is why there is so much war here in the neighborhoods. Because, because this is the latest vice at the moment. Teenagers don’t even smoke marijuana to try it. They all get into it to try Tusi, mostly minors. Those are the ones who are moving this.
Reporter: We recorded this video at 6:50 in the morning at a clandestine party for minors in Medellín. The DJ is 11 years old and the rest of the attendees are no older than 16. For hours they consumed Tusi causing some adolescents to pass out at the party. The place has positioned itself as an unrestricted space to consume this cocktail of high-risk psychoactive substances. It is a Tusi outlet for minors controlled by criminal gangs. Calavera starts frying, as he calls the process, veterinary analgesics such as ketamine with more than eight substances in glass ampoules and adhesive bags. In the kitchen of the house where he lives with his wife and children he produces daily some of the Tusi that is marketed in the area. He says that his recipe contains ecstasy, fentanyl, caffeine, clonazepam, among other substances.
Calavera: There are people who add methadone, there are people who add heroin. There are people who add heroin to Tusi because that son of a bitch is a basic additive. In my case, for example, I don’t use it for my own consumption, it’s for sale, because I’m not going to be so stupid as to get myself addicted to both drugs. So, we don’t replace heroin with fentanyl. Unfortunately, that’s the way we as human beings are. You don’t give too much thought about your neighbors. I don’t think of myself as the person who makes you read into all of this. It’s not my job to enlighten you on this matter.
Reporter: Échale Cabeza and the University of Caldas analyzed 25 samples of Tusi and 56 samples of MDMA or Ecstasy collected in Bogota and Medellin. As for the appearance of the samples analyzed, the most common color was pink followed by purple, yellow and white. Caffeine and ketamine were present in 24 of the 25 samples. MDMA was present in 22 samples, making the interaction between stimulation and sedation one of the main effects of Tusi.
Julian Quintero: The lack of knowledge of what they are mixing with the dosage of what they are doing and the mixtures of what makes it when they consume. Well, it makes it I believe right now the highest risk substance of consumption in the country. This is very similar keeping all proportions to what is happening with fentanyl in the United States that one of the main reasons for death is associated with people not knowing the dosage of fentanyl in the substance that comes. Here basically people are totally unaware of the substances that compose it and they don’t know the dosage of each of those substances. The Tusibi, this pink powder is already a mixture of substances and apart from that, when people are partying or in situations of high consumption, they consume other substances. So it is a very high risk poly-consumption. For example, mixing this Tusibi substance, which contains opioids and benzodiazepines, with another nervous system depressant such as alcohol. Well, it is highly risky for health. And there are already known cases of deaths in Colombia where these substances have been found in combination in people’s bodies.
Reporter: In 1974 chemist Alexander Shulgin synthesized for the first time the substance 2CB. A phenylethylamine with psychedelic and stimulant effects derived from amphetamine in the 1990s. It had a massive exposure in European discotheques and was marketed under the name of Nexus. It landed in Colombia at the end of the 2000s when national traffickers smuggled it from Europe and began to sell it at very high prices. Some media popularized it as the luxury drug or the drug of the elite. In the country it was marketed as Tusi or Tusibi because of the English pronunciation of the acronym of the original substances. Over time, traffickers began to mix it with other components. They added cooking colorants and essences to make it more tolerable for human consumption.
Edwin Javier: In general terms, the panorama of synthetic substances in Colombia and in particular in the Bogota region has been increasing in recent years. The laboratory has detected and identified different types of NPS substances. New psychoactive substances are on the rise and with concern we see in the laboratory that there are more and more cases related to MDMA, Ketamine, NPS (new psychoactive substances), and types oe and oc of Tusibi.
Reporter: Calavera’s batch of frying didn’t last more than an hour and a half and it yielded 16 points or grams of Tusi ready to sell. The price of each depending on the sector is between 60,000 and 120,000pesos. Compared to other psychoactive substances each dot of this mixture costs at least 10 times more than a gram of cocaine which in the area is 6000 pesos. At the beginning of each month Calavera must pay 500 thousand pesos to La Oficina to be allowed to distribute Tusi. If he does not comply he is charged a fine of 5 million pesos. The same thing happens with the vendors who are not authorized by this criminal gang.
Calavera: You have to have a person who gives you permission and pay that person to let you work. The bosses of the neighborhoods that control the area give you permission to sell or work. In France, Mexico, United States, Chile, Ecuador, Europe, Spain, Italy, they do it everywhere.
Reporter: One of the most important findings of the study was the presence of Oxycodone in six samples. A type of substance that had not been previously reported. It is the third opioid after heroin and fentanyl that has contributed to the most overdose deaths in the United States. However, these cases also involve combinations with other Benzodiazepine opioids and alcohol. We brought two bags of Tusi to Échale Cabeza for analysis. One came from Calavera’s clandestine kitchen in Medellín and the other we got for 80 thousand pesos in a well known park in the northeast of Bogota.
Cristian Gordillo: In this type of analysis, for me it’s bad, the first thing I would say is that I find the presence of Ketamine and I find the presence of many other things that are not usual within the Tusi here. My advice would automatically be not to consume it because first of all you are subjecting yourself to a substance that you don’t know what kind of toxicity it can generate in your body. Secondly and most likely you can’t control a bad trip from a substance that you automatically don’t know. And you don’t know how long you are going to last with this effect. And already from there it starts to trigger many things let’s say inside the person.
Reporter: The scenes of Tusi consumption are repeated throughout the country leaving several questions. Because if the consumption of this mixture is so evident, the issue becomes part of the public debate. What are the real health impacts generated by this type of mixtures and what can be done to mitigate the risks and damages of a young population that uses these substances? In 2022 alone more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses. And two-thirds of these deaths are attributed to fentanyl, representing a major risk to public health in that country.
