How to Differenciate Cocaine and Mescaline ?
Question by Lucie: How to differenciate cocaine and mescaline ?
Suppose I have 2 similar white powder. One is cocaine and one is mescaline.
How to tell the difference ?
I know cocaine makes your tongue numb but isn’t it the case for mescaline too ?
Is there a particular smell ?
Is there a process to identify the substance ?
Best answer:
Answer by Brandir
You can do classical organic analysis, e.g. by differentiating between the teriary amine in cocaine and the primary amine in mescaline using nitrous acid (nor eaction in the first case, evolution of nitrogen gas with mescaline). More modernly, you’d record some spectra (NMR, IR) or use mass spectrometry – all these methods should give you very clear pointers as to which sample is which substance, as they are structurally very different.
One other option are the commercially available quick tests that detect common drugs (though reliability is somewhat questionable). Cocaine is usually tested for, so you should easily be able to obtain a test, but mescaline is generally not covered by those tests – so it should give a negative result.
Answer by Cactus Prophet
You can have a rough shot at identify the powders using reagent test kits. Mescaline is detectable on Marquis reagent tests. The Cocaine would need it’s own test with a different reagent specific to cocaine. Mescaline would not make your gums numb like cocaine would.
Cocaine (by Eric Clapton) Guitar Lesson
Guitar Lesson – Cocaine- from the album “Slowhand” (1977)