Last night I was having some beers and watching Goodfellas. The main character, Henry Hill, gets busted for drug dealing near the end of the film and is taken downtown with all his drug accomplices. He says nothing and the cops start taunting him. After a while one of the other cops brings in some of the drug paraphernalia Henry and his girlfriend and cohorts used to mix and cut the coke, including a small bowl of white powder. One cop dips his finger in it, takes a little taste taste, and looks up with a “yeah-it’s-coke-for-sure-this-asshole-is-going-to-prison-forever” kind of grin on his face.
Seems like I’ve seen this in at least a few cop or mafia movies and I wonder if it’s accurate. I’m sure drugs taste different from baking soda, but it just seems too much like a cinematic device to be real. Also, would cops even do that? Wouldn’t it contaminate the evidence?
It’s my (limited) understanding that what the cops are detecting when they “taste” cocaine is a tingle or numbing effect. I’m sure it’s just a movie device, anyway…what with the contamination risk and all.
Cops don’t actually taste it, because white powder could be anything, including many toxic or poisonous substances. There’s a small test kit they use that they dip a sample into that’ll change color for the presence of cocaine.
You wouldn’t want to taste it as the coke could have been cut (mixed to make the batch stretch out) with anything from corn starch and anesthetics to kitchen cleaner.
Testing kits don’t make for exciting movies. But we have no idea how long those kits have been used, so it’s possible cops did this (maybe only once in a blue moon) before that. Here’s a Straight Dope staff report about the topic.
There’s a police comedy out there (can’t remember the name, sadly) where one of the detectives finds a bag of white stuff in the appartment of a suspect, dramatically does the gum rubbing thing, goes “Just as I thought. Arsenic.” then keels over :).
What about the scene in It’s A Wonderful Life where young George comes back to the druggist and says “You put poison in these pills!” and the druggist takes a little taste? Could he have tasted the “poison”?
It’d be more likely that the pharmacist would know what the pure unadulterated pill was supposed to taste like. I know it’s a movie, but it’s very easy to underestimate the great human (and animal) ability to detect that something isn’t quite right with our senses without knowing what the problem actually is.
In the case of USP Cocaine Hydrochloride Reference Standard, it is an odourless powder with a slightly bitter taste that numbs the tongue, according to the MSDS sheet my friend just quoted from in response to my asking her what the MSDS says. She is the standards and narcotics manager for a pharmaceutical company that manufactures a cocaine product.
