Do detectives really take a tiny taste-test of heroin or coke?

News imitates the Dope- “Officer nearly dies from fentanyl overdose after traffic stop”.

I remember reading an article long ago about food adulteration. They mentioned that tavern owners would water down alcohol, but then add small amounts of a poison that induced vomiting - if the customer started throwing up, after quite a few drinks, he would think “wow, this is strong stuff”. Not sure if some injectable adulterants would have similar interesting properties. IIRC strychnine induces some sort of lively response.

An ex-addict once told me that he cut the drugs himself. He believed that the adulterants slowed the absorbtion into the body, and made the high last longer.

This Hollywood image of the cop testing the dope on the tip of his tongue? Where did filmmakers get the idea?
:confused:

It’s not so much that dealers would cut rat poison or whatever into their stuff, it’s that the perp might actually just be an exterminator measuring out rat poison (or some such) instead of a drug dealer. Ok, I don’t know what exterminators do, but the point is that the perp might not be a drug dealer and is handling stuff for whatever reason that looks like drugs but isn’t.

:confused:

The same incident that Leo linked to in post #9. It’s just a different report.

Interestingly, the adulterant I read about (in a Toronto Star Magazine article about 1970) was called “nux vomica”. There is a tree called the “Strychnos nux-vomica” tree from southern India, and it’s a source of … wait for it … strychnine. Hmmm…