I just finished watching the movie Magnolia and it triggered a question I have always wondered. When actors are playing drug addicts, and they are required in a scene to snort some white powder that is supposed to look like cocaine, what are they actually snorting?
I would think snorting bleached flour or powdered sugar wouldn’t be very healthy for the actor. Is there some sort of “stunt” cocaine that prop deparments have come up with?
Could be Manitol, which I understand is or was used to cut pure cocaine.
In a friend’s film the actor bent down with a metal tube. Then there was a cut to an extreme close-up of the powder going up the tube, and another cut to the actor straightening up. In reality, the ‘cocaine’ was granulated sugar and the ‘tube’ was the metal nozzle of a vacuum cleaner. It was very convincing.
I have been told that you can snort vitamin B powder, but I can’t find a cite for that, so take that with another white powdery substance in single granular form.
Alternatively, it shouldn’t be too difficult to have the actor’s nose and the powder in the shot together, but have the vacuum cleaner nozzle going into the tube at the end that’s hidden from the camera, and hidden by the actor’s hands and head. If that makes sense to anybody but me.
In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, they snorted powdered milk.
Mannitol is a baby laxative, sold as a white powder. It is commonly used to “cut” cocaine, so we know it’s more-or-less safe to inhale. Lactose (milk sugar) is often used to cut heroin. Occasional heroin users sometimes snort it instead of injecting, so we know that lactose won’t kill you.
There’s a reality warp here that’s making me shake my head, wobbity-wobbity. Here we are, speculating about the safety of snorting innocuous stuff, relative to cocaine or heroin. :smack:
They’re Hollywood people. I would have assumed they’d just use cocaine. 
Sorry, no cite, but I heard somewhere that narcotics detectives have special straws that catch the coke somewhere in the middle; these allow them to appear to be snorting it up like everyone else without actually ingesting any of the drug.
Uh huh. You’re not really from L.A., are ya friend? 
One does want to tread lightly with what one asks an actor to snort up into the sinuses. As our esteemed Johnny has indicated, one can work wonders with editing, angles and a good hard-sucking Kirby.
Shall we all recall, for a moment, the extreme close-up from Pulp Fiction as the needle penetrates the arm and hits a vein? Graphic, and appeared to be real, but was obviously a cut-away and not our lovely starlet.
Cartooniverse
That film was made in New Orleans. 
That was John Travolta shooting up. Uma Thurman snorted his Heroin, thinking it was cocaine.
Sorry for the Hijack, can’t resist a Pulp Fiction nitpick.
While the conclusion might be true, I have to question the reasoning, here.
And if there are powders (like powdered milk) that can be used without unpleasant effects, why would anyone use a laxitive instead?
I had a thread on this subject a while back, but SEARCH won’t let me go back that far. 
Now that can’t be good for you!
In the extremely long ago forgotten past, I used coke. Shamelessly.
If I bought a quarter to split with a friend it wasn’t beyond my excellent morals at the time to cut it with baking soda. You couldn’t tell the difference.
Perhaps they use Sherbet.
Certainly imagine it would give a bit of a ‘kick’ if the actor was into method acting.
From what I’ve read, dealers use Mannitol because it looks exactly like cocaine and mixes well without clumping. That way the customer can’t tell how many times it’s been stepped on. There must be some drawback to using powdered milk to cut cocaine, or the dealers would all use it.
I’m not speaking from experience, and I really can’t tell you how various powders behave in moist air, under hot lights, or how they look in extreme close-up.
The Loaded Dog assumed actors used real cocaine, seeing as how they probably use it off the job anyway. I have to agree it makes sense, except when the director wants to shoot eight or ten takes of the same scene “to get it just right.” :eek:
I think they use different substances depending on whether it’s a close-up, distance shot, or someone is snorting it.
In Velvet Goldmine, for example, they used bleaching powder for the distance shots.
Toni Collette said (in some promotional interview) how the funniest thing was the set designers going around with megaphone before each shot in that scene saying “people, don’t snort the white powder, it’s not coke, it’s bleach. I repeat, don’t snort the white powder, it’s not coke, it’s bleach”.
Uh, it’s not actually powdered milk. Didn’t you read the quote? They used lactose, which is a sugar naturally present in milk. Mannitol is a sugar alcohol. They’re not dramatically different substances.
Until you try eating them. Mannitol is a laxative.