Crack cocaine is commonly smoked in a pipe with a metallic filter made from a steel wool scouring pad. We report an unusual complication of smoking crack cocaine: the aspiration and ingestion of a Brillo pad filter. A 34-year-old female presented 7 h after drinking beer and smoking crack. She was concerned that she might have inhaled the "screen" from her crack pipe, a piece of Brillo pad the size of her fingertip. She complained of "burning" in her throat, a foreign body sensation, and change in her voice, but no dyspnea, dysphagia, or abdominal pain. On physical examination, she was afebrile with a pulse of 105 beats/min and respiratory rate of 24 breaths/min. She was tearful and spoke in a whisper. There were no visible oropharyngeal burns and the lungs were clear to auscultation, but she had intermittent inspiratory stridor. The O2 saturation was 96%, and the ethanol concentration was 100 mg/dl. No foreign body or burn was seen on indirect laryngoscopy. A lateral neck x-ray study showed a normal epiglottis and no foreign body. Chest x-ray studies were unremarkable. Fiberoptic laryngoscopy showed left posterior arytenoid edema and swelling. An abdominal x-ray study revealed a foreign body in the right lower quadrant consistent with the Brillo pad filter. The next morning, the patient was asymptomatic and was discharged, recovering without sequellae. While crack pipe screen aspiration is a rarely reported event, physicians should be aware of the potential for foreign body aspiration and ingestion by this mechanism.
In the "Required Activities" section of this notice, HHS wrote that funds must be used to support purchases including "safe smoking kits/supplies." Safe smoking kits have been used across the country and often contain glass pipes. In fact, "safe" pipes are usually the entire point of "safe smoking kits." As your drug legalization allies said when expressing disappointment that the safe smoking kits will no longer include pipes, "safe smoking kits without pipes are useless."
how to smoke crack without pipe
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Six healthy male volunteers were exposed to the vapor of 100 and 200 mg freebase cocaine heated to a temperature of 200 degrees C in an unventilated room (12,600-L volume) for a period of 1 h. No pharmacological effects were detected as a result of the exposure. Blood specimens collected immediately following exposure were negative for cocaine and metabolites. Urine specimens analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry contained peak concentrations of benzoylecgonine that ranged from 22 to 123 ng/mL. The peak excretion time for benzoylecgonine following passive exposure was approximately 5 h. The amount of cocaine inhaled by the subjects during passive exposure was estimated from room air measurements of cocaine to be approximately 0.25 mg. The total amount of cocaine (cocaine plus metabolites) excreted in urine by the six subjects ranged from 0.04 to 0.21 mg. For comparison, the six subjects also received an intravenous injection of 1 mg cocaine hydrochloride. Four of six subjects screened positive (300-ng/mL cutoff concentration) following the injection, indicating that the minimum amount of cocaine in these subjects necessary to produce positive results was approximately 1 mg. A second passive inhalation study was undertaken in which specimens were collected from research staff who assisted in a series of experimental studies with "crack" (freebase cocaine) smokers. The research staff remained in close vicinity while the crack smokers smoked three doses of freebase cocaine (12.5, 25, and 50 mg) over a period of 4 h. As a result, staff members were passively exposed to sidestream smoke from crack pipes and to breath exhalation from the crack smokers. Urine specimens from the staff members contained a maximum of 6 ng/mL benzoylecgonine. Only traces (less than 1 ng/mL) of cocaine were detected in any specimen. Overall, these studies demonstrated that individuals exposed to cocaine smoke under naturalistic or artificial conditions absorbed small amounts of cocaine that were insufficient to produce positive urine specimens at standard Department of Health and Human Services cutoffs. However, passive exposure conditions that would result in absorption of cocaine in amounts exceeding 1 mg could result in the production of cocaine-positive urine specimens.
Also, pipes used to smoke cocaine tend to be small and harder to hold, leading to burns on the fingers and hand. Since cocaine is a numbing agent, a person may continue burning themselves without feeling it until later.
So first, let's frame the problem. A dab rig works very specifically to heat up your dabs, vaporize, and then help you inhale the tasty result. So how can you vaporize your dabs without a nail, quartz banger, and torch? The answer is "On Weed." By gently placing your dabs in with a bowl of ground-up bud, you can disperse that concentrated THC goodness into a regular pipe.
The fire from a lighter can heat your dabs to vaporization, just a little less cleanly than using a dab rig. So why can't you dab out of a standard spoon pipe or bong bowl? The problem is the hole in the bottom. Dab rigs feature a banger with a side-valve and a cap. When the lid is placed, all the vapor goes through the dab rig. But with a pipe or bong bowl, the smoke is pulled down through the bottom.
If you love to dab, we've got what you need. From full-sized dab rigs that are works of art to convenient mini rigs and dab straws, we've got the goods. We can also help you supply your hand pipes, bongs, rolling papers, lighters, and anything else you can take with or out of. Contact us or just explore the site to find more great stuff to make your smoke sessions better.
Crack cocaine smoking is associated with an array of negative health consequences, including cuts and burns from unsafe pipes, and infectious diseases such as HIV. Despite the well-established and researched harm reduction programs for injection drug users, little is known regarding the potential for harm reduction programs targeting crack smoking to reduce health problems from crack smoking. In the wake of recent crack pipe distribution services expansion, we utilized data from long running cohort studies to estimate the impact of crack pipe distribution services on the rates of health problems associated with crack smoking in Vancouver, Canada.
Data were derived from two prospective cohort studies of community-recruited people who inject drugs in Vancouver between December 2005 and November 2014. We employed multivariable generalized estimating equations to examine the relationship between crack pipe acquisition sources and self-reported health problems associated with crack smoking (e.g., cut fingers/sores, coughing blood) among people reported smoking crack.
These findings suggest that the expansion of crack pipe distribution services has likely served to reduce health problems from smoking crack in this setting. They provide evidence supporting crack pipe distribution programs as a harm reduction service for crack smokers.
Crack cocaine use remains a significant public health problem in many parts of the world [1, 2]. A previous study documented that among 1936 persons who inject drugs surveyed across seven major cities in Canada, approximately 65.2% reported crack smoking in the last 6 months, and in Toronto 88.8% did so [3]. Further a significant increase in crack smoking has been shown among persons who inject drugs in Vancouver from 7.4% in 1996 to 42.6% in 2005 [4]. The negative consequences that can result from crack smoking range from extreme social marginalization to elevated morbidity and mortality [5, 6]. Of particular concern, users suffer from high rates of infectious diseases, such as HCV and HIV [1, 5]. Additionally, sores on the lips and mouth from smoking crack cocaine, which are common amongst users [7], provide a route for the transmission of infectious diseases when users do not have access to sterile and proper crack pipes and are compelled to share a pipe with others [8, 9]. Further exacerbating the risks of transmission and other health problems is the makeshift equipment used by crack smokers when no safe equipment is available, including wire scouring pads and glass stems, both of which have concerns of breaking and causing cuts [10]. Brillo screens, which are steel wool impregnated with soap, are also known to break apart during use, allowing for the particles to be inhaled and lead to breathing problems [11]. The use of unsafe smoking equipment, also contributes to the experience of pipes exploding while smoking, further contributing to the high reports of burns and lesions among users [12].
We observed that the increase in crack pipe distribution services coincided with a corresponding increase in the uptake of crack pipes obtained through health service points only. Further, rates of reporting health problems associated with crack smoking declined significantly after the crack pipe distribution program was implemented. In the multivariable analysis, compared to obtaining crack pipes through other non-health service sources only, obtaining pipes through health service points only was significantly and negatively associated with reporting health problems from smoking crack. These findings suggest that the recent expansion of crack pipe distributions in this setting has likely served to reduce health problems experienced by crack smokers, achieving the desired outcome of the program.
This study has several limitations. First, the VIDUS and ACCESS cohorts are not random samples and therefore generalizability of the findings may be limited. Second, data used in the study, including those for the primary explanatory and outcome variables, were solely based on self-report and thus could be subject to reporting bias, including socially desirable responses. Although efforts were made to prompt participants to report all sources of crack pipes in the past 6 months, including opportunistic sources, the pipe sources may have been incorrectly categorized due to self-report bias. However, self-reported behavioural data has been shown to be largely accurate among adult drug-using populations [28]. Lastly, as with any observational research, unmeasured confounders may exist although we sought to reduce this bias through adjustment of statistical models using key predictors of health problems associated with crack smoking. As this was an observational study we cannot infer causation between crack pipe acquisition and experiencing health problems. Also, while we conducted the sensitivity analysis for participants who were lost to follow-up in one or more years prior to the end of the study period, and showed that the results remained the same, it is impossible to confirm whether attrition was random or not, and therefore there is still a possibility that attrition may have under- or over-estimated the results. 2ff7e9595c
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