Freebase

Freebasing is a process used to increase the potency of licit and illicit drugs. Freebasing refers to the chemical process of freeing the base of a drug and reducing impurities in order to produce a form of a drug that can be heated or vaporized in order to smoke it. The evolution of freebasing drugs dates back to before modern chemistry. Archeologists have found evidence of freebasing going back hundreds of years. Modern chemistry in the mid-1950s and 1960s provided for mechanisms to change the way that drugs such as nicotine were distributed to the public, and led to more widespread knowledge of freebasing. In the 1960s scientists at Philip Morris found that by using ammonia, nicotine could be freed in nicotine smoke, providing a more direct intense nicotine experience for smokers of tobacco.

Freebasing illicit drugs, especially cocaine, grew in popularity among U.S. drug users in the late 1970s. As the name implies, “freebase” is the base form of cocaine, as opposed to the salt form, and is prepared by neutralizing its compounding salt with an alkaline solution. Similar to how tobacco is treated with ammonia, one way of converting cocaine into freebase involves treating the cocaine with ether, a highly flammable liquid. This method of producing freebase is extremely dangerous [Page 309]because of the flammability of the ether solvent. Another method of freeing the base form of cocaine is to dissolve cocaine with an alkaline such as baking soda mixed with water. This method, which also results in cocaine that can be smoked, is known as crack. Crack is a lower purity form of freebase cocaine and contains sodium bicarbonate as impurity; however, the effects of smoking crack are still more immediate and intense than are the effects of snorting cocaine. Other drugs such as heroin and methamphetamine have been synthesized so that they can also be freebased. As with freebase cocaine, the “ice” form of methamphetamine provides a faster onset and greater potency than methamphetamine in other forms.

Ice methamphetamine, the freebase form of the drug, is shown with a glass pipe that has been used for smoking meth.