Black cocaine, also known as Coca Negra, is a mixture of regular cocaine

Cocaine

Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...

 base

Freebase (chemistry)

Freebase or free base refers to the pure basic form of an amine, as opposed to its salt form. The amine is usually an alkaloid natural product. Free base is commonly used in organic chemistry and pharmaceuticals to describe the unprotonated amine form of a compound.Most alkaloids are unstable in...

 or cocaine hydrochloride

Hydrochloride

In chemistry, hydrochlorides are salts resulting, or regarded as resulting, from the reaction of hydrochloric acid with an organic base . This is also known as muriate, derived from hydrochloric acid's other name: muriatic acid....

 with various other substances. These other substances are added

• to camouflage
  Camouflage
  Camouflage is a method of concealment that allows an otherwise visible animal, military vehicle, or other object to remain unnoticed, by blending with its environment. Examples include a leopard's spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier and a leaf-mimic butterfly...
  
   the typical appearance (pigments and dyes, e.g. charcoal),
• to interfere with color-based drug test
  Drug test
  A drug test is a technical analysis of a biological specimen – for example urine, hair, blood, sweat, or oral fluid / saliva – to determine the presence or absence of specified parent drugs or their metabolites...
  
  s (mixing thiocyanate
  Thiocyanate
  Thiocyanate is the anion [SCN]−. It is the conjugate base of thiocyanic acid. Common derivatives include the colourless salts potassium thiocyanate and sodium thiocyanate. Organic compounds containing the functional group SCN are also called thiocyanates...
  
  s and iron salts
  Iron(III) chloride
  Iron chloride, also called ferric chloride, is an industrial scale commodity chemical compound, with the formula FeCl3. The colour of iron chloride crystals depends on the viewing angle: by reflected light the crystals appear dark green, but by transmitted light they appear purple-red...
  
   or cobalt
  Cobalt
  Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. It is found naturally only in chemically combined form. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal....
  
   salts forms deep red complexes in solution),
• to make the mixture undetectable by drug sniffing dogs
  Detection dog
  A detection dog or sniffer dog is a dog that is trained to and works at using its senses to detect substances such as explosives, illegal drugs, or blood. Hunting dogs that search for game and search dogs that search for missing humans are generally not considered detection dogs...
  
   (activated carbon
  Activated carbon
  Activated carbon, also called activated charcoal, activated coal or carbo activatus, is a form of carbon that has been processed to make it extremely porous and thus to have a very large surface area available for adsorption or chemical reactions.The word activated in the name is sometimes replaced...
  
  , absorbs trace odors).

Since the result is usually black, it is generally smuggled as toner

Toner

Toner is a powder used in laser printers and photocopiers to form the printed text and images on the paper. In its early form it was simply carbon powder. Then, to improve the quality of the printout, the carbon was melt-mixed with a polymer...

, fingerprint powder

Fingerprint powder

Fingerprint powders are fine powders used in dusting for fingerprints by crime scene investigators and others in law enforcement. The process of dusting for fingerprints involves various methods intended to get the particles of the powder to adhere to residue left by friction ridge skin on the...

, fertilizer

Fertilizer

Fertilizer is any organic or inorganic material of natural or synthetic origin that is added to a soil to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants. A recent assessment found that about 40 to 60% of crop yields are attributable to commercial fertilizer use...

, pigment

Pigment

A pigment is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. This physical process differs from fluorescence, phosphorescence, and other forms of luminescence, in which a material emits light.Many materials selectively absorb...

 or metal moldings. The pure cocaine base can be recovered from the mixture by extraction

Extraction (chemistry)

Extraction in chemistry is a separation process consisting in the separation of a substance from a matrix. It may refer to Liquid-liquid extraction, and Solid phase extraction....

 (freebase) or acid-base extraction

Acid-base extraction

Acid-base extraction is a procedure using sequential liquid–liquid extractions to purify acids and bases from mixtures based on their chemical properties....

 (hydrochloride) using common organic solvent

Solvent

A solvent is a liquid, solid, or gas that dissolves another solid, liquid, or gaseous solute, resulting in a solution that is soluble in a certain volume of solvent at a specified temperature...

s.

It was reported that in the mid-1980s Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet

Augusto Pinochet

Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...

ordered the army to build a clandestine cocaine laboratory in Chile where chemists mixed cocaine with other chemicals to produce what Pinochet's former top aide for intelligence Manuel Contreras described as a "black cocaine" capable of being smuggled past drug agents in the US and Europe.

Black cocaine was detected in Bogota, Colombia in May 1998. In 2008, a new type of black cocaine was discovered by police in Spain. It had been manufactured into rubber-like sheets and made into luggage.