Cocaine and freebase evaporation

[Try2swipe]

Hey guys, I searched about this in the forums but I can't find anything yet, so I'm posting a new thread

I guess that almost everyone here has heard before that cocaine can't be smoked because it burns very faster and it'll be a big waste of the product, so the question is, why does this happens? In chemical terms, why freebase cocaine (like crack or cheese) can be smoked but cocaine HCl can only be injected or snorted?

I hope that anyone can give me a useful answer, I've been searching about this all the night in many places but there isn't enough information, cheers

 

[szuko000]

Pretty sure it has to do with the fact that a freebase is not bound by any salt configuration so it is less stable. That lesser stability translates into a lower boiling point. You can think of a salt as being stable as it is neutral in charge, that neutrality means that it isnt going to want to exist in a different form as readily. Since you would need to dissociate the bond between the freebase and its negative ion that takes energy generally more energy then the decomposition temperature or closer to it.

Salts also freely dissociate in aqueous solution as they are composed on positive and negative ions. These ions can interact with the H3O+ and OH- ions that compose water... that is the whole "like dissolves like" saying you follow in chemistry. Freebase is just the positively charged component, cant dissociate into two ions, cant dissolve in water.

This is all general theres a bit more too it then this because its a very big topic. You also have the individual constituents of the molecule to think about, some will go from long chain to cyclic when heat is applied and some salts require or give off energy upon dissociation (this is why lye gets hot) a lot of things come into play as you are talking about basic properties of compounds.

 

[Pilll_head]

The free-basing also makes drugs like coke and opioids absorb better when snorted or smoked. Your nasal passages and lungs are bathed in little blood vessels but it has to pass through the tissue first. Free bases are neutral and those pass much easier than salts do. But when taking orally, free-base vs. salt doesn't really matter because your intestines pretty much free-base it for you.

 

[LaGaFàNi]

The HCL salt is formed at the amine link where the methyl group is attached. When the freebase is made into hcl, the NH becomes NHCL. Free amine groups (not salts) are what tends to make molecules (like Amp. freebase) vaporisable without degradation, as the free H ion on the amine group makes it so (don't ask me why). When turned into salts, this volatility is lost because the amine group is no longer prone to evaporation. (ammoniac (NH3) + HCL forms a stable salt whereas ammoniac on its own is quite volatile). That's why your HCL salts will be prone to degradation and will form more toxic fumes than a form of cocaine where the amine group is "free".