You can test the purity of cocaine hydrochloride by freebasing the white powder to 'free the base' cocaine from the hydrochloride. Essentially this is a process that when completed will let you know how much of your cocaine is actually cocaine (you'll probably be underwhelmed with surprise).
Generally street cocaine ranges up to
about 30-60% purity for the maddest stuff that goes around. I have no figures to support this statement, but every time I've seen someone do a kitchen freebasing of some nice coke, they end up with an answer of bout 30-60% purity. This isn't to say that the coke is shit, if you receive this answer, it just means it's normal. People tend to expect that kind of purity. It also means when someone tells you they have 95% pure columbian fish scale, they've either gone there to pick it up themselves, or they're lying through their arse hehehe.
Typically freebasing cocaine involves mixing, say, a typical quantity of cocaine in warm water with about a half quantity of bicarb soda and heating and stirring until the reaction is complete. In the end what is left over, is usually some percentage (like 30-60%) of original weight of home-based cocaine. I say home-based because it's not technically cocaine freebase, which requires some more tricky chemistry and noxious chemicals. But, what you're left with is, technically, crack. (When smoked, the rock crack and any unreacted bicarb soda burns with a popping, cracking sound... hence the name). However, it's not normal cocaine, and since it's freebased in a fashion, it's not water soluble either, which means you can't snort it, because it won't dissolve in your nose. And, you can't eat it, because it's not really active that way either.
So there you are - you know how pure your cocaine was, but you can't use that portion as normal coke anymore. The process can be scaled down, I assume, though I haven't seen it done with smaller quantities than about a gram. If anyone wants specifics for this, email me. I'd rather not put a detailed crack recipe on Australian Drug Discussion just now.
BigTrancer
[ 19 June 2002: Message edited by: BigTrancer ]