English to Italian Social Sciences Social Science, Sociology, Ethics, etc. Substance Abuse

Cocaine is transesterified by liver esterases to cocaethylene, which has cocaine-like pharmacologic properties, in the presence of ethanol (Dean et al., 1991). Both ethanol and cocaethylene reduce mean cocaine clearance by 47% and 26%, respectively (Parker et al, 1996). The effect of cocaine is therefore prolonged and the ’comedown’ following cocaine is diminished. Although more detailed toxicological information was not made available for the present study, one could assume that cocaine had a facilitating role in causing death in the polydrug combination cases reported here.