K drugs: what they are and why Brazil's largest criminal organization stopped selling them

“A devastating blow that paralyzes the body and disconnects from reality.”

“Paranoia combined with tachycardia in which you may faint, temporarily paralyze, or not recognize friends and family.”

“The zombie drug.”

“Piripaque de Chaves” (Brazilian expression that refers to a false comical fainting of the character El Chavo del Ocho).

What you just read are the effects and the most popular names of K drugs.

The Brazilian criminal organization First Capital Command (PCC) vetoed the sale of this type of narcotics in places under its control, as confirmed to BBC News Brazil by two sources who work in the fight against drug trafficking and who asked not to be identified.

The order would be documented through wiretaps, the informants indicated.

In the recording – made a year ago according to sources – a member of the PCC whose telephone calls were intercepted with authorization from the Court claimed that the leader had ordered that the order be carried out immediately.

The consequences of this “rescue,” as the faction's announcements are called, are already reflected in the seizures made in Sao Paulo, the PCC's main market.

“Before, K9 and K2 were found in 30% of operations. Today that figure has dropped to 10%,” says one of the sources.

But how are K drugs produced? How do they get to Brazil and then are distributed?

And why did the PCC, which has its most profitable business in drugs, decide to veto the sale of these specifically?

BBC News Brazil spoke with delegates and public security experts to understand the current dynamics around K drugs, which worries the authorities and, apparently, also the drug traffickers themselves.

The PCC's reasons for banning K-drugs

According to sources consulted for this article, the PCC prohibited the consumption of drug K in 2023 in the “leading areas”, as the areas where narcotics are sold are known.

The intention would be not to harm the trafficking of other drugs, which is the organization's main source of income.

The decision was made after PCC leaders realized that excessive use of K2s and K9s was attracting police presence.

“When a man consumes them in the favela he can fall and hit his head, get sick, and this leads to public authorities going there, such as the police and the ambulance. “This draws a lot of attention and creates confusion,” said a source linked to the police.

“If the customer goes there to buy drugs and sees the police and medical personnel, they turn around and stop buying or look elsewhere.”

Another interviewee claimed to be unaware of this veto, but considered that it made sense according to the logic of the faction.

The PCC “focuses on profit and has that calculation of costs and benefits in the context of drug sales, that is why they may be prohibiting the K9,” explained Paes Manso, author of “The War: the rise of the PCC and the world of crime in Brazil.”

“It is a rational analysis of a billion-dollar business. The PCC has been operating in the drug market for 30 years and has a business vision,” he stated.

The researcher from the University of Sao Paulo recalls that there are precedents for this in the history of the PCC itself.

The command banned the use of crack cocaine in prisons in the early 2000s to maintain order in its facilities.

As Paes Manso explains, the doctor Drauzio Varella said at the time that, if drug use was so widespread in prisons, especially in the old Carandiru prison, stopping it was practically impossible.

Every week, in Carandiru – the scene of a massacre in 1992 and more recently converted into a park in the northern part of Sao Paulo – there was a “lawless second,” the researcher recalls.

This was the name given to the day when prisoners could settle scores: beat or even kill their opponents.

Paes Manso affirms that it was common for five or six people to be murdered on Mondays and that crack cocaine “increased this number exponentially.”

This occurred because most of the settlements were related to crack debts.

“As happened with crack, the K9 ban is an assessment of order and disorder,” Manso asserts.

“The chaos it causes in the market outweighs the profits. Crack has the potential to cause this outside of prisons, although for them the income still seems to make up for it.”

According to Manso, a faction of the PCC defends that crack should also be banned from the streets.

“They haven't made that decision yet, because crack is a drug that reaches the brain very quickly,” he says.

And he explains that “one puff (smoking crack with a pipe) produces an instantaneous effect and the user wants to repeat the experience quickly. Thus, he spends a fortune in just a few days. “It's a very profitable drug.”

What are K drugs

K drugs emerged from an experiment in the 1990s to try to synthetically produce therapeutic substances from marijuana.experts explain to BBC Brazil.

But what the scientists produced in this study was an extremely potent narcotic and at least a hundred times more intense than marijuana.

Experts point out that these varieties of synthetic cannabinoids are a group of new drugs that have gained an important space in the global black market.

Police have identified more than 300 different types around the world, toxicologist Maurício Yonamine, from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at USP, explained to BBC News Brazil.

In a short time, these drugs became a major public health problem in Brazil due to their high potential to cause dependence.

Today they are mainly found in the peripheral regions of Greater Sao Paulo.

Its side effects include aggression, paranoia, cardiac arrhythmia and even death.

The most common varieties are known as K2 and K9, but there are others on the market.

Carlos Castiglioni, agent of the State Department of Prevention and Repression of Drug Trafficking (Denarc) of the Civil Police of São
Paulo, explains that the difference between K drugs lies, basically, in the way of consuming them.

“This narcotic is a liquid that, when sprayed on plant leaves and teas in general, is conventionally called K2,” says Castiglioni.

“But when it is placed on paper or cardboard to be digested or consumed sublingually, we call it K9.”

The origin of the name K2, according to the agent, was in honor of the second highest mountain in the world, which is located between China and Pakistan.

This alludes to the word high in English, which means “high” and also “drugged,” and since this narcotic produces a very powerful effect, users called it K2.

The Denarc agent explains that traffickers often mix several dried plants in a blender to form the base of the drug.

In the mix there are different types of tea and dried herbs in general.

“Once in a while, they use a very small amount of marijuana to give it the smell and taste of marijuana,” he points out.

Where are they produced

According to the experts interviewed, the K drugs consumed in Brazil are mainly produced in India and China.

The concentrated liquid is easily exported to Brazil in bottles, each containing thousands of doses, according to experts from the Scientific Police.

Upon arrival in Brazil, this substance is diluted and mixed with others before being marketed.

However, experts explain, there is no standard and traffickers make several different mixtures to dilute it before selling the drug.

Alexandre Learth, director of the Narcotics Examination Center of the Technical-Scientific Superintendency of the Sao Paulo Police, affirms that this increases the profitability of the PCC, since it does not need a space to produce.

According to Learth, there are no records of laboratories manufacturing K drugs in Brazil.

“Everything indicates that the active ingredient comes from abroad and that there are only synthesis centers in Brazil. Hence this diversity of identified substances,” he states.

And he adds that “each laboratory dilutes it differently; some add marijuana and cocaine to the mix.”

Learth explains that even the K drugs found in seizures made in sequence and in the same neighborhood are “completely different.”

He argues that although they are classified as cannabinoids and synthetic opioids, they cannot be compared to marijuana.

“K drugs are part of groups of more recent narcotics, applied to plant substrates and paper for consumption,” he alleges.

Since they are cannabinoids, he continues, “there is a correlation with marijuana, but the effects are very different.”

The main difference, Learth points out, is that the synthetic cannabinoid acts with full force on two existing endocannabinoid receptors in the human body.

“We have CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors in our body. The synthetic cannabinoid acts on both, at the same time and with full force, unlike THC. That's why the K9 causes this lack of muscle control,” he asserts.

The expert states that, just as the synthetic cannabinoid binds more strongly to the receptor in the human body, it also disconnects more strongly and this causes immediate dependence.

For the director of the Scientific Police, however, the main drug-related problems in Brazil continue to be linked to cocaine consumption.

“It causes the biggest public safety problems. “The majority of violent deaths, traffic accidents and homicides are related to cocaine consumption, in addition to Cracolandia (a neighborhood of crack addicts in Sao Paulo) and other very serious public problems caused by this drug,” he explains.

According to Paes Manso, the fact that the K drug is increasingly present in nightlife worries the criminal organization, because it could cause problems with the community that lives in the areas where they operate, in addition to drawing the attention of the authorities.

“Street fights provoke rejection in their own communities, in families, and generate much greater resistance to drug trafficking,” argues the researcher.

“This implies causing a social imbalance, and it is not in the interest of the faction to devastate an entire neighborhood and cause chaos like this,” he adds.

The PCC also assesses that it needs to maintain connections with religious and community leaders, indicates Paes Manso.

“They don't do it out of ethics, but out of a business vision of the market,” he said.

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