Ken Finn is a prop master who has made fake drugs for filmmakers. He says "cocaine is probably one of the two or three easiest [drugs to fabricate]. It's just a white powder." That white powder is usually inositol, a common dietary supplement.
Joe Bernardi of Hopes&Fears reports:
Not just any white powdery substance will do, of course. Says Ken: "You don't want to use powdered sugar because it gets sticky. You really don't want to use flour either because if it gets damp at all it just becomes clumpy." Instead, it's almost always inositol, a B-vitamin compound. "In fact," says Ken, "if you ever snort it, you might get this familiar feeling. A certain memory, like, 'Hey, I've tasted this in the back of my throat before.' What I've learned since then is that actual cocaine is oftentimes cut with this stuff. If you ever do shitty [cocaine], You might actually be ingesting this stuff without even knowing it."
Finn says that sometimes actors request genuine cocaine instead of faux blow:
"A term was recently coined in the industry. No names involved. We call it 'going hot.' If there's a long week, and it's toward the end of the day, and and there's a snorting scene, the actor might request that you 'go hot,' or you switch the fake stuff for the real stuff. It happens more frequently than you might think."
