Liam Payne, Lamar Odom.
Liam Payne isn’t the first celebrity to be connected to pink cocaine.
Following the former One Direction member’s death in October 2024, a partial autopsy revealed that Payne had the substance in his system during his time of death, per ABC News. Us Weekly previously confirmed that Payne died at age 31 after falling from a third-floor balcony of a hotel in Buenos Aires.
Pink cocaine is a recreational drug typically mixing methamphetamine, ketamine and MDMA. Addiction specialist Richard Taite told Us in October 2024 that pink cocaine “has nothing to do with regular cocaine. It’s a synthetic psychedelic drug.” Taite noted that it is usually in powder form and has “hallucinogenic effects.”
Taite, who is the founder and chairman at Carrara Luxury Rehab & Addiction Treatment Center in Malibu, shared that consuming the substance, which gets its name from its pink hue, is similar to “taking MDMA, ecstasy and acid.”
“All these drugs do nothing but kill people,” he said of pink cocaine, which Taite shared is “coming in[to] fashion now,” and fentanyl. “They’re not like heroin and cocaine in the past. This is like garbage, all of it. [It’s] all dangerous today.”
Following Payne’s death, NBA star Lamar Odom revealed that he previously took pink cocaine, which is also called “Tuci.”
“Drugs could cause you to hallucinate,” Odom said to TMZ. “And if [Payne] was in a hallucination state, then who knows what would happen.”
Keep scrolling to see which other stars have been linked to pink cocaine:
Diddy
While Diddy hasn’t publicly spoken out about pink cocaine, the drug has been mentioned in a lawsuit against the music mogul. Record producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones accused Diddy of sexually harassing, drugging and threatening him while they lived and traveled together from September 2022 to November 2023.
In Jones’ complaint, he claimed that Diddy “required all employees from the butler, the chef to the housekeepers, [to] walk around with a pouch or fanny pack filled with cocaine, GHB, ecstasy, marijuana gummies and Tuci (a pink drug that is a combination of ecstasy and cocaine).”
Diddy denied Jones’ allegations and subsequently called him “a liar” who is “shamelessly looking for an undeserved payday,” per a February 2024 statement to Us from attorney Shawn Holley.
Months after news broke of Jones’ lawsuit, Diddy was arrested and charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and transportation to engage in prostitution. Diddy has denied the allegations. After being denied bail multiple times, the rapper remains in jail until his court date which is scheduled for May 5, 2025.
Lamar Odom
The retired basketball player and ex-husband to Kourtney Kardashian was hospitalized in 2015 after overdosing in a Nevada brothel. Since his near-death experience, Odom has become sober and has been candid about his struggles with substance abuse. He now owns a collection of recovery clinics.
“I’ve done a lot of things,” Odom said to TMZ in October 2024. “I’m not ashamed of it because it’s my testimony.”
The athlete opened up about his experience with pink cocaine and crack, noting that he heard “voices” and felt paranoid while under the influence.
“If you’re hearing voices, it’s hard to escape those voices,” he said while reacting to news of Payne’s cause of death. “God forbid if those voices tell him to do something that led to his fate.”
Liam Payne
Following Payne’s death in October 2024, Argentine authorities investigated the singer’s hotel room and found what “appeared to be narcotics and alcoholic beverages,” per a report obtained by Us.
Payne’s partial autopsy report showed that he had pink cocaine, cocaine, benzodiazepine and crack in his system when he died.
Prior to Payne’s passing, the musician was candid about his struggles with alcohol and drugs. Payne admitted he had a “problem” with “pills and booze” when he first started with One Direction.
“There is some stuff that I’ve definitely never spoken about,” he recalled during a 2021 interview on “The Diary of a CEO” podcast. “It was really, really, really severe. It was a problem.”
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