

Cocaine prices around the world - csbartus
http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13931336&source=features_box4

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dtf
What, no data for Colombia?! This map shows the street price of a gram of
"cocaine", as advertised, but it doesn't tell us anything about the purity of
that gram. A recent police report in the UK suggested street purity had
dropped from 30% to around 9%, compared to the 70% of stuff hot out of the
factory. A recent government sponsored report on drugs misuse in Britain found
the supply chain to be completely flexible: big busts higher up the chain
would simply result in more cutting agents added lower down, with customers
seemingly willing to pay standard street price for whatever purity they could
get. Demand is rising, if anything. It's interesting that police have now
turned their attention to the supply chain of the cutting agents. We're
fighting a war on laxatives.

~~~
demosthenes
More detailed figures and trends here, with both wholesale and retail prices:
<http://www.unodc.org/pdf/WDR_2006/wdr2006_chap5_cocaine.pdf>

With those price differences, it's no wonder the illegal drugs trade is so
tough to shut down.. you can lose 9/10 shipments and still be profitable.

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samlittlewood
Somewhat related - measuring consumption by looking for metabolic byproducts
in waste water:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/aug/05/highereducation....](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/aug/05/highereducation.research)

Given some more data points, and the above map - one could get some idea of
the amount of money involved.

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froo
Interesting article.

From having a friend who has an addiction to cocaine here in Perth, I can
confirm the $285 figure is pretty close to correct, although it is in
Australian dollars, not USD, so with that in mind I decided to run some of the
figures in the article through a currency converter (against the US dollar) to
get a more normalised view.

    
    
      USD - $97/g USD
      CAD - $83.47/g USD
      AUD - $227.18/g USD
      NZD - $198.87/g USD
    

So umm, yay us for having the most expensive cocaine in the world?

~~~
colinprince
Interesting.

The chart says "$ per gram" so I had assumed the prices were already
represented in US dollars.

Anyone else got info on local prices? Esp Canada, NZ.

~~~
mikeyur
Here in Canada (west coast) it's usually around $80/g (cdn). This number
obviously fluctuates based on quality, dealer, etc.

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eru
I see an opportunity for arbitrage.

~~~
GavinB
The prices directly reflect the difficulty of arbitrage by country.

~~~
eru
Exactly. The difficulties create the price differences. And the price
differences fuel the trade.

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nickmolnar2
The chart doesn't specify what their data sources are. There are a number of
conflicting agendas that go into the reporting of illegal markets. The police
want to make the criminals appear wealthier, to justify more police
enforcement, so they tend to inflate statistics. Caught criminals want to be
able to hide some of their cash so they tend to deflate their prices.

Some of these differences likely reflect the reporting methods, and not the
underlying markets.

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joubert
Prices seem to be in $ instead of purchasing power. So not really meaningful,
except insofar as it indicates where someone buying with $ would find the
cheapest.

~~~
froo
_"Prices seem to be in $ instead of purchasing power. So not really
meaningful, except insofar as it indicates where someone buying with $ would
find the cheapest."_

I decided to use the Big Mac Index to satisfy your hunger for knowledge
(pardon the pun) to figure out purchasing power.

Appropriate Links at the end of the comment. As with my above comment
regarding street prices here in AU - it is assumed that the prices are in the
local currency, so these figures represent local currencies.

    
    
      US - 27.17 big macs
      Canada - 23.71 big macs
      New Zealand - 63.67 big macs
      Australia - 82.61 big macs
    

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index>

[http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?st...](http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11793125)

~~~
joubert
Are you using the straight Big Mac Index, or the Working-time Big Mac Index?

~~~
eru
I guess the straight one. Otherwise he would have given the figure in hours
not Big Macs.

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Mistone
the reporter however never made it back from columbia, where she is now
seeking permanent residence

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Alex3917
You used to be able to buy real Mate de Coca on Amazon. I have no idea how
they never got caught for that until recently. They are working on bringing
back a version without the cocaine now, last I checked.

~~~
mikeyur
Coca leaves != Cocaine

You don't get 'high' from drinking Maté de coca, it actually has less of an
effect than coffee.

There are a lot of chemicals and processing that go into making cocaine - it's
not just coca leaves.

<http://www.cocaine.org/process.html>

~~~
Alex3917
I wasn't claiming it gets high. I just think it's funny that Amazon got away
with selling it.

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csomar
from $2 to $80 or $90 is a big business when it's with tonnes, this explain
why it's a dangerous work!

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zackattack
Cocaine is God's way of telling you that you have too much money, except in
Peru.

