Cocaine prices around the world
economist.com
Cocaine prices around the world
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: Cocaine prices around the world
#2What, 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.
Re: Cocaine prices around the world
#3I see an opportunity for arbitrage.
Re: Cocaine prices around the world
#4Prices 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.
Re: Cocaine prices around the world
#5Interesting 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
Re: Cocaine prices around the world
#6Somewhat related - measuring consumption by looking for metabolic byproducts in waste water:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/aug/05/highereducation....
Given some more data points, and the above map - one could get some idea of the amount of money involved.
Re: Cocaine prices around the world
#7Prices 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.
"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://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?st...
Re: Cocaine prices around the world
#8Prices 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.
"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 price…
Are you using the straight Big Mac Index, or the Working-time Big Mac Index?
Re: Cocaine prices around the world
#9What, 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…
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.
Re: Cocaine prices around the world
#10I see an opportunity for arbitrage.
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