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Cocaine prices around the world

economist.com

11–20 of 23 posts

Re: Cocaine prices around the world

#11
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.

Re: Cocaine prices around the world

#12
post #7
post #4

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.

"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…

With those figures, I think cocaine is a healthier option

Re: Cocaine prices around the world

#13
post #5

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/…

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.

Re: Cocaine prices around the world

#14
post #5

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/…

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.

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

Re: Cocaine prices around the world

#15

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.

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

Re: Cocaine prices around the world

#16
post #8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

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

Re: Cocaine prices around the world

#18
post #15

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.

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

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

Re: Cocaine prices around the world

#20
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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