back to article Cocaine now cheaper than lager

The price of cocaine has dropped so dramatically in the last ten years that a line of Bolivian marching powder is now cheaper than a pint of lager or a glass of wine, the Telegraph reports. The Home Office - using data collected by police forces and the Serious Organised Crime Agency - reckons that while in 1998 a gram of …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.

Page:

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    eh?

    "the total weight of cocaine seized actually fell by 15 per cent a year, and it has halved in five years"

    what an utter stupid argument, just cuz you dont seize it, doesnt mean its not there!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Coke and Coke

    Perhaps Coke and Coke will be the new Rum and Coke?

    Sorry.

  3. Neil Stansbury
    Stop

    Huh?

    "A reduction in price may be associated with increased competition or reduced demand, not just increased availability."

    It's that kind of pitiful understanding of marketplace economics that has got us into the financial mess we're in now.

    Quod erat demonstrandum - ah how the brains of Britain runs our nation.

  4. Mark
    Dead Vulture

    Stimulant?

    "Those of you who are no longer prepared to stump £2.75 for a pint, but don't fancy cocaine as an alternative stimulant"

    Are you implying that alcohol is a stimulant? Much the opposite, it is a depressant.

    Please, Wikipedia is *right there*, you might want to look at it some time.

  5. Patrick O'Reilly
    Dead Vulture

    Old Drug - New Addict

    It's strange but the price of illegal drugs is falling, but it's costing me more and more to get my caffeine hit.

    Ah C8H10N4O2 is there anything that you can't make me do?!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bloody Conservatives

    They complain when prices go up, now they're complaining when prices go down.

    There's no pleasing some people. I think they just don't like the government.

  7. JRallo
    Thumb Up

    Tax it...

    Tax it... Make it cost £5 per line... Win Win! Pays for rehab, road construction and what not!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Stupid

    The governement says that alcohol and smoking are bad for us so they crank up the taxes to make said naughty products to pricey to buy. Drugs however are cheap as chips in comparison, you can buy an E for £1.50 !! - A whole night of sweating and gurning with chavs for £1.50 or you could get pi$$ed for £100. Then they wonder why more and more people are turning to drugs, because they are cheap, they are trying to take our normal sources of relaxation so people are turning to "alternatives".

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can we get

    a Playmobil mockup of this, please??? :-)

  10. Tony Gosling
    Happy

    Drug Prices Falling Whilst Tobacco Goes Up

    The price of cannabis has also fallen significantly in real terms over the last twenty years. Just goes to show that all that prohibition and war on drugs has had little effect. If we could control and tax the market like with nicotine then the prices would be going up every year and usage would actually reduce.

    Shame the Conservatives are spouting the same old rubbish and advocating the same failed policies we have had for the last thirty years. The intelligent response would be to put the dealers out of business, bring in tax revenue and make the products less glamorous and exciting by selling them in Boots.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Misleading title

    Lager now more expensive than cocaine.

    See what punitive taxation does now?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Minister thundering down wrong path...

    >These startling figures show the reality of drug use in Britain.

    Err, no. These startling figures show the ineffectiveness of the police force, border control and HM Customs and Excise in stopping the stuff from entering the country in such huge quantities as to make it so cheap. I suggest Wacky Jacqui creates a database immediately to count all incoming cocaine shipments so they can be tracked and intercepted whever PC Plod needs to be seen to be doing something. Tag the stuff with rfids and force the drug mules to carry ID cards. That should sort it.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wonderful stuff

    I'm off early today for a swift half...a line of Charlie.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    It's not that drugs are too cheap...

    Lager is clearly too expensive. What this shows is that in order to maintain the price differential, the government needs to urgently slash the level of alcohol tax, in order to massively reduce the price of our favourite tipples.

    This will also have several positive side effects on the current economic blip/recession/slump/depression/apocalypse*:

    Firstly, people will be happy and dancing (vomiting coming a close second) in the streets.

    Secondly the boost in spending in pubs, including a rise in the sales of crisps, peanuts, kebabs and other ancillary items, will provide a positive economic stimulus.

    Thirdly it will help to relieve the problem of unemployment. There will be extra work as bar staff, and for those unfortunates unable to get work, there will at least be plenty of cheap booze to spend their giros on.

    Put simply, there are no downsides. This is clearly the only correct move for the Chancellor. Sensible Policies, for a Happy Britain!

    *delete as applicable

    Wot no pint of beer logo?!?!? Had to use a smiley, drunken face instead.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    old news

    When my little brother moved to Newport,Gwent he found no-one ordered drinks in pubs/bars because coke was so much cheaper most people were on it. And this was about 15 years ago.

  16. Neil Bauers
    Joke

    Nose ajax ...

    ... drives you clean round the bend!

    Sorry I'm going.

  17. Ian Bradshaw

    Taxman

    Can't imagine which of the two the government can't tax.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It may be 40 sobs a G

    But how much of that G is the "Real Thing"?

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More fun, too

    not sure on the factual accuracy though, 20 lines out of a gram?

  20. Jimmy Floyd

    Pointless

    I doubt I'll be the last to rant at this junk science but here goes anyway:

    * Not comparing like with like: a pint might be £2.75 in a pub but it's cheaper at home. Know any cocaine houses where one can drop in for a line? Me neither.

    * What's a "hit?": A cheeky half-pint might equally be comparable.

    * More confusion: The effects of alcohol last hours; the effects of cocaine minutes. You'll probably need more of the latter, then.

    * Another pointless comparison: The government has failed to stem the tide of Sterling leaving this country, to the extent that a euro is now worth roughly the same as a pound. This is outrageous (and equally irrelevant).

  21. Wize

    They should drop the price of booze

    The government is turning people to drugs with the price of beer.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The cheaper the better

    "Think of it as evolution in action", as Larry Niven was wont to remark.

  23. Richard

    Just goes to show...

    ...booze is too expensive. The government should make alcohol illegal so it has the same (lack of) tax as Coke, and then it can compete on a level playing field in terms of price.

  24. Craig
    Thumb Up

    Simple Solution

    Put the price of beer down to 90p a pint.

    Problem sorted.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lager is better

    I'm not surprised its cheaper than lager...the stuff you get in the UK is rubbish! Erm, so I'm told...

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    However

    One thing a price drop is not an indication of is a monopoly.

    Which is more than can be said for train prices...

  27. Red Bren

    Dodgy comparison

    A pint costs more than coke because of the huge amount of excise duty levied by the government. These "shocking" figures could be instantly fixed by cutting tax on booze or legalising and taxing drugs.

    Of course, either of these solutions might encourage recreation instead of generating income.

  28. Matt Smart
    Coat

    This "crack"s me up...

    I'm leaving, I'm leaving! (Yes, I know they're not quite the same...)

  29. b
    Happy

    War on Drugs

    = EPIC FAIL

    "It's a serious indictment of Labour's failure to combat drug crime and stem the flow of drugs onto our streets."

    Oh get stuffed, your policies would have the exact same affect.

    Acid smiley, just because.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    This is what happens ...

    ... when the aim of the "War on Drugs" is not to reduce any harm from drugs, but to simply ban ban and ban.

    I heard a spokesperson on the radio recently saying "we have seized more cocaine than ever before. Therefore the war on drugs is being won."

    No, dickbrain. If you are using the amount of drugs seized to measure your success, then don't be surprised if you seize more and more every year. Otherwise the police would have nothing to do.

    Now if you wanted to measure the success of the "War on Drugs" as a reduction in people treated for addiction/overdoses, then you might consider scrapping prohibition ....

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Why not...

    ...start taxing it. That'll get the price back up sharpish.

  32. James
    Paris Hilton

    "the total weight of cocaine seized actually fell by 15 per cent a year

    And our current gov think this is a good stat. Like it’s a success to be finding less of the stuff flooding in.

    Lets face it the two figures match up - Seized amount down = more getting through to street = more supply = lower price.

    Simple logic. If they seized a high percentage of shipments then that would cause the price to go up, both from supply and demand as well as from the dealers having to charge more to re-coop costs of lost shipments.

    Paris - cus even she knows about supply and demand.

  33. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    Charlie's mates.

    It's not true that London's media is run by friends of Charlie, is it? I mean, if it were, you'd end up with IT / technology newsletters reporting on the cost of a line as if it's something the rest of us could give a toss about?

  34. Yorkshirepudding
    Alert

    all together now

    rang dang diggidy dangy dang pipe liiiiiines........

  35. Daniel Garcia
    Thumb Down

    When...

    you policy too many things, you do too little on each point.

    what do you think about a bunch of ignorant that can not see the difference between opium base drugs and extasis-like drugs?

    they will never reconize that the biggest damage of drugs are the mafia related one, not the heath ones.

    My cynic side always told me that when a state do not tax someting is becouse they cant physically or they doing it in other more efficent way(for them).

    Btw, the price should be per 1 gram of active subtance. if it is not the argument is flawed.

    Where do they get 1 gram of pure colombian at 20 quid in UK?

    Exactly.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    The other side of the mirror

    Rather than making charlie look cheap, It makes paying £2.75 for a pint of fluid that is 95% water look bloody expensive!

    Pass the razor...

    ...at least until Brown figures out how much he can tax he can make on it

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    £20? Prove it!

    'Using data collected by the police'

    Um... how exactly? Do they ask for a price list from any dealers they bust?

    Sounds like a wild guesstimation to me.

    If they want us to believe that there are people out there selling it for £20 a gram they need to prove it. Ideally by giving us their names, telephone numbers and an introduction. Obviously we would need to try a bit. Just to test that it really is cocaine.

    Being serious for a moment though - We have the government saying the price drop is because demand has gone down, we have the opposition saying that it is because the amount being smuggled in has gone up. There is a third option though - The dealers are just cutting it with more shit.

    The government have previously stated themselves that cocaine siezed is much less pure than 10 years ago, so surely it has nothing to do with demand changing, just that a gram of pure coke now makes 4 grams on the street instead of two - As a result the supply has gone up (sort of) but people are less willing to pay £££s for it.

  38. Michael
    Stop

    This is shocking.

    Where's the quality/cost breakdown?

  39. ben
    Heart

    Keep it illegal!!!!

    Or the prices will go up. The government loves taxing stuff that gets you wasted. Wobbilies were one squid last time i checked, down from a fiver. That's consumer power for you, a night of dancing and no need to buy a drink for a quid!

    Must dash now, off to murder some grannies and steal their pension to pay for my drug addiction. Being the head of a global bank during in these hard times means expenses won't cover my habit.

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Time to send messages eh Jaqui

    Or down / up grade these filthy drugs... oh wait, wrong story.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    will you do price checking in

    Cash 'n' Carrion

  42. Evil Auditor Silver badge

    @Lester

    'jiggery-pokery' as in 'having a crack at'? (no pun intended) And no, I'm not suggesting anything.

    EA

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Great credit crunch tip Reg!

    I'm going to stop being a pissed up drunkard and become a doped up junkie..

    Any other cost saving ideas?

    Many Thanks!

  44. Pete

    Could it be that

    cocaine has stayed the same price, or increased, and the stuff sold as cocaine just has less cocaine in it? OFT any comment?

  45. Lionel Baden

    I reckon

    they are thinking of ways to try and tax it :)

  46. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Notice..

    how they dont jump to the conclusion there is too much tax on Beer.

    As all hard drugs dont come with VAT.

    *\. Mines the one with the whiskey flask with a pad lock on.

  47. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Taxation

    Simple, tax charlie at the same level as booze and the prices will go up, good source of revenue too. Of course the whole legality thing might be a slight problem but nothing insurmountable.

  48. Lloyd
    Stop

    20 quid a gram.?????

    What the hell are they buying? Speed with some glucose and anaesthetic thrown in? I've known people to sell it for £40 a gram but it's always cr@p quality (apparently).

  49. Thomas Jolliffe
    Alert

    £2.75 for a pint of lager?

    Ouch! Come up North, dear friends, and enjoy the delights of cheap booze!

  50. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Hmmm

    Some might argue the quality of a pint has remained reasonably constant over the last 10 years while the quality of charlie for your average punter has nose dived.

Page:

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like