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.
  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.

  51. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Clear proof

    It's clear proof they're taxing alcohol too highly. Reduce the cost of alcohol before we all get addicted to cocaine during the credit crunch!

  52. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Remind me

    Never to go out with Lester. 10-20 lines out of a gram? You stingy git.

    Paris because she knows the only way to do it is with a nice fat one.

  53. Adam Foxton

    So, for £20 per gram

    What do you actually get? I mean it's not all going to be coke- what's the purity of it on average at the various price points? And has the cost per gram - compensated for any drop in quality- actually fallen?

    Compared with lager that's single-figure-percentages, it could still look promising...

    How about a damage-to-body-from-active-ingredients chart?

  54. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    So NOW we see why it's not legal

    Not enough profit for whoever gets put in charge...

  55. Sooty

    jumpimng to concluusions a bit quickly

    "These startling figures show the reality of drug use in Britain"

    or, just possibly, that alcohol is horrifically overpriced.

  56. blackworx
    Boffin

    "Carpet fresh now cheaper than lager"

    Fixed that for you.

  57. richard
    Stop

    have a look on ebay

    for this item no:

    270341270300

  58. TeeCee Gold badge
    Coat

    Obvious really.

    When down the boozer, you have to go outside into the cold and peeing rain for a drag these days, but you can snort a couple of lines while comfortably seated in the warm and dry.

    Mine's the one with the, er, small bag of icing sugar in the pocket.

  59. Robert Ramsay

    £2.75 a pint?!

    Off to the Wetherspoons with you!

  60. J-Wick
    Happy

    You're all missing the real issue here...

    Where can I find someone to sort me aaaht?

  61. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    20 lines per gram?!

    Who divvied that up, a Scotsman?

    There are some faux-barnet clad songstresses who'd be lucky to get 20 lines per kilo!

    Happy icon because it looks like a smilie.

  62. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What maroons!

    Figure in the cost of interdiction efforts, usage enforcement, court costs, prison costs, lost productivity, and I'm sure a host of other costs.

    Now, figure what eliminating all that and adding a nice tax for the sale of legal drugs, profits to liquor/drug stores, less costs for substance abuse clinics and staff and retraining all the prison and other enforcement officials that are now looking for new positions.

    The results? You figure it out, but a substantial bit of our national deficit is likely to go away, and we stop subsidizing the most vile criminals in the world with tax-free loot.

  63. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Look at it another way...

    If cocaine and heroin are coming down in price, then so also should crimes such as muggings and burglaries. Junkies wont need as much money to feed their habit, therefore crime goes down.

    Of course this crime reduction is spoilt by the contrasting increase in the price of beer.

    Don't be surprised if you see this description in an appeal to find a mugger next time you see CrimeWatch -

    'Middle-aged man, 5'8", large belly, greying hair and long beard, wearing 'Suffolk Beer Festival 2006' T-shirt and a CAMRA badge.'

    Mine's the one with a pocketful of unused beer tokens because they ran out of beer.

  64. Nicholas Ettel
    Heart

    Sarah Bee

    This has nothing to do with this article:

    Decently commented articles trigger my ADD, as such I tend to scroll only to read comments posted by Sarah Bee. Why? I find her hilarious. Please post more. Thanks!

  65. Don Sinclair

    Cocaine?!

    I hear that the old 'trumpet' is now so cheap that the more 'switch on' members of the Welsh Philarmonic have now actually started to use 'hooter' for cleaning the valves on....you guessed it - their trumpets! This has however caused some problems during performances which all stems from what has become affectionately known as 'trumpet blow back', which occurs quite frequently on most brass instruments. Basically musicians, on occassion suck instead of blow, which deposits (over the course of a performance) a micro thin layer of 'jazz dust' on the mucous membrane of the victim, causing problems with timing, sweating and irritability. Recently during a performance of 'Dylan Thomas - man, legend, crap poet' perfomed in the Llandewi Brefi Village Hall, a fight broke out between the lead cornet player and the second baritone, when, due to the impact of 'gac inhalation' the cornet player started playing that famous U-Roy classic 'Me Woman aint got no rizlas' in the middle of the national anthem.

    Has anybody else got some 'chortle - worthy' anecdotes?

  66. Ian Sawyer
    Thumb Up

    How Much???

    I wish someone would tell my man it is now £20 a G.

    When I get home i'm gonna rack up a couple of London to Edinburgh size

    lines and talk bollox for 2 hours. Hmm lovely.

  67. A J Stiles
    Unhappy

    Yeah but

    Cocaine is *not* cheaper than beer!

    A nasty mix of amphetamine, bicarbonate of soda and ground-up aspirin, however, may well be cheaper than beer. As the penalty for dealing substandard drugs is no harsher than the penalty for dealing high-quality drugs, there is a direct incentive *against* selling quality product.

  68. Muscleguy
    Boffin

    Dose response curves matter

    @Mark

    Alcohol is both a stimulant and a depressant, which depends on which part of the dose-response curve you are looking at. In short 1pint or so is a stimulant, more than two points is a depressant.

  69. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It is so obvious we are not in a democracy

    Most people would just legalise everything, bar straight poison.

    And all the dictators at the top don't want to do what the people want.

    WTF, this is a democracy or it isn't, we should have a vote every year, and abide by that.

    If not let's just accept that we live in a totalitarian, rolling 4 year dictatorship, and start sorting out the revolution for democracy and freedom.

    With the depression kicking in, there won't be much else to do, if you go from democracy at least you get a chance at freedom.

  70. Will

    @Mark - re:Stimulant?

    Very true, however you failed to point out that he also incorrectly implied Heroin is a stimulant. Honestly Mark, wikipedia is *right there*, and depending on whether or not the Tories are trying to cover up getting their facts wrong it's sometimes correct as well.

  71. kain preacher

    in the US

    they have been cutting with aspirin, some times meth.

  72. greg

    It's not only cheap, it's easier to find here

    In my town known as the Olympic Capital (Lausanne, IOC general headquarters here, what a maffia, but that's an other subject...), I can find cocaine any hour of the day. And they won't check my age.

    While in shops, you can't buy alcohol any hour of the day, and they will check your age.

    And here, it's been down to 100 CHF a gram since a good 2 years, that's rightly approx 40 £...

    As to the comment, here too they are seizing less, but there's more on the streets : the immediate conclusions are that :

    -since Schengen, less controls at the borders

    -police are less to be working on that subject (it costs but doesn't pay, politics prefer to ask policemen to go put parking tickets...)

    -importers have made progress not to be caught

    2 days ago newspapers title : a net of 35 small dealers arrested in Lausanne. All of them immediately replaced on the streets, no worry. And all of them arrested for 3-4 days then free again since they are all without passports from countries that don't recognize them and didn't do re-admission contracts with our government... (Nigerians for 95% of them)

    And now, it's harder to find weeds in the streets, since they closed the shops you could buy it from a couple of years ago... So more black market, more fights, more troubles, etc...

    Happy world we live in, but god do our politicians make all they can to annoy us...

  73. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Well....

    As pointed out already, you'd be lucky to get 4 or 5 lines from a gram, especially if it wasn't strong stuff. You'd think coppers of all people would know how far coke goes.

  74. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    talk to frank

    could be that the government have done a stunning job in lowering demand so with a steady supply the bottom has dropped out of the market

    depends how you spin it

  75. jake Silver badge

    Strange, nobody's pointed out ...

    ... that folk who indulge in either have no taste.

    I mean, really. Cocaine or lager? I'll pass, thanks. I'm too old for drugs, and we have real beer here in California, thankyouverymuch.

    Mine's the one with the Arrogant Bastard in the left pocket, the Maximus IPA in the right pocket, and the Bigfoot Ale in the inner pocket.

  76. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Trust me...

    Firstly, you can't get 10-20 lines out of a gram of cocaine. Maybe 4 nice ones, and although you can find it at £35 the better stuff is always sold at £40.

    The effects of cocaine, contrary to what an earlier poster believes, do not last "a few minutes". You tend to have a rush for a good 2-3 hours or so, but if you take when you go out you'll inadvertently spend just as much money on drinks as you normally would so all round it's not like it's cheap.

    Cocaine isn't cheap - I know people who go through 3 grammes on a big night, you'd have a hard time spending £120 on booze in one go like that, and if you did, hey, you probably wouldn't remember it anyway ;-)

    Cocaine isn't as evil as people seem to think it is either, as with every addictive substance, as long as you are responsible and know your limits it's fine, and unlike alcohol I have never experienced a significant hang over from it.

    Plus it doesn't stop your meaty bits from working. But it's still expensive.

    Mine's the one with the Colombian passport in the inside pocket ;-)

  77. Gilbert Wham

    @ AC

    10-20 lines? Depends. Coppers can get *very good* coke....

  78. chris

    Invisible hands, holding a mirror

    It's market forces innit?

    Stockbrokers have fallen on hard times, their suppliers have to drop their prices accordingly.

    Equally, I bet lapdances have gotten cheaper as well.

  79. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Crazy times!

    We need some kind of Google Maps mashup to help us locate this cheap coke.

    And possibly some kind of thread on moneysavingexpert.com

    And while we're at it, do any dealers offer Quidco/cashback?

    And, if the Police want to boost their 'we captured X tons' stats, why don't they take a (cocoa) leaf out of the dealers books and cut it with glucose? You've doubled your (apparent) work with little/no extra input!

  80. EvilGav

    Old news

    Columbian marching powder has been cheaper, for a line, than a pint for a number of years now. However, it's only around a 12 minute high from a single line, so the effects are less long-lasting than a pint.

    And yes, doing coke off a girls pert arse is great fun.

  81. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    poitiacian enact big stimulation package

    could it be all the politicians are passing on their parliamentary bulk discount?

    Now that is a real stimulation package, work's in Australia Just like at Captain Bligh and prime Minister Krudd. Must be good stuff like most politicians they are highly on the straw line nose...

  82. skeptical i
    Happy

    Legalise it, control quality, tax it, end of story.

    If gubmint really and truly cared about the health and welfare of its citizenry, it would not illegalize marijuana (harmless) while allowing alcohol and cigarettes (documented health risks) or the sometimes dodgy legal pharmaceuticals being prescribed left, right, and center for whatever new "ailment du jour" the pharmaceutical industry can cook up ("oppositional defiant syndrome"? please). Legalise it, control the supply and quality (this would reduce the number of folks found with needles in their arms and rat poison in their veins, yes?), tax it as one does beer and cigs, and sell it wherever regulated substances (pharmaceuticals, liquor, tobacco) are sold. Solves the criminal element problem, reduces the power of criminal gangs/cartels overnight (until they find something else to traffic), reduces public health problems (overdoses, secondary level harms from being victims of drug- related crime), and creates funding for rehab, addiction prevention ("safe use"), and other services that are needed now (despite, or rather, because of, the "war on drugs") but hugely underfunded.

    Two problems: (1) The alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical industries have become too damn comfortable with being a leisure- substance monopoly and will spend their last dimes buying enough Congresscritters to keep real reform from happening (I assume similar will happen across the pond). This must stop. Bringing the ATP troika into the equation as part of the supply chain (grow MJ alongside tobacco, maybe?) and ensuring that currently- illegal drugs will be taxed similarly (so there is no cost incentive for customers to dump beer and take up cocaine) might work. (2) Too many law enforcement agencies have become addicted to the stream of "war on drugs" funding for their whiz-bang robocop gadgets, and too many prison builders like the idea of building more jails into which people charged with drug crimes can be thrown (did CCA's stock spike when California passed its "three strikes" law?). This too must stop. Redirecting policepower away from drugs and related problems should free up some boys and girls in blue to work on community building and crime prevention (which saves us all money in the long run).

  83. Martin Usher
    Black Helicopters

    Funnny Economics

    We're continually being bombarded with stuff about the "laws of supply and demand" but apparently cocaine doesn't follow those laws because if it did then it would be getting cheaper because there's just not enough people consuming the stuff. Too much supply and not enough demand.

    But then if drug use dropped think of all the people who would find themselves redundant. Its a microcosm of the "Global War on Terror" -- you have to have these shadowy threats because there's all these people who depend on protecting us from them for their livelihood.

  84. This post has been deleted by its author

  85. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    International Units.

    In nearly 25 years of touring as a roadie (until about 1995) cocaine was nearly always about £60. So much so that we used it to settle debts, exchange money etc a wrap of coke was worth an 'International Unit'.

    I don't ever remember an 'average price of £74', anymore than £60 was a generally a rip off, that said, good quality stuff was always more expensive. As for £40 a gram, you can pay that in any area where there a lots of students and the quality is shit -talcum powder or baby laxative.

    I'm surprised Keith Vaz hasn't stepped up to the plate, anything to get his mug on TV and voice some idiotic opinion.

  86. Pete "oranges" B.
    Happy

    Yup.

    " 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."

    Just make sure there are no apostrophes involved.

  87. Neil

    coke is the real thing

    I bet this really gets up Gordons nose

  88. Loki
    Pirate

    Drugwars

    The Marrakesh express has arrived. Price of Hashish is down to $4.

    <sorry if i misquote the game here>

  89. Cassian
    Flame

    what?!?!

    10-20 lines out of a gram?!?! who is your dealer....

    Seriously, if journalists only did drugs they could actually write about them with some credibility. Nose ajax? what says that?

    Why is the writer trying sensationalise the article by using slang?

  90. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yeah right!

    First off, a £20 gram, will be about 10% coke, 90% mescalin or teething powder. until this country can produce it's own cocain (never) or get rid those terribly annoying import restrictions, i wouldn't touch a £20 gram with yours! (nose that is).

    It will also not be a gram, it will .7 or more likely .6

    Secondly, if you were to take 20 lines out of 1gram of powder, you're telling me that the lines will be 0.05 of a gram!!!! WTF WTF WWWTTTTFFFFF who the hell does these pissing studies? MY GOD YOU TWATS, join the real world!

    try this, it's generally universaly standard, your 'gram' will be 30 - 45% pure, it will weigh between .7 - .9, you will NEVER get a full one, just think about why that is from the dealers perspective. You will get 5 to 6 lines out of it, and it will cost you £40.

    I don't understand who these idots speak to when they are dong these incredulous studies, it's insulting, even more so because the mail crowd will be all up in arms again...

    A few years ago, they would stil be .9, but they would be 70% pure and would cost you £50, so if anything, it has got more expensive.

    Can someone give me a research grant for, er, further studies please :D

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like