A pile of packages filled with cocaine seized by the government in April 2013
Heroin, cocaine and marijuana are as available, cheaper, and more potent as they have been in decades, according to a new study.
In a study published in the British Medical Journal, researchers aggregated government drug surveillance data from seven different countries. Between 1990 and 2010 in the United States, the street price (adjusting for inflation) of all three drugs fell about 80%.
The drugs also became more potent: the average purity of heroin increased by 60%, cocaine by 11%, and cannabis by 161%. According to the researchers, one reason for this could be that supply is so high that there’s no need to cut cocaine or heroin anymore.
The data was much the same for countries in Europe and Australia, despite a huge increase in drug seizures in all seven countries.
Evan Wood, who headed up the study told Vice that “there’s been no gains in the past two decades…There’s no economic paper out there that suggests [drug seizures have] any effect. “
[Vice]