The best thing readers can do is keep in mind, when reading about cocaine seizures, that many factors may be involved: quantity and quality of the drug, locale, and politics.īeth Taylor is assistant Volusia County editor for The Orlando Sentinel. Heroin (schedule I) Methadone (schedule I) Ecstasy / MDMA. If its quality were diluted to that extent, he said, the drug would have little or no effect and customers would not be pleased.Ĭonflicting information about the value of drugs can be confusing, but, unfortunately, solid figures don't exist in the drug world. 2009 Illicit Drug Price List Opiates Pharmaceuticals (diverted) continued Synthetic Drugs. The sheriff uses $300,000 when figuring the street value.įernandez doesn't dispute the selling price of a gram, but said 1,000 grams of cocaine, after being cut three times, cannot result in 4,000 grams because bulk is lost in the process. (Most any material can be used for this purpose, including lactose and sugar.) Each gram sells for $40-$100, Vogel said. Each time the cocaine is diluted, its purity is reduced and bulk is added. He said the 1,000 grams in a kilo can be "stepped on" - or diluted - three times, making 4,000 grams. It costs less in Miami than in Daytona Beach, and much less here than in the Northeast.Ī kilo of cocaine can be sold wholesale - for $13,000 to $15,000 - or broken into smaller quantities - 32 ounces, 1,000 grams of powder, or 3,575 "rocks" of crack, Fernandez said.īut however you cut it and wherever you sell it, a kilo won't bring in more than $64,000, Fernandez said. Cocaine is much cheaper in areas where it is directly shipped or flown. A drug buyer pays less for a kilo if he buys 10, rather than 2 kilos.Īlso, dealers who have been in business longer have lower overhead than newcomers and can undercut them, he says. Like their law-abiding counterparts, merchants in the drug world give discounts to customers who buy in bulk, Fernandez said. Obviously, underworld prices aren't fixed. People have been getting into the downers.News value isn't the only reason for the discrepancy over street value. This might come as a surprise given there were initial reports earlier in the pandemic that sales of “party drugs” were down across the globe, with dealers in Australia telling Vice, “The customers in Melbourne have gone down though. We’re seeing that through policing and seizures, ongoing operations and intelligence collection right across the country.” Of course, there was some disruption in terms of how drugs were getting to the country in the early months of the pandemic, but according to Detective Superintendent Hunter, supply is “mostly back to normal now.”įurthermore, the report also details that while the pandemic might have indeed disrupted where Australians socialise and therefore take drugs, drug use has not decreased according to early indications from Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s annual Waste Water survey. In a comment to the SMH, Australian Federal Police Detective Superintendent Todd Hunter said, “In some cases the street level values are almost double for ice and cocaine Their profit margins were quite good and are now going through the roof. For comparison, a gram of cocaine could cost anywhere from $250-$350 pre-pandemic, so it’s certainly nothing to… sneeze at.Īs per law enforcement intelligence reports obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald, those looking for a bit of nosé around the Byron Bay area can expect to pay the significantly increased price, while reports have also confirmed the prices of MDMA, ketamine, ice and more have also jumped. “ce is fetching up to $250 a gram, marijuana is being sold for $400 an ounce and MDMA is being sold at $170 a gram in its powdered form,” the report stated. And, while one might initially think the price hikes are caused by disruption to global supply caused by the virus, it actually has more to do with drug dealers themselves “looking to boost their profits”, as SMH reports. Cocaine, MDMA and ketamine prices soar as Australian dealers seize on demand during pandemicĪccording to a new report from the Sydney Morning Herald published on July 12th, it’s become even more expensive to have a night on the nose beers in Australia with a gram now potentially costing around $450 in parts of the country.