I know and it's a shame, but the old ones are still around I believe and I doubt their policy about specific drug purity has changed since then. iirc with ecstasy they can give you ratios of active ingrediants so you end up with something like MDMA 4, Caffeine 1, Meth 1 but they never say MDMA 70%. I''m not 100 % sure on how they do it with other drugs so I'm gonna see if I can track down a microgram and see if i can find any info.
sorry if the afghanistan post was a little irrelevant, I was pretty jammed last night and interpreted the discussion on pre/post 9/11 dope poorly. I wasn't doing dope pre 9/11 either but I think it definitely had some effect, if not on purity than on price. I think it could go both ways though because in the post 9/11 frenzy the government started providing more funding for counterterrorism efforts abroad than the war on drugs.
edit: from what I can tell they will post the percentage of drugs in a smuggling attempt like heroin lollipops (think of the kids!) or cocaine laced car parts, but with ecstasy they always say something like "although not formally quantitated the TIC indicated moderate loading" I'm not sure how that translates to heroin purity but I think any info they give on "average purity" in a region is bullshit. there is something called the DEA drug threat assessment that would probably be the best place to look for more information on average purity.
here's some info on heroin purity in MA from 1999, compare it to purity in 2002 and on and you should have a good idea about what kind of effect 9/11 had.
"Law enforcement in Massachusetts and throughout New England reports a significant increase in the availability and purity of heroin. Heroin purity levels in Massachusetts range from 50 percent to 90 percent. DEA’s Domestic Moni- tor Program (DMP) indicates that the average purity of South American heroin in Boston in 1999 was 57.7 percent at the street level, down for the second straight year following levels of 66.4 percent in 1997 and 61.4 percent in 1998.15 However, purity levels in Boston far exceeded the national average every year from 1991 to 1999.
Violence
Heroin trafficking, distribution, and use are strongly associated with violent crime in Massa- chusetts. Some heroin traffickers and distributors commit violent acts while protecting or expand- ing their market area, others when stealing heroin
Retail-level heroin purity averaged 67.5 percent from April to June 1999, second highest on the East Coast for that period. Street-level heroin more than 90 percent pure is available in Boston and Lawrence, although 60 percent or more is the average. Analyses of several heroin exhibits seized in Lynn in 1998 revealed purity near 90 percent.16"
source: "The DMP is a retail-level heroin purchase program that identifies purity, price, and source of origin. The purity calculation for 1999 was based on 38 samples that ranged from 0.8 percent to 93.0 percent. The median for these 38 samples was 57.1 percent, similar to the average (mean) of 57.7 percent."
http://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs/658/658p.pdf
and yeah highonlife if I hadn't just done a fat shot I wouldn't have had the energy to type up any of this.