Seven Important Truths About How the World Takes Drugs in 2014

[Jabberwocky]

Seven Important Truths About How the World Takes Drugs in 2014​

By Max Daly Apr 16 2014

There's a pretty thorough list of national stereotypes stashed away in the collective consciousness. French people love bread, the Swiss are born dull, Americans don't understand humor, Britain doesn't have any dentists... etc, etc, etc, until the whole globe is just a sphere of tired cliches spinning around in space.

We need a new way to make sweeping assumptions about entire populations, and what better place to start than drugs? After all, there's so much you can tell about a person from their drug of choice. Wouldn't it be great if we could apply the same logic to entire countries?

Luckily, this year's Global Drug Survey has just been released. The people who put it together gathered feedback from nearly 80,000 drug users and clubbers in their 20s and 30s, from over 40 different countries. Yes, the vast majority of them seem to be middle-class people without crippling dependency problems, but nevertheless it provides a unique insight into international drug habits.

see the rest of this interesting article here

 

[neversickanymore]

In Australia it’s four times the price, at the equivalent of $320 a gram.

LOL, coke price in Australia 8(.. is that right?? If I were an australian I would have given the value at that price 0 outa 10.

 

[Jabberwocky]

lol right??? and the purity, g'damn!!! dude, fuck levamisole(sp?) I was happy to see a halfway-reasonable analysis of why they're cutting the product w/ it but, jesus, the $ these cartels have for r&d you'd think they could come up w/ something better. As an aside, til I read this article, I'd no idea how bad lev actually was, i mean they refer to it (rightly so, it seems) as a 'chemical form of AIDS'.

all in all though, that was an interesting article, hope more bl'ers actually read it in its entirety.

 

[drug_mentor]

Without getting into that side of things too much, that price is correct for Australia and it is not uncommon for people to pay more. Unless you got it off a reliable dealer with consistent product you could bet a product for that price would likely be average at best. Most drugs are over priced in this country, although not as much as it may seem to some when you factor in our relatively high wages, but few (if any) come close to cocaine in just how over priced they are.

 

[spacejunk]

Yeah, when I see Americans talking about their awesome job that pays $18/hr the whole thing makes a bit more sense.

Without factoring in geographical and sociopolitical context (ie smuggling routes) of course...I mean, Australia has no land-borders to any other nation states, let alone land borders that connect with the flow of the smuggling route of (at least) 3 or 4 different illicit substances.

 

[neversickanymore]

So the 1 Australian Dollar equals 0.93 US Dollar.. >source<

average weekly wage in australia 1247.30 jan 2014 >source<
Median weekly earnings of the nation's 104.3 million full-time wage and salary workers were $796 in the first quarter of 2014 >source<

on average Australians make 1.6 times the average wage in the US. I think I remember seeing that the price of goods is also elevated quite a bit there compared to the states?

 

[spacejunk]

Yeah, I remember being amazed at how cheap cars were in the US when I last went there.
Not to mention food, clothes....practically everything.
Having said that; pretty much all drugs are ridiculously (over)priced here; cannabis (bought by weight) is about the only thing I've not known to fluctuate wildly in my years as a...keen observer of (black) market trends.
Alcohol and cigarettes are FUCKING expensive due to huge taxes
(Though personally don't care - as I don't drink or smoke; and the price is a good incentive not to, as both are pretty toxic and shitty drugs IMHO) and about the only thing that is cheap in terms of "drugs" is prescription medicine covered by our (pretty extensive, govt funded) Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme,

But no, this cheap pricing does not extend to the same drugs once they hit the black market

Ecstasy actually got dramatically cheaper at a certain point (defying every drug market trends I have observed to date - yet this likely coincided with the point at which "ecstasy" ceased bearing any resemblance to MDMA/MDA etc.

I'm not too bothered by the price of coke considering the market exclusivity the cost of it here creates; most of the cashed up Aussies that are still chopping up their $xxx lines of blow are likely oblivious to the levamisole cut debacle. What they don't know can't hurt them....uh, right?