Hacker News Reader

One figure I have yet to see reported with such news is the change in the street price of drugs caused by the action.

Did they actually throttle the supply? Did it rebound? How quickly? These are the interesting questions yet I don't see them reported.

View on HN

Prices on the street don't change. Ever. As a result of some hike in price somewhere along the supply chain. What you will see on the street is varying quality but never prices at least in the way we think of price compitition driving prices down.

A good book on this is 'Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel' by Tom Wainwright

How would you even collect this data? Survey local crackheads? Would you find this reliable?

Probably not so hard to do:

- Personal reports from drug users

- since the majority of users are recreative users and not hardcore junkies, and even those are just people with various levels of mental issues, I would actually find this reliable.

- There are surveys that are taken, at least here in the EU, that track drug usage.

- Quality sampling of confiscated drugs

- Analysis of medical data (deaths, overdoses,...)

- Analysis of police data (crimes related to drug usage)

A lot of data out there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com