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Comment by jdavis703 | Hacker News Reader

Valuing drugs at street value when they’re still at a lower value part of the supply chain makes for a good headline. But it’s really not an accurate portrayal of the real cost. I’d be interested to know how much cocaine this was based on how much cocaine is produced annually.

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What’s the story, some pot grower in the early 2000’s with two plants was busted with $10m+ of street value product? After they weighed the plants, soil, roots and container of course. Minimum life sentence too, probably.

There was an amusing flip side in US early legalisation days where some Feds raided a dispensary and did their usual over valuation of drugs taken.

They were then sued with the dispensary winning, the damages requested were of course the official police valuation.

I don't suppose you recall any details that might help us find the story?

If true this would make me happier than anything else I learned in probably the past 2 years.

>If true this would make me happier than anything else I learned in probably the past 2 years.

until you realize that it's a nice "gotcha" moment for the cops, but the taxpayers are the ones paying the bill.

Sure, and the taxpayers pay the bill every time a victim successfully sues or settles with a police department, too. So what?

At the end of the day cops get away with all this shit because the taxpayers support them, whether tacitly or explicitly. Hitting them in the pocketbook is a perfectly valid tactic. Maybe once they have no money left for high school football, they'll wake up and demand that their government reign in the out of control cops. And if they don't, well, they fully deserve to pay every single victim.

It’s simple, get rid of qualified immunity. Set reasonable standards and hold them personably and financially responsible when they deviate. And while I’m on my internet soapbox, civil asset forfeiture laws gotta go too. That shit is plain theft and violates the 4th.

Like any other story of its type, the truth is gonna be much more mundane and nuanced.

Sorry it was a long time ago. I think it was on reddit. Guessing Colorado as early days of legalisation but this is news article from years ago. It might have been a state not fed thing too as I was thinking about it after and that makes more sense logically.

I also tried to find/link when I wrote comment but I couldn't find it again. But 100% read about this some years back and the weight/value cops used as damages used in court.

What were they sued for? The feds illegally taking their contraband?

You can't get contraband returned, even if it was illegally seized, and I don't think you could sue for the value of it?

Who knows though? I was in jail with someone who was there because he bought some heroin off a dealer and only handed over $20 instead of $40, and then ran off. The dealer then phoned the police to report his stolen heroin and the buyer got busted.

I think a Kilo in Mexico is $5K, less in bulk Kilos. Selling on the street in US that Kilo stretches to $80k or so.

So I would imagine the cartels running the actual coca production sites that sell to the people selling for $5k… is probably $1k or so, $2.5k at the very most.

There’s reasons Chapo and such had literally billions in cash just sitting in warehouses being eaten by rats. They make a looot of money

Citation on the rats?

Eaten by rats sounds like an excuse thieves would tell their narco-terrorist boss. It’s like kids having their homework eaten by a dog right before the deadline. That’s to say, it’s likely a euphemism turned urban legend.

In Narcos, something similar happens. Some money that was buried was found by a farmer, some was lost, some rotted... Escobar preceded to violently murder the people that brought him the excuse.

I dont want to disclose my background exactly here, suffice to say I was not involved in any illegal activity, but others I knew were, and rats and just rotting cash really are genuine concerns affecting large sums of stored or buried money.

Why not store then in weatherproof boxes?

Pay $20 for a Rubbermaid tub to protect hundreds of thousands of $$ seems like a reasonable tradeoff, except maybe it's hard to come by that many where they're hiding the money?

Rubbermaid tub will NOT cut it for that purpose. You really need a pelican case or similar.

But... you'd be surprised, people are lazy.

I confess I'm extremely ignorant in terms of what it takes to actually store money in bulk. But it seems like literally anything would be better than just letting it rot.

I guess Enginnerd has a point.. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29827582 and remarks at the end

Rats can chew through a lot of materials. Cash management is hard.

They just chewed through a Rubbermaid tote to eat all my dog's treats. I had to break the bad news to her...

They often do actually! The pelican cases are quite popular for that purpose. But, like all things, they aren't totally fool-proof. Leaks happen. Even a small air-leak means moisture has an opportunity to condense and penetrate into the container and accumulate. Cracks happen, debris along the gasket, etc. etc.

Actually, a more common failure mode than rotting or rats is... simply forgetting where you buried it!

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/pablo-escobar-and-rubber-...

"The Accountant's Story: Inside the Violent World of the Medellín Cartel", Roberto Escobar.

> I know that Pablo was earning so much cash that each year we would simply write off approximately 10 percent of our money because the rats would eat it or it would be damaged beyond use by water and dampness.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Accountant_s_Story/...

Oh Ill one up that. Escobar in a rough spot literally burned millions of dollars to stay warm. "In addition, while his family was on the run in 1992–93, Escobar reportedly burned $2 million in order to keep his daughter warm."

https://www.britannica.com/list/pablo-escobar-8-interesting-...

Some people do it for the lulz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qu...

I really just can’t believe they didn’t invest in some… cats…

Like, if there’s ever a description of zero fucks given, I think it would have something to do with letting that much money get ruined by rats.

I see multiple other replies of the citations so I won’t repost

@jdavis703 I’m doubtful. I don’t think you’re aware of the sheer ruthlessness of high level narcos… they will brutally kill a lot of people over the smallest grievances, theft of petty cash included. Nobody is stealing %’s of billions of stored money & getting away with it.

Pablo had to bury money in farmers fields. One farmer years later found 600 million dollar

For some reason he turned over all 500 million

The local police department asked the 400 million found to go towards their budget.

No way a kilo costs 80k on US streets. How much does a gram cost?

$80/g is cheap if anything.

$25 and $200 a gram [1]. So 80k sounds about right.

https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/how-much-do-drugs-cost...

Location matters, cocaine in Miami is cheaper (some might say on a multiple of 20+) than cocaine in NYC or SF. I only know this because my uncle and cousins used to run drugs for the Columbians.

Yeah, I was going to say Miami and Texas are likely the lowest. The Texas border smuggling is pretty real, as is the various ways of quickly getting to South Florida/Miami. Southern California border is nowhere near as bad as Texas in terms of smuggling

LA is roughly $80/g, or it was 3ish years ago. I’d say it’s still around that.

Going into the MidWest of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philly, & North into Seattle, Portland & co is where it’s heading North of $80/g. $150/g in some of the mostly dead middle of nowhere but still metro cities then becomes a thing.

I can imagine if you know a guy in NYC you could get $40/g or cheaper as massive loads come in private yachts and stuff… but average bloke is paying somewhat high

A lot of projection there. Product is brought north on i95, rarely on yachts to the NE.

Miami prices are hit or miss, if you don’t want something that’s been stepped on too much you’re still at $80/.8.

NYC is actually cheaper. $60/1.0

A rack is about 20k street price.

Right now a kilo (bird) is 20k. Ounces are $2000, 8balls are $200-250. Grams are $100.

So a kilo stretching to 80k through the supply chain makes sense. That would put the final street dealer of that kilo buying on average a half ounce. That sounds about right to me.

Prices in Los Angeles.

From what I've heard, it's 4x the price per gram in Australia. So valuations like the ones in the linked article must be taken with some context.

Imagine if they were dumped into the ocean how good of a headline that would be.

"The drugs were dumped into the ocean. The ocean, weighing 4.9x10E21 pounds, according to Google, means we just stopped 4.9x10E21 (plus a few) pounds of drugs from reaching the public. As we all know, this is the official standard measurement procedure used by police in the US.

Cocaine has a street price estimate of $120 per gram on average according to Google. Because of how averages and math work (no source needed), we can just double that to $240 per gram to get the highest price out of the average.

To convert grams to pounds, we just multiply by 453.59237. This means 1 pound of cocaine costs $108,862.17.

4.9x10E21 pounds, multiplied by $108,862.17 per pound means we just stopped $533,424,633,000,000,000,000,000,000 worth of cocaine from going to the general public. This is the low estimate, because it does not even include the weight and price of the original drugs or the shipping container it was in. We truly are godly and just heroes on this day."

20 tons is still a respectable amount of yayo.

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