"Sometimes I sell flour or baking powder. . . I usually have both coke and flour on me, and decide on the spot which one you'll be getting. I think of it as drug prevention. A lot of tourists only come here to do drugs—not to see how beautiful the Netherlands are, or to have a nice bit of cheese. I stop them from only using drugs on their holiday by selling them fake sh**. And you can't die from snorting a bit of flour, so I think it's a good solution."
Those are the words of a Dutch cocaine dealer interviewed recently in Vice. The Netherlands has a famously tolerant drug policy, but that's been tested recently when several tourists died after purchasing heroin disguised as cocaine from a street-level drug dealer.
The Vice interview opens a fascinating window into the street-level economics of the drug trade. The dealer laments the plummeting value of cocaine, and says that the introduction of the Euro cut into his business as people started carrying less cash around.
These trends are mirrored in the U.S. as well. Since 1981, the per-gram price of cocaine dropped from $753 in 1981 to $186 in 2012, according to the Office on National Drug Control Policy. The average purity of seized cocaine samples fell over the same period.
The dealer interviewed in Vice says "it's inhumane to pull a dirty trick" like passing off heroin as cocaine to tourists. He laments that "people are cutting their stuff more and more," e.g., mixing adulterants with their drugs before selling them. He freely admits to doing it himself, but insists he's doing it for his customers' own good.
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Whether buying or selling, the street-level drug trade is a dangerous business. Online drug markets, like the infamous Silk Road and its successors, circumvent many of those dangers and give buyers more control over the transaction.
But those markets are fraught with dangers of their own. Just last month Evolution, the largest of those markets, vanished into thin air taking millions of dollars worth of bitcoin with it. And the markets are being closely scrutinized by federal law enforcement agents -- some of whom are engaging in the same unsavory tactics as the markets' drug dealers.
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