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cost they are talking about was the average cost that one heroin user had to pay to "get high" one <br />time and the purity they talk of was the average purity of one dose of street level drugs, which the <br />heroin user purchased. DEA started their chart in 1980 but as I mentioned above I started buying <br />heroin in 1970 so I can back this chart up ten years. <br />In 1970, we purchased Heroin price and purity <br />"tre- bags" of heroin so called <br />because they cost three dollars Pric 10 <br />p er bag We bought them in 3so 98 <br />'° 3 <br />1� g• g $3.14 1381 & <br />multiples of two, because a 2 " is 7 - 1 % <br />heroin user needed to shoot $ 3 , 5 6 s.s ^ , B: <br />two of those bags to get high. > USX <br />Two bags at $3 each, so in °'n , s 252X <br />1970 it cost $6 to get high. At $2.17 1"1 zssx <br />that time the purity of the�� <br />1.+F7'� 1gg3 3s, 8x <br />product was only about 1.5 40:4 <br />ercent ( p urity means how V `~ 1595 39.7s <br />p tl' y '1U�1356 36.3/ <br />much of the white or brown *1ia7mmmmmm" 1337 38.5y <br />p owder contained in the small *°BMW' 41.6x <br />P S+a.aa r= I 38.2•.. <br />glassine envelopes was Scuc*- DEA Domestic Monitor Program <br />actually heroin). It was called <br />"garbage drugs" on the street. After ten years of fighting the "drug war," the purity had more than <br />doubled and the cost to get high had dipped to $3.90. And after thirty years of "drug war" the price <br />to "get off' on heroin had plummeted to 80 cents in 1980 equivalent dollars because the purity of <br />heroin had increased by 25 times its original level then registering over 38 percent pure in street <br />buys.' By the year 2000 the purity of heroin had become greater than 70 percent in Newark, New <br />Jersey and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. <br />Heroin users are four times more likely to die of an overdose today than they were in 1979. <br />Why are so many people are overdosing on drugs today? Addicts do not consume more and more <br />drugs each day until their bodies can no longer take the poison and they die. That is a myth. They <br />overdose because they get what is known in the trade as a "Hot- Shot." If for any reason the drug <br />dealer is distracted while mixing the nearly pure heroin he gets from another country with the cutting <br />agent he is using to dilute the drug before reselling it he is left with a lumpy product. On that day, <br />some of his clients are going to be very angry because they get the part that contains mostly cutting <br />agent and they think the dealer tried to beat them out of their money. But another unlucky group of <br />his clients will get the part of the mix that contains mostly pure heroin. When they cook up and <br />inject the powder they think is 10 percent heroin and it is really 80 or 90 percent heroin, they don't <br />get angry they get dead there is no second chance for them. That is why we are hearing of more <br />and more cases where 5, 10, even 20 people overdose in the same suburban town on the same day. <br />That is due to a bad mix. And folks, these kids who are overdosing are somebody's children they <br />could be mine or yours. <br />According to researchers, Matthew Robinson and Renee Scherlen, "The increased deadly nature of <br />drugs under prohibition led to 15,000 more deaths in 2000 than would have occurred had prohibition <br />not made drugs more dangerous [than they were in 1979], assuming everything else remained <br />constant. <br />11 <br />