Blog-a-blog blog, I'm stuck in a bog.

woody:

theeconomist:

Daily chart: the cost of cocaine. The street price of cocaine in Europe has dropped relentlessly over the past two decades, which may explain why Europe is now almost as big a market for cocaine producers as America.

I sense a serious arbitrage opportunity here……aaaand a great way to fund my next trip back to europe.

Much more interesting than the price (which I’m sure you could make a small fortune on), I think is the % usage.  It comes out to an average (I would say global but, just in these countries) to 1.13333%, meaning that United States, Italy, Spain, and Britain are greater than double the average. Which is NOT a good thing. Sure Ireland and Denmark could come down a bit, it’s the huge gaps that is worrisome. I mean the US’s is almost as high as Britain’s which it is at pretty much half off, what’s that say about US?

Given that the US population of people aged 15-64 is around 67% of the TOTAL population, as of july 2009 the census bureau clocked it at 307.007 Million, taking 67% of that (to get the age group population in numbers) 205,694,690, taking 2.4% of that (to get the amount of cocaine users) 4,936,673 meaning that ALMOST 5 MILLION PEOPLE ARE USING COCAINE IN THE UNITED STATES.

And any country with a usage over 2% is looking at just about the same numbers.