Crime Sift

A couple of recent articles published by Spiegel Online International, Mountains of Coke Along the Rhine and New York Blows Away the Competition sparked my curiosity.

Up to this point statistics in relation to cocaine consumption have come from two sources primarily, law enforcement and treatment centers. It is not difficult to imagine that trying to determine the amount of cocaine consumed annually cannot be accurately determined by the volume seized by law enforcement or from interviewing drug users. After all, addicts are unreliable individuals and recreational users ought to know better than to admit to using cocaine.

According to Mountains of Coke Along the Rhine, the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research (IBMP) in Nuremberg has published a report based on its analysis of waterways in Germany to determine or perhaps obtain an accurate assessment as to the volume of cocaine consumed by those living along the Rhine.

It seems that when the human body processes cocaine a byproduct called Benzoylecgonine, or BE, is produced. The great thing about BE is that it is only produced by the human body when cocaine is processed, it is easily detectable, and it stays present in water for a long time. As was noted in the article:

We don’t know of any other way the chemical is produced,” says Herbert Käferstein, professor of medicine at the University of Cologne. “That has both to do with the complex chemical structure of both cocaine and Benzoylecgonine.

The testing system for BE is apparently very precise, so much so that in a town of 8,000 residents, it is even possible to detect a single 50 to 100 milligram dose of cocaine by analyzing the town’s waste water. Near the western German city of Düsseldorf it was reported in Mountains of Coke Along the Rhine that

the 38.5 million Germans who live in the Rhine River basin snort some 11 tons of pure cocaine each year. Day after day, the chemical traces of 30 kilograms of the white lady flow from the region’s commodes and into the water treatment system. The street value of that much charlie is a whopping €4.5 million per day — or €1.64 billion per year.

So the Germans like their blow. Lets come across the pond and look at the results of the study in New York. The overall conclusion in the article New York Blows Away the Competition was that “New Yorkers are the biggest coke-heads of all.” From the study by the (IBMP) the by-products in the Hudson’s watershed indicate a projected cocaine consumption totaling 16.4 tons per year. The value would be around $2.5 billion per year.

According to the United Nations “World Drug Report,” 2.8 percent of Americans in the age group 15-65 use cocaine at least once a year. That would mean that about 95,000 people are responsible for an annual consumption of 16.4 tons of pure cocaine — a per capita rate of 172 grams per year.

By comparison, assuming that the figure of 2.8 percent is correct, In Washington’s Potomac, IBMP chemists found traces of an annual per capita consumption of 73 grams of cocaine, while the San Francisco Bay indicates an annual use of little more than 40 grams per person.

The reports still does not allow us to determine how many people are using cocaine or how much is being used by the average addict or recreational user but the results do permit us to determine the extent to which the War on Drugs in the United States is a success. While the amount of cocaine consumed varies by city, and I expect that the figure of 2.8 percent of Americans use cocaine is on the low side, some other statistics assist in determining the level of success of the War on Drugs. Here are a few stats:

In order to properly assess the War on Drugs, a few stats are needed.

On July 1, 2005 the population in the United States was 296,410,404, up almost 3 million from 2004 when the US population was 293,656,842.

The population of New York in 2005 was 19,254,630, this is an increase of only 1.5% since 2000. This means that 1 out of 15 people in the United States lives in New York.

Interestingly, the total number of troops in the U.S. is 2,685,713, and of these 1,426,713 are on active status. The total funding spent on the military in the U.S. is $446.1 Billion.

28,828 is the number of domestic arrests made by the DEA in 2005, this is down from 29,953 the previous year.

In 2005, 118,270 kilograms of cocaine was seized by the DEA, this is up slightly from 117,847 kilograms in 2004.

The DEA had 5,296 Special Agents and a budget of $2.14 billion in 2005.

On December 31, 2005, 2,193,798 prisoners were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails, an increase of 2.7% from year end 2004. In state prisons alone, of the 2 million plus prisoners, 250,900 were drug offenders. That means that in excess of 1 out of every 8 American prisoners are drug offenders.

There is approximately 900 kilograms of cocaine in a ton. In 2005 the DEA seized 118,270 kilograms of cocaine. That is roughly 131 tons of cocaine seized. Not bad, but consider that New Yorkers consumed 16.4 tons of the white stuff. If 1 out of 15 Americans live in New York, assuming a consistent level of cocaine consumption throughout the U.S., Americans consume 246 tons of cocaine per year. That means for every two tons of cocaine thrown at the American coastline, only 1 ton of cocaine is seized.

If you use the Washington average of 73 grams per person, you can reduce the figure of 246 tons by a factor of 2.3 placing the U.S. demand for cocaine at 106 tons. Based on the Washington rate of consumption, that would mean that the DEA seizes more cocaine than that which ends up on the street.

All of this cocaine, and the other work of the DEA costs the U.S. taxpayers $2.14 billion. So, if the United States doubled the budget of the DEA by reducing the military budget by approximately ½ of a percent, the U.S. would be so dry that Americans may be able to tackle their other pressing social issues.

If you are interested click here for a chart outlining all of the drugs seized by the DEA over the last decade.

So the question becomes is the U.S. serious about the War on Drugs?