This whole post is referring to this statistic: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/443460/percentage-of-population-that-has-used-illicit-drugs-by-drug/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/443460/percentage-of-population-that-has-used-illicit-drugs-by-drug/)
The cartel is so rich and has so much power which makes me wonder how the hell are they making so much money if there’s quite a low of percentage of people using drugs.
In: 2701
most drug users wouldnt disclose they use drugs in a survey
drugs are expensive
cartels do more than deal drugs
The answer is very simple: drugs are expensive, and even if only a small portion of people use drugs, that’s still a lot of people over the scale of a whole country.
IIRC in the US, cocaine usually costs around $100 a gram, but it does not cost anywhere near $100 a gram to produce and even transport over international borders. If a gram (1/28th of an oz) of cocaine is $100, then a kilogram (2.2 lbs) is valued at $100,000 dollars on the street. Even considering the high costs involved in drug trafficking, that’s still an enormous amount of money.
Is it low?
According to this
https://drugabusestatistics.org/
in the USA “22% of males and 17% of females used illegal drugs or misused prescription drugs within the last year.”
The percentage is low, but what’s the actual number of users?
Assuming the USA, the bar on the right shows 3%. That equates to 10million users. Globally, that’s 243 million users.
What’s the average daily spend on drug use? Assuming cannabis, 0.5 gram per joint is approx $5. 2 joints a day would be $10.
That’s 100million dollars, per day, assuming 3 percent of the population smokes on average 2 joints.
This is a pretty conservative figure, any only accounts for 1 type of drug in the us. All illicit drugs across the globe? Much, much higher.
To put it into perspective, Apple’s annual revenue equates to around 250million per day in the USA (based on 2018 revenue figures).
Ex drug policy here. Drugs don’t cost much to produce, are cheap to distribute, involve little capital investment, sell for high prices and – crucially – it’s pretty much all cash and nowhere for it to go. The cartel is a few dozen people, rolling in cash and unable to invest it. So they bribe, party and blow it on whatever takes their fancy including, of course, assassinating rivals and threats..
A lot is lost or wasted (one mid-level US distributor estimated that only a quarter of the money made it back to Colombia). 1500 tons of cocaine – even at wholesale prices – is a lot of cash.
The answer is relatively simple, drugs are sold with a huge margin, they’re overpriced. A brick of coke may cost tens of thousands on the street but in terms of production that kind of money equates to a truck load. This means that a successful delivery and sale can cover a lot of losses and then some.
Cartels sell more than drugs.
Some have stolen gas right from the pipelines at stretch through the desert.
One town was destroyed from an explosion caused by cartel oil theft.
I guess diamond users are low percentage but they are also rich. Or sports cars, or big yachts or whatever you can think. So many things in this world are used by a very very small percentage of people and that doesn’t prevent it from being extremely profitable
When your drugs have something like a 100000% markup and you have a small captive audience that will do anything to get it. That’s a lot of money.
Especially when you consider the cost of labor is so cheap. Your average American drug dealer makes barely over minimum wage. Your average coca farmer makes even less and your cocaine producing staff make even less, that’s a lot of money going into the midlevel guys.
The only guys making good money are the drug lords themselves, the gang leaders moving it at the point of sale, the hitman working for the gangs/cartels, and the government workers taking the bribes.
You states say about 1% of the population uses hard drugs worldwide.
A $100/week habit (very, very cheap for many drugs, some users will spend twice that in a day) is $5200*3.3 million = $17 billion/year just in the US.
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