The LA Times is going to town on the Xalisco (north of Puerto Vallarta!) heroin dealers, in their series on the Evil Scary Super-Black-Tar Heroin, delivering an award to these dealers for Excellent Drug Business Practices. (This is part of the paper's very dramatic MEXICO DRUG WAR extravaganza.) Our hardworking Mexican friends take phone orders; deliver by car; they are not particularly prone to violence or gun-toting; they take customer satisfaction surveys; they sell in smaller amounts; they have cut consumer prices in half; and their heroin is just better. Sounds awesome!
What does this all mean? Your mileage may vary, but it means they are creating heroin users, according to the LA Times. "Competition among the networks has reduced prices, further spreading heroin addiction." Also: their business practices are described as "often creating demand for heroin where there was little or none."
Does that make sense? Do people who don't want to do heroin start doing it because it is a good bargain?
I assume that is the same sort of reasoning in which sex education makes teenagers into sluts and a lack of non-firebombed abortion clinics makes everyone kill their babies.
Meanwhile, the facts are that where these black tar heroin dealers establish themselves, the numbers of people entering drug treatment and people overdosing rise dramatically. Thing is, only one of those things is a bad thing.
The dealers have been especially successful in parts of Appalachia and the Rust Belt with high rates of addiction to OxyContin, Percocet and other prescription painkillers. They market their heroin as a cheap, potent alternative to pills.
There you go, Pfizer, Abbott, GlaxoSmithKline, etc: Market forces drive pricing.
Hey, at least if (sort of regulated) Big Pharma made heroin, it wouldn't be cut with Drano and anthrax-infested bonemeal...
Things I have learned today: it is not the fault of the middle-class white Ohioans that they're becoming addicted to heroin. It the evil Mexicans' doing!
Not evil Mexicans. The efficient and hardworking Mexicans.
FREE MARKET GOLD STANDARD FREEDOM BLIMP
El siete-percent solution
If they'll deliver in the snow and take a check, I could be persuaded.
Um,how come the post were I jokingly and publicly try to by drugs over the internet has my name on it? Although I would still by some pot if it was delivered and they took a check.
Your drugs are on the way to St. Louis--please see your PayPal invoice.
Ugh, my cousin in Arizon is addicted to black-tar heroin. So sad, I think he's like 22 or 23 and homeless at this point.
Ditto to my former bff in Ohio, who got better SAT scores than me. Homeless a few times, car repossessed, kitchenaid stand mixer pawned. I hadn't thought about her in awhile until they checked my arms for track marks when I donated blood last week.
I realize the above sounds sarcastic, but it isn't. Black-tar heroin is a fast track to Lifetime Movieesque anecdotes.
Incidentally, poppies are not indigenous to Mexico. They were introduced to the Xalisco region during World War II in order to assure a supply of opium for the manufacture of narcotic analgesics. What we have here is the perfect confluence of the Law of Unintended Consequences and capitalism.