Cocaine Cheaper Because Of Meth Crackdown

Nearly anyone these days can recognize the hollowed-out features, skinny limbs and pockmarked skin that characterize someone hooked on methamphetamine, thanks in part to intensive local education campaigns.

It’s precisely that education, coupled with a crackdown on meth users and dealers that has helped get pounds of meth off local streets, law enforcement officials report.

Yet, like any supply-and-demand equation, that is causing a decrease in the amount of the locally available drug, lowering its quality and making it more expensive. That shift has tipped the scales in the drug-buying business, now making cocaine relatively less expensive and more likely to be discovered by undercover officers in drug raids, according to spokeswoman Karen Flowers, resident agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Grand Junction.

“It’s cheaper to buy cocaine,” she said. “If you have an addiction, you want to do what it takes to stimulate that high. Cocaine is the closest thing (next to meth) that’s readily available.”

Current rates for a gram of meth, which is enough of the drug to last some addicts for about a week, is about $150 to $180, depending on the quality, said Lt. David Holdren of the Mesa County Sheriff’s Department. Cocaine, in contrast, is being sold for about $120 a gram, he said.

From January to June of this year, officers with the Western Colorado Drug Task Force have confiscated 19 pounds of cocaine and 27 1/2 pounds of meth.

But a relative break on the price of cocaine poses another problem for law enforcement, Flowers said.

Unlike meth, cocaine is viewed as a stylish drug, more commonly associated with a glamorous lifestyle. Cocaine use is not accompanied by many of the trademark signs of deterioration of a user’s physique, and users aren’t as likely to experience the paranoia and sometimes the violence that accompanies meth use, Flowers said.

Grand Junction Sentinel