stock up now before the lines get long because of limited supplies. dealers are at a congressional hearing now to make sure they're not gauging prices 
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/ ... index.html
Cost of cocaine rises in United States
U.S. official cites progress in curbing drug flow from Colombia
Thursday, November 17, 2005; Posted: 11:15 p.m. EST (04:15 GMT)
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Cocaine is becoming more expensive on U.S. streets in a sign that a $3 billion aid program to Colombia is finally bringing results and reducing illegal drug imports, the White House drug czar said on Thursday.
The price of cocaine on U.S. streets rose by 19 percent from February to September, hitting about $170 per pure gram, according to data published by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Higher prices probably mean less of the illegal stimulant is making it to U.S. shores, as users try to outbid each other, the office's director, John Walters, told Reuters.
He hailed more expensive cocaine as a sign of the effectiveness of more than $3 billion in mainly military aid since 2000 to Colombia, which produces most of the world's supply of the drug.
"What we see on the streets of the United States is the clear and irrefutable evidence of a change in availability that will help us reduce demand and will change the profitability of the cocaine market for those who make money off the death and destruction of lives through addiction," Walters said in a telephone interview from Washington.
The U.S. aid money has gone largely for an aerial-spraying program to destroy coca bushes, which are used to make cocaine and are grown by peasants in remote jungle regions, often under the protection of Marxist rebels or far-right paramilitaries.
Until now, cocaine prices had been falling in the United States, fueling critics of the aid program both in the United States and Colombia who said this showed new coca bushes were being planted to replace those destroyed by spraying.
One prominent critic said cocaine was still cheap and the rise in the price this year was insignificant.
"It would be pure nonsense to point to this recent blip as evidence of success of U.S. international drug policies. The effective price is still just a small fraction of the price 10 and 20 years ago," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
Purity declines
The long wait for signs of an ebb in the cocaine flow to the United States was due to stockpiles of the drug and of coca leaf, which helped smugglers to keep serving their customers even as production fell, Walters said.
Thursday's data also showed a 15-percent fall in the purity of cocaine sold in the United States since February, which Walters believes shows dealers are trying to make up for a shortage of the drug by mixing it with other substances.
The signs of falling cocaine production will be a boon not only to the U.S. administration but also its close ally, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who is preparing to run for reelection next May.
The Colombian government says that cocaine pays for many of the weapons used by Marxist rebels and far-right paramilitaries fighting in a 41-year-old war, and that getting rid of the drug will make them easier to defeat.
About 2 million Americans use cocaine, which was once the official remedy of the United States Hay Fever Association but banned in the early 20th century.
Although only 15 percent of those users account for 80 percent of consumption of the drug in the United States, Walters said.
The White House also believes Colombian heroin is getting more expensive and less pure in the United States. While a smaller business than cocaine for Colombia's drug traffickers, Colombia is the main supplier of heroin to the eastern United States.
Copyright 2005 Reuters.
