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Drugs

We Tested £50 and £60 Coke to See If Price Makes a Difference

An investigation.
cocaine being weighed on scales
Photo by the author.

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands.

Most dealers in Amsterdam sell coke at two price points: €50 (£44.50) or €60 (£53.50). Both bags are said to contain one gram, while the premium variety claims to be purer. But is the €60 batch actually better, or do users just assume it is because it's more expensive?

To answer this extremely important question, I bought both varieties from three different Amsterdam dealers and had the contents weighed and examined by the Dutch national drug testing service.

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Here's what we found:

1537970311376-chart

A graph showing the amount of coke in each bag, plus the percentage of pure cocaine (dark shade) in each.

1535543623339-VICE_COKE_CHART_V2

This graph shows the cost per gram of pure cocaine in each bag, across all three dealers.

Firstly, comparing the dealers: these graphs show that Dealer A's selection was not only the cheapest, but that their bags contained both the most cocaine and the highest concentration of pure coke across each price point. Dealer C was by far the worst, coming in at the most expensive, but offering the lowest purity, at 37 percent. Last year, the average coke purity measured in the Netherlands was 68 percent.

All considered, across the three dealers, the €50 variety was the best value option – offering 12 percent extra cocaine per euro. Although the €60 packets mostly contained more pure coke, it's hard to justify that 20 percent price difference.

So the €50 bag seemed to offer the best cocaine to cash ratio, but for users prepared to pay a bit more to minimise the amount of cutting agents coursing through their body, the €60 variety would be preferable. Mind you, the average purity in the tested €50 bags was 55 percent, and 59 percent in the premium alternatives, which only adds up to 0.04 less junk per gram.

I discussed my results with a former drug dealer, J, who was active in Amsterdam until 2010. He recognised the results from his own days as a dealer. However, J claimed the stuff he'd sell for €60 back in 2010 – a purer, Peruvian brand, he said – was a lot better than what's on offer today. Either way, J doesn't believe the average recreational user can actually tell the difference. "People who smoke coke are a different story, but people who snort it are easily fooled," he said. "Customers are drunk and their noses are numb. As a dealer, it's more important to be available on short notice than it is to sell quality stuff." Perhaps the least surprising conclusion from this research was that dealers are happy to simply make something up when you ask them about the difference between the varieties of cocaine they sell. Only one of the three dealers who sold the tested coke was able – or willing, perhaps – to accurately describe what was in their product; he admitted that he had diluted the cheaper kind with about 10 percent multivitamin powder.

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Most drug testing organisations in the Netherlands will only reveal the cutting agents found in your product; they won't usually measure the filler, such as baking powder. One popular cutting agent, phenacetin, has been proven to cause kidney and bladder cancer in extreme cases, while another, levamisole – used to treat worm infections – is known to affect the immune system.

Of course, regardless of the amount of cutting agent present, none of these options are really any safer than the other. Not only are all the cutting agents also present in the expensive variety, but the most dangerous substance in every bag is cocaine itself. The Netherlands' Trimbos Institute reports dozens of deaths caused by cocaine use annually, while cocaine hospitalisations and deaths continue to rise in the UK – but we're yet to hear of the first levamisole fatality.

So there you have it: when you buy coke, you're always getting a little ripped off; and, more likely than not, if you go for the more expensive option, you're getting even more ripped off. According to former dealer J, there used to be a much bigger difference in quality at each price point. "Nowadays it's just a marketing trick," he added. "People mainly buy the expensive kind to feel special."

Because of the popularity of the premium gram, however, it's actually losing its exclusive appeal. This is why some savvy dealers are now offering a €70 option – which is definitely increasing the dealer's revenue, but whether or not the quality of the coke is any better remains to be seen. One thing's for sure, though: there's no point in asking your dealer. "Ninety percent of what your dealer is telling you is complete bullshit," said J.

If you choose to put powders up your nose, you should really try to find out what's in them yourself.

More on VICE:

How I Finally Quit Doing Coke

How Cocaine Affects Your Sperm and Your Dick