It makes a great deal of sense.

> deaths dropped months before purity did

That's a plausible lag: credible purity figures are not sourced from Mexican drug cartels. They come from laboratories at the end of a long chain of custody complicated by legal machinations, dealing with contraband having no provenance beyond its date of seizure. That it takes only "months" to wend its way though the byzantine and corrupt legal system, and the bankers hours academic process of laboratory professionals, is actually admirable.

> which a habitual user would compensate for by taking twice as much

Habitual users are operating in a market, seeking value. They cannot afford to simply double their spend, and I'll give you one guess as to how quickly purity drops are reflected by price drops in the narcotics business, because that's all a person of sound mind should need.

No, when the purity dropped, users paid the same and got less, and died less. Believe me, I understand why this finding is unwelcome: it serves to put arrows in the "drug war" quiver, and that is anathema, in my mind as well. But knee-jerk thinking, ultimately, isn't helpful. Further, I have complete faith that the ability of drug dealers and drug users of America to produce disturbing body counts will not be diminished for long.

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john-h-k 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> They come from laboratories at the end of a long chain of custody complicated by legal machinations, dealing with contraband having no provenance beyond its date of seizure. That it takes only "months" to wend its way though the byzantine and corrupt legal system, and the bankers hours academic process of laboratory professionals, is actually admirable.

But... this relies on the idea that the purity numbers are based on "time of test" not "date of seizure". This seems like a pretty obvious thing they would have accounted for. Do you have any evidence that the published data for purity levels is delayed by several months?

	▲	topspin 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> this relies on the idea that the purity numbers are based on "time of test" not "date of seizure" No, the idea doesn't rely on "time of test" vs "date of seizure". There is no real provenance for any of this. There is no auditable trail for when any given batch of narcotics was manufactured, when it appeared in the US, how long it took to disseminate to domestic dealers, when it may have been further cut by domestic dealers, when it was sold, and when it was actually used. Even the seizure dates are dubious, given haphazard and inconsistent law enforcement handling and record keeping. There are also sampling biases, because some legal jurisdictions and law enforcement organizations are more or less cooperative than others. All I claimed was that a delay was plausible. I am not obligated to become a narcotics market researcher in defense of my modest claim, and given the nature of all this, no amount of such effort is likely to be sufficient for you in any case.