UK drugs trade tops £7bn, study shows

There are about 300 major drug importers into Britain, 3,000 wholesalers and 70,000 street dealers producing a turnover of £7-8bn a year, according to an internal Home Office estimate revealed today.

This official indication of the astonishing scale of the drugs trade in Britain, although very rough, has led Home Office researchers to calculate that by value it represents about a third of the size of the tobacco market in Britain and two-fifths of the trade in alcohol.

The estimates are contained in a Home Office research study published today based on prison interviews with 222 convicted high-level drug dealers. This reveals that about three-quarters of drug dealers attempt to grow their operations, enjoy mark-ups of 16,800% on heroin and 15,800% on cocaine, and now employ salaried staff as runners and storers.

"Drug dealers enjoy mark-ups of 15,800% on cocaine" Really? Well, no, they don't actually unless that is, they grow and process the stuff themselves haul it over to the UK, cut it and turn it all into half gram wraps and sell them all on the street at £25 each. The reality, as clearly shown in the report itself, is that wholesalers pay around £30k per kilo for good quality coke. This is then sold on to street dealers in eighths (3.5 grams) quarters and one ounce bags given an average return of around £42k on the kilo, a markup of around 140%. Even if the entire kilo were traded as wraps the return would be around £50k (more if it was cut) producing a mark-up of 170% - 200%. The street dealer turning his ounce or half ounce into wraps will make about the same markup. Nowhere does anyone make anywhere close to the figures mentioned in this Guardian report.

You'd make a much bigger mark-up trading in King crabs.