Measuring out drugs
08/24/2009 03:18 a.m. | Statistics
Recently I have been watching The Wire, and have become more and more interested with the economics of illegal drugs.
While I won't delve too much into the complex organization of dealers, I do want to get into how they organize their goods.
From watching similar shows, most people are familiar with the user of the term 'Kilo' to represent a unit of drugs. This is short for kilogram, which is a metric unit of measure to describe weight (or mass, which is all the same to the general public). Similarly, drugs can be measured in grams, which are also Metric units. Typically, cocaine and heroin are measured in these means.
There is another way to measure drugs, though. Some drugs are measured in Pounds and Ounces, which are the Imperial conversions for the Metric units. The mostly notable (if not only) drug that is measured this way is marijuana.
These differences in how drugs are measured are quite interesting. Why would a country that uses the Imperial system have drug dealers who use a different system? And why would this only be true for certain drugs? I believe I have the answer.
The basis of the answer is that the unit of measure is generally a result of the packaging. The packaging, of course, is controlled by the supplier. This makes sense, considering that a majority of cocain and heroin come from countries that use the Metric system. This would lead me to believe then that marijuana comes mostly from countries that use the Imperial system, the biggest of all being the United States.This then makes marijuana an American product of sorts.
This continues to baffle me, because I would think somewhere along the way all of the dealers would want to get on the same system. But then, I wish the same for the United States, and I don't see that happening anytime soon. This two system nonsense should come to a stop, and I think drug dealers might wield just enough power to make that happen.
In conclusion, based on the multiple standards for units of measure for particular drugs, I think that drug dealers should use their wealth and power to change the US over to the Metric system. If you've spend much time at all measuring things, you'll understand why.