PRICE OF COCAINE MUCH LOWER THAN IN '80S

Among the many details laid out by authorities after last week's drug
raids around San Diego State University, there was this tidbit:
Alleged dealers were selling half-ounces of cocaine for as little as
$400. A half-ounce contains about 14 grams, which comes out to about
$28 per gram (the size of a Sweet'N Low packet). In the 1980s, a gram
of cocaine cost $100 to $125.

When inflation is factored in, the price difference is even more
eye-popping. If the cost of cocaine went up like everything else,
that $100 gram from the 1980s would cost $282 today.

It's a stunning price drop for a drug once considered among the more
glamorous to use - and one that seems to be on the rise again.
Hollywood celebrities, professional athletes and rock stars
gravitated toward cocaine in the 1980s. The popularity soon trickled
down to young professionals and Average Joes who spent small fortunes
to snort lines of white powder.

The drug made headlines for contributing to the deaths of such
notables as comedian John Belushi and college basketball star Len
Bias. Belushi died in 1982, five years before most of today's college
students were born. Government officials said the price drop isn't
surprising. People became aware of the drug's dangers and started
shying from it, said Eileen Zeidler, a special agent with the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration. "It's not the trendy drug that it
once was," Zeidler said. She also said agents conducting the SDSU
raids found cutting agents - products such as laxatives or baking
powder - used to mix with the cocaine to lessen its purity. That
allows dealers to price it cheaper but sell a higher quantity.

Others look at the falling price of cocaine as proof that the
government's drug policy is failing. Despite years of effort to get
rid of it, cocaine is plentiful and cheap, said David Borden,
executive director of StoptheDrugWar.org.

Borden estimates that the price has fallen 80 percent since the
1980s, and he said the drop has occurred regardless of the stepped-up
enforcement. Prices are dropping because dealers have become better
at distributing the drug, said Mark Kleiman, a professor of public
policy at the UCLA School of Public Affairs.

Cocaine use, meanwhile, is rising. According to the National Survey
on Drug Use and Health, the percentage of people older than 12 who
said they used cocaine in the past year was 2.5 percent in 2006. In
2000, it was 1.5 percent. The high mark was 1982, at 5.6 percent.

Among college students, use is going up as well. In 2004, 6.6 percent
of college students said they had used cocaine in the past year,
according to surveys conducted by the University of Michigan Survey
Research Center, through a project called Monitoring the Future.

The low, in 1994, was 2 percent, while the high was in 1983 and 1985,
when 17.3 percent of students said they used it.

Surveys also show that the percentage of young people who see cocaine
as being harmful has dropped over the past decade.