Gutter punk kids & NOPD are a joke

My first thought to Guido's second question about economics was purity.

I wrote a paper in college on the heroin epidemic among US soldiers in Vietnam. They were getting heroin with purity north of 90% there and street heroin in the US is typically in the range of 10 to 15%.

I recall the DEA issuing a warning a few years ago of street level heroin purity in the Northeast rising from 40% to nearly 60%. Regions such as the west coast were among the lower spectrum you've mentioned. I don't know why. Talks with detectives at our local shelter about the increase of OD deaths and heroin purity was pretty grim.

This is from '02
https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs5/5787/avail.htm
DEA also reported purities for retail quantities of heroin as high as 90 percent in Bridgeport, Connecticut (65 to 90%); New Bedford, Massachusetts (30 to 90%); and Portland, Maine (50 to 90%). According to the DEA Newark Division, all of the heroin purchased in Newark under the auspices of the Domestic Monitor Program--a retail-level heroin purchase program that monitors source of origin, price, and purity--was identified as South American heroin and had an average purity of 78.6 percent in the first half of FY2002.
'
Random NJ article from '14
http://www.trentonian.com/article/TT/20140912/NEWS/140919799