drug addiction

Arizona is smoking when it comes to having some of the purest illegal drugs in the entire nation.

Boycott be danged – we got ourselves a selling point.

The Grand Canyon State shares this fine distinction with its sister border states thanks to our proximity to Mexico, where we get first dibs on the freshest heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

This glorious news comes from a study tackled by an international research team led by University of Arizona’s own James Cunningham. The study was published in the scientific journal “Addication” and highlighted in UA News.

Researchers checked out about 250, 000 seizures of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin across the U.S. from 1990 to 2004.

Thankfully, they did not test drug potency by sampling the wares, but rather with federal data obtained through the glorious Freedom of Information Act.

“They calculated the distance from the location of each seizure to the nearest major city (import portal) on the border and compared that distance to purity, adjusting for factors such as the size of the seizure,” UA News reports.

The perhaps not-so-shocking results indicated that the purity of these three drugs was inversely proportional to the distance from the border – or the closer you were to Mexico the more potent these three drugs would be.

That means unless you have your own meth trailer hidden in the wiles of Tennessee, you’re best off buying the stuff in Arizona or other places closest to Mexico.

While the general purity decrease held true for all three drugs, researchers did note some exceptions.

Northeastern states as far as 1,500 miles from Mexico had some pretty potent meth, thanks to Canadian imports. New York City and other drug portals made for some pretty pure heroin. Researchers also found cocaine stayed the purest across the board, with less dilution of the drug than the other two.

The researchers’ hypothesis?

“Allowing for variance by drug type, it seems that traffickers increasingly cut their drugs – decrease purity – as distance from a portal increases, possibly to compensate for added transport costs,” Cunningham told UA News.

Those unscrupulous drug hustling scamps. Based on their formidable fashion statements, like the diamond pinkie ring, we would have thought those in the business of transporting and selling drugs would have a tad more class.

Next thing we know they’ll be giving away free samples to try and get people hooked.

Cunningham said this decreasing drug potency was good news for communities far from Mexico and other portals, as less potent drugs means less chance of overdose or other health problems.

While the results of this study may seem somewhat obvious, at least it’s now official. And at least the study was a bit more involved than one that researched if coyotes eat cats. (They do.)

We also say such results could mean good news for the border states, as it can increase tourism and boost the overall economy. After all, traveling drug hungry thugs still need a hotel in which to crash and a few restaurants in which to eat. They may even buy a tchotchke or two.

The title of the study is “Proximity to the U.S.-Mexico Border: A key to explaining geographic variation in U.S. methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin purity.”

NOTE: Although this piece is written with sarcasm, drug abuse is a serious topic. Drug abuse is not only likely to get you arrested, but is also known to wreck – or even end – your life.

[tnipoll]

What do you think?

Do the results of such a study shock you?

Would you have guessed otherwise?

What other studies do you recall that state something that seems obvious?