These days, it seems like everything is more expensive — with one curious exception.

In a post on the subreddit r/NoStupidQuestions, user Smash_4dams asks, given that everything is more expensive now, why is blow still the same price? Or as he put it, “Why is cocaine still priced the same as it was in 1985? When you factor inflation, it should be nearly $300/gram by now.”

Why is cocaine still priced the same as it was in 1985? When you factor inflation, it should be nearly $300/gram by now.
byu/Smash_4dams inNoStupidQuestions

In the comments, users offered their theories as to why riding the rails doesn’t get more expensive year over year. “One explanation is that the cost of processing and transporting it has dropped. Another is that the market will only support a certain price before demand drops,” explained a user. “The real answer to this question is that they crunched the numbers and found that they will be making more profit if they kept the price lower because it needs to be affordable enough to be a habit,” alleged another.

Others claim that the price went down because it’s significantly more stepped on. “I live in a large U.S. city. The quality I’ve seen in the last 10-15 years is very poor — so poor that I don’t even bother with it,” argued a commenter. “It’s so much different than coke I would get in ‘80s and ‘90s. I know many people who would pay $300 for quality coke.”

So who’s right?

Well, unbelievably, there are actually experts who study this stuff. Tom Wainwright, a former reporter for The Economist and a man with a fully intact septum, gave his summary of why snow prices are so consistent. “What’s really going on there is that the cartels in parts of South America have what economists call a monopsony, which is like a monopoly of demand for a particular product — they’re the main buyers by far,” he explained to Yahoo! Finance. “And what this means is that even when the supply is interrupted or restricted the farmers there aren’t able to push up the price in the way that you’d expect, because the cartels there have this kind of Walmart-like grip on the market, which means that they can say, ‘Sorry guys, we’re the only buyer in this region, the price stays where it is.’”

So there it is. Also, they’re probably cutting it with other things — but hopefully not fentanyl (anymore).