Re: a whole quarter pound of
The HA make money selling drugs which are profitable because the government has made them illegal. Because of the extremely high profits, they find it worthwhile to have extremely destructive wars with other, rival drug distribution groups. But the root cause is that the government has created the niche market by manipulating the supply and demand scale for this product.
An example. Methamphetamines cost about $5 a pound to make, in terms of raw materials, not including startup costs for glassware. Methamphetamine sells for $2000 per ounce, because the supply is so low. That's $32,000 per pound. Versus $5 for raw materials, plus 12 hours of a skilled chemists time at $50 per hour, which would work out to $605 per pund under the free market. Drug companies typically charge 300 to 500% markup, which still works out to only $3000 per pound if available OTC. Which means that Meth currently runs about 10x standard market value, and you wonder why people are willing to kill for those kinds of profits?
And that's when you make it a pound at a time. A drug company mass producing could easily drop the price much much more.
If you respond with any sort of plea along the lines of "But it's addictive! Drugs are bad! Think of the children!" I will consider you to have not responded to my actual point.
-Kawazuki