Abstract
In the sixth chapter of the book, we analyze the data available to estimate the financial dimensions of the Italian market for doping products, including the revenues and profits of different types of suppliers of doping products. As expected, this objective has been the most challenging of the whole project. As is well known in the literature on illegal markets, it is always very difficult to estimate the size of a market that is at least partially illegal (e.g., Reuter and Greenfield, World Economics 2(4):159–173, 2001). We hence have no ambition to provide a definitive estimate; rather, we make a first attempt to assess the retail revenues and hence financial dimensions of the market.
We proceed in three steps, the first two referring to the market in its entirety and the last focusing on the revenues and profits of different suppliers. First, we estimate the potential market value of the substances seized by NAS and other law enforcement agencies in Italy. Second, we assess the total retail expenditures—or the total financial size of the market—for doping substances, using the consumption estimates developed in Chap. 2. Third, we analyze the rather sketchy data collected concerning the revenues and profits of a few illegal suppliers of doping products in Italy. A preliminary condition for the first two steps is the determination of the prices of doping substances—and this is what we begin with.
Our main findings are that, with few exceptions, doping products are relatively cheap, certainly cheaper than illegal drugs, if they are bought at regular pharmacy prices or on the Internet. Therefore, the revenues generated by retail exchanges are also relatively modest, representing only a fraction of the revenues raised on the market for cocaine. We acknowledge, however, that our underlying consumption estimates severely underestimate the consumption of some of the most expensive substances and hence the related revenues.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Above all, we checked the following Web sites: http://www.mesomorphosis.com/; http://www.eurobolic.info/; and http://it.steroidset.com/. An important caveat is that Web sites offering doping products are online one day and disappear the next (see also Swedish National Institute of Public Health 2010: 15).
- 4.
- 5.
See http://www.steroid4u.eu/compra-iniettare-steroidi/deca-durabolin-norma?language=It. Accessed April 20, 2012.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
See http://www.eurobolic.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=342&language=de; accessed on April 19, 2012.
- 10.
The Dipartimento Politiche Antidroga (2012b: 191) provides prices per street gram for heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and hashish. To make the comparison, we have hypothesized—based on the small literature about Italian local drug markets (e.g., Arlacchi and Lewis 1990; Paoli 2000)—that one can make four doses out of a gram of heroin or cocaine. The standard street dose of heroin and cocaine, in fact, is called quartino, i.e., quarter, even though it often contains less than 0.25 g. In the case of marijuana and hashish, we have calculated the price of a dose of cannabis by assuming that you can make three joints out of a gram.
- 11.
Reporting data from an Internet survey of 500 US users, Parkinson and Evans (2006) concluded that cycles had become longer in the 2000s than in the previous decade.
- 12.
We have reached this figure by multiplying the number of doses (3,000 IU × 2 weeks/200 IU) by the price per dose (9.491 €).
- 13.
For example, http://www.massimospattini.it/ORMONEDELLACRESCITAEBODYBUILDING.htm. Accessed June 19, 2012.
- 14.
This sum does not include the active ingredients of peptide hormones, growth factors, and related substances, because they are not comparable to each other and to the other doping substances.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
According to the UNODC (2010: 41), about 18 metric tons of heroin at 70 % purity are consumed yearly in Italy each year. According to the data published by the Dipartimento Politiche Antidroga (2012a, b: 414), brown heroin, the type of heroin by far most widespread in Italy, has an average purity of 22 %. If this figure is accepted, we can hypothesize that 57.6 t of heroin at 22 % purity (18 t × 3.2) are yearly consumed in Italy. However, the Dipartimento Politiche Antidroga does not distinguish purity data by different market levels. From previous studies (e.g., Paoli 2000) and expert interviews we know that retail heroin purity rarely exceeds 10 %. This means that the 18 t at 70 % that according to UNODC are yearly consumed in Italy need to be multiplied not by 3.2, but by 7, reaching a total of 126 t. As each gram costs 42 € in 2010, we can estimate the revenues generated by heroin retail purchases in Italy between a minimum of 2,419 million euro (at 22 % purity) and a maximum of 5,292 million euro (at 10 % purity).
- 19.
To estimate the revenues generated by the retail cocaine market, we have multiplied the estimate of cocaine users (353,000, based on a 2010 past-year prevalence rate of 0.9 %; see Dipartmento Politiche Antidroga, 2011: 8) with the average amount consumed by each user, i.e., 30.2 g of pure cocaine, according to UNODC (2010: 71), thus reaching a 10.7 t figure (10,660,600 g). Although Italian law enforcement agencies do not collect purity data at different market levels, we know from previous studies (e.g., Paoli 2000) and expert interviews that retail cocaine purity hardly ever exceeds 20 % and is probably even lower. This means that the 10.7 t have to be multiplied by five and thus amount to 53.3 t (or 53,303,000 g) of cocaine at 20 % purity. As we know that a gram of street-level cocaine costs 69.15 € in 2010 (Dipartimento Politiche Antidroga 2012b: 191), we can estimate the revenues generated by cocaine retail purchases in 3,685,902,450 €.
- 20.
This choice is due to the fact that most commercial activities, including the sale of doping products, slow down considerably in Italy during the months of August.
- 21.
Large-scale importers of illegal drugs were not only members of mafia groups. In the late 1990s, a former bank manager, P.C., was responsible for several 400–700 kg cocaine shipments and later sold the cocaine to a plurality of wholesale traffickers, including members of Southern Italian mafia groups, who resided in several parts of the country (Tribunale di Milano 1998).
- 22.
The prices of illegal drugs are published online as an appendix of the annual World Drug Report. See http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2011.html.
- 23.
In making the comparison, though, it is important to recall that we do not know how the US DEA calculated the 2.5 million dosage units mentioned in the text and what the packages seized by the German and Austrian police forces effectively contained.
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Paoli, L., Donati, A. (2014). Revenues and Profits. In: The Sports Doping Market. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8241-3_6
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