Forty years ago, when the U.S. government began systematically tracking drug prices, a street bag of heroin cost around $10. In 2025, $10 could buy five fentanyl pills, with a total potency equivalent to 20 bags of 1980s heroin. In the early 1970s, the American government launched what became known as the war on drugs.

The goal was to reduce substance abuse. The strategy: Crimp the demand for heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances by disrupting the supply and making drug use expensive. A key way “we measured success was getting the price up,” said Robert Du Pont, who served as the White House drug czar from 1973 to 1977. “It meant we got the job done.” For a few years, prices did rise.

But then they started dropping — and kept dropping. Over the last two decades, the cost of getting high on opioids has fallen more than 90 percent, and the prices of other illicit drug experiences have dropped precipitously, too. By contrast, the cost of many consumer items has risen steadily.

In 1981, $10 would easily buy eight McDonald’s Big Mac hamburgers; last year, it wasn’t even enough to buy two. The result is a stark economic reality: It has become harder to buy dinner out, compared to most other purchases, but much easier to get high. Prices Drop, Deaths Rise In 1972, 6,700 people died of overdose in U.S. In 2024, the figure was 80,000.

Many factors contribute to the death rate, which soared beyond the rate of population increase, including the widespread use and accessibility of ultra-potent drugs that are cheap by historical standards. “When the price drops, people use more,” said Jonathan Caulkins, a Carnegie Mellon professor who researches drug prices and policy. “When they use more, they die more.” One main reason for the price drop has been a transformation in how and where drugs are made. Until a decade ago, drugs were largely grown on vast farms that were costly to operate and relatively easy for law enforcement to identify. Today, many are synthesized from cheap chemicals in labs across the globe.

Fentanyl is the most infamous, but the United Nations has identified more than 1,500 novel psychoactive substances — opiates such as fentanyl but also stimulants, hallucinogens, cannabinoids and sedatives. “The supply is diverse, gone away from agriculture, and synthetic drugs are all over the world,” Dr. Du Pont said. “Because drugs are so cheap to make, they can price them very low.”.