It used to be that prescription opiates were much cheaper than heroin, because production costs are very low and pharmacy supply chains are much less expensive to maintain than criminal black markets, even though the pharmacies have to do quality control. Now that the US is aggressively cracking down on prescription opiates to try to combat addiction, the street price of those is going up and the supplies are much more limited, so heroin can compete better.
For instance, a few years ago an over-the-counter-in-Canada bottle of Tylenol 222s cost about $5, and the only reason it wouldn’t keep Rush Limbaugh happy all day was that it’s also got acetaminophen in it (aka paracetamol) so it’d rot your kidneys and liver if you took that much; it’s mainly there to keep people from abusing the non-prescription and easy-to-prescribe drugs, while the pure stuff requires much more DEA paperwork.
I use opiates about as often as I get root canals, but my dentist used to be able to prescribe either hydrocodone (Vicodin) or regular codeine, and the regular stuff makes me a bit more spacey for a given amount of pain relief; I know people who have the opposite reaction. Now that the US government is cracking down on them, it’s hard for dentists to prescribe Vicodin, so I’m stuck with the side effects of the regular stuff. (If I want to get spacey, medicinal weed does the trick just fine.)
