My friend accidentally ended up befriending one of the largest distributors of LSD in the country. She didn’t even know until she went to a party with him, and he whipped out a pint sized dropper bottle full of acid. Each drop was $10. That one bottle was worth like $80,000.
She didn’t go to any parties with him after that. Apparently she had a great time that evening, but the anxiety of “what if he gets busted while I’m hanging out with him” kept her from being comfortable around him. She did learn some fascinating things from him though.
Apparently LSD producers are very hippie and do it purely for love of the substance; They just want to spread it to as many people as possible. They sell to the distributors basically at cost, which is how it’s able to stay so cheap per hit; $10 will last you pretty much all day, unless you’re regularly doing massive doses and have built a resistance to it. That’s also why LSD isn’t trafficked by groups like gangs or cartels; The suppliers simply won’t sell to them, because they don’t want the gangs and cartels fighting over it and increasing street prices.
It’s also incredibly easy for traffickers to hide, so the risk of getting caught is low. It dissolves in alcohol, so traffickers can just throw it into a vodka bottle in the trunk of their car. If they get pulled over and searched, they just say it’s left over liquor from a party they went to last week. As long as they’re sober while driving, cops can’t bust them for just having liquor in their trunk.