Cocaine remains the most expensive drugs in the world, according to aglobal survey into narcotics published Monday - and Aussies are paying the highest price.
The average price for a gram of cocaine is 70 euros ($78), according to the Global Drug Survey 2015, but Australians shell out 207 euros per gram on average. New Zealand comes a close second, with cocaineselling at around 191 euros per gram in the country.
By contrast, a gram of cocaine costs 75 euros in the U.K. and 55 euros in the U.S., according to the independent researchers, who surveyed more than 100,000 respondents in 50 countries between November and December last year.
Kiwis and Aussies are stuck paying top dollar because of tough border controls, addiction psychiatrist and survey founder Adam Winstock told CNBC. Also, the relatively small market size isn't as attractive to cartels.
Of the 100,000 people surveyed across the world, between 15,000-20,000 said they had used cocaine in the last year – and 80 percent of those had used it less than 10 times over the period.
This, Winstock said, meant that cocaine use was relatively low compared to other narcotics.
"If you look at the sampling among cannabis users, many had used over 100 times in the past year, and for alcohol, a lot more were using weekly," he said, highlighting that only 1 percent of cocaine users had used it more than 100 times over the period.
"It's a good thing that coke is really expensive. It helps lowers indulgence," he added.
Brazil was the cheapest places to buy cocaine, the survey found, at 9 euros per gram. But Winstock warned that nearly 3.4 percent of the country's cocaine use resulted in visits to the emergency room.
He added that the prevalence of new, comparably cheaper drugs like crystal meth had created a two-tier cocaine market, with dealers offering "normal" and "premium" cocaine at different costs.
And people aren't just buying off the street – the Global Drug Survey revealed that the number of people who purchased narcotics online was on the up. Nearly 6 percent of recent drug users surveyed said they had purchased drugs on the "dark net" – a hidden, unregulated online marketplace – over the last year.
Cocaine currently ranks as one of the top 10 drugs bought online last year, accounting for nearly 15 percent of dark net drug purchases.