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How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency
- rickyconnolly 14y agoBut I still don't get it. Why Tide in particular? Why not any other high-price bulk retail product? Why not gourmet coffee grounds, for instance?
- pkulak 14y agoIf you think a bit, you really can't come up with anything better. Gourmet coffee is a bad currency because it's very local and few people actually need it. EDIT: And if it's already ground when you buy it, it's no good, by the way. ;)
- objclxt 14y agoBecause Tide is universally popular in the US, amazingly so. You could go into a CVS or Walgreens in the US and 70%+ of the detergent on sale will be Tide branded. Since people are always going to wash clothes, retailers can guarantee they'll shift, and it's virtually un-perishable - and because the margins on tide are rather low, shops will happily buy suspect goods: they're practically untraceable and will shift fast. Practically everyone does laundry, but not everyone drinks coffee. And those who do drink coffee will have differing tastes and far more varying brand loyalty than the detergent market.
- bcn 14y ago"...talking about moving the Tide to stores “back home”—which in their case is Vietnam." Not only popular in the US!
- aes256 14y agoBecause it is ubiquitous, there is constant demand for it, a consistently high retail price, and there are plenty of retailers willing to fence it in large quantities.
- hyperbovine 14y agoInterestingly, it would also be rather easy to counterfeit, assuming the fragrance isn't impossible to nail down. Wonder how long before we see that start happening...
- pixl97 14y agoCollect empty bottles and fill them with cheap blue stuff, put a layer of real tide on the top for the smell and viscosity. Probably already is.
- VLM 14y agoI used to work retail. Well, during Bush the 1st. Anyway there are multiple markets. Its not like on the internet where there's pretty much ebay and nothing else. Locality and physicality breeds multiple markets. One is a kid can probably walk out of his parents basement with a bottle of tide and mom and dad probably won't notice quite as obviously as if the kid walked off with a $20 bill. So at least some Tide is from unemployed teens smoking up via mom's walmart bill. Obviously not terribly high volume, but... Another is there is already a booming market in turning high value food stamp food into money for "whatever". Our food store was surrounded by bars where a cold steak presented at the bar resulted in maybe half price in cash being returned, more or less. Also you can buy a steak OTC, cooked even, from the bar, for cheaper than we sold them. Whatever drug market operating in steaks is parallel or in competition with the existing food stamp market in steaks. This also explains the anecdote WRT food stamp corruption the crooks are always buying stacks of steaks with food stamps... they're the universal currency, not doritos or rice bags or whatever. If you're trying to turn stamps into cash you buy steaks. (yes I'm old, and I'm well aware its a debit card like scheme now, but nothing really changes with the market)
- marze 14y agoOf course it would come to this. People need to pay more attention.
- monochromatic 14y agoWhat a strange article. Almost feels like an April Fools Day joke.
- muzz 14y agoIndeed. I expected a revealing that Tide was used as an ingredient to make drugs, like how baking soda is used to make crack. I didn't expect "brand loyalty" to be the TLDR.
- marshray 14y agoYeah, this has all the signs of a viral marketing campaign to me. But some folks with long-established accounts on here confirmed that they've seen evidence of the Tide underground economy in and around DC. I think the world would be a more interesting place if it turned out that Procter and Gamble had subcontracted some PR firm who trolled the shopkeepers, police and crackheads alike.
- corin_ 14y agoI don't think anyone would sign off on a viral marketing campaign whose message was "buying our product might make it look like you're about to buy drugs".
- idunno246 14y agoI guess this is why safeway locks up the most ridiculous things. Like toothbrushes!
- anigbrowl 14y agoThings like toothbrushes are locked up because they are relatively expensive but so small that they are easy to steal. You can just slide one up your sleeve while pretending to examine another one and then putting it back. It's not worth trying to identify or detain shoplifters over toothbrushes, but the costs of theft add up. Same thing with razor blades.
- caf 14y agoI have heard that razor blades are one of the most expensive items on a per-pallet basis that a supermarket sells.
- norswap 14y agotl;dr: Thieves and crackheads are using Tide bottles as currency, because those are getting bought by some stores under their market value in order to turn a bigger profit.
- dickbasedregex 14y agoThank you. I quit reading after a while because the author wouldn't just cut to the damn chase already.
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- dminor 14y agoSounds way way less convenient than cash to me.
- jpatokal 14y agoStealing cash from a store requires armed robbery. Stealing Tide from that same store is only shoplifting.
- dminor 14y agoOk, but if I'm hanging out on the corner selling drugs, do I really want to deal with a bunch of laundry detergent tubs?
- nathannecro 14y agoI'm not sure if that's the point. What they're doing is lowering expressed risk. In a standard drug+robbery cycle (I'm guessing here): Alice robs a Walmart/7-11/etc with armed force or intent to use armed force. Alice gains $500. Alice goes to Bob and pays the $500 to him for drugs. Not only is Alice in danger (she can be prosecuted for armed theft), but the cash can be traced back to Bob putting him in danger. This also links Alice to Bob's drug dealing activities which stacks additional charges on Alice. In a Tide-enhanced drug+robbery cycle: Alice goes to the Walmart/7-11/Etc and walks out with 10 tubs of detergent (coordinating shift changes to make her escape). If caught, she can only be prosecuted for shoplifting which is at best a mark on the record. Alice sells the tubs of Tide to Bob and grabs her drugs. If caught with the tubs of Tide, Bob can deny any connection. In addition, as Cynthia, Darcy, Elizabeth, ... all shoplift Tide from the same store, that store's inventory of Tide detergent will be depleted. As it takes time for P&G to ship the Tide out, the store will have to rely on local-area suppliers of Tide which in turn will have bought the Tide from Bob at a markup. As long as Bob is not caught with the drugs on him, he'll not face any charges (for possessing marked cash for example) as a bottle of Tide is deniable. Similarly, Alice will only face charges for shoplifting which carries a far more lenient sentence compared with grand theft.
- 14y ago
- Cogito 14y agofull text: http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/#print http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/#...
- montecarl 14y agobetter yet: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Ffeatures%2Ftide-detergent-drugs-2013-1%2F http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnew... I really like viewtext. To whoever made it, thanks!
- aaronbrethorst 14y agoRonnie Roller (http://ronnieroller.com http://ronnieroller.com), who is also the creator of http://www.ihackernews.com http://www.ihackernews.com
- Cogito 14y agoThe primary reason for using detergent as a currency, beyond the fact that the market for stolen Tide is so strong, is that shoplifting carries a far lower penalty than robbery or burglary -theft-. If they were robbing the stores at knife point, or breaking and entering, the risk is significantly higher. This way they have a low risk, easy to turn over, virtually untraceable scheme, and that is obviously a very attractive thing.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoTide as a poor man's bitcoin. TL;DR version - Laundry Detergent is pretty fungible, everyone needs it, and its difficult to trace, unscrupulous retailers will buy stolen tide for cash. This situation provides crooks with a couple of benefits, one they can separate the money trail for selling drugs, after all who thinks this looks like a drug buy: Alice goes to grocery gets laundry detergent; Bob sells stolen detergent to a grocery for cash. No way to connect Bob and Alice until you add: Alice goes to grocery gets laundry detergent; Alice gives Detergent to Bob for drugs. Bob sells stolen detergent to a grocery for cash. Now you can connect them and see the drug deal. Hard to get a warrant to search Bob's car for laundry detergent.
- andyjsong 14y agoAnd if you get sent to prison you can always exchange Tide for canned mackerel: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122290720439096481.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122290720439096481.html
- finnw 14y agoIt's not really like bitcoin. For one thing it does not broadcast to the whole world whenever it changes hands.
- delinka 14y agoI can't figure out why the unscrupulous retailer is buying Tide from anyone except P&G. Except that he knows Bob is up to something and willing to assist Bob.
- tbirdz 14y agoQuote from the article: "Despite its popularity, Tide is not a big moneymaker for stores. P&G’s proprietary surfactants and enzymes are relatively expensive to produce, notes Bill Schmitz, a Deutsche Bank analyst, so Tide’s wholesale cost is steep. Only so much of that can be passed on to customers. “It’s so tight,” says Schmitz of the profit margin. In general, a retailer clears just a few percentage points on a Tide purchase. A store that charges $19.99 for a 150-ounce bottle might claim $2 in profit. But if it buys stolen bottles for $5, that jumps to $15."
- montecarl 14y agoThis article makes Tide almost sound like its worth the extremely high cost. I buy store brand everything for the most part. Am I missing out?
- jevinskie 14y agoHonestly, I don't know. I think a lot of it has to do with the fragrance. Wearing clothing washed with a different detergent feels odd, at least to me. Also, one of the main odors that defines a "household scent" is the detergent used in that household. Maybe these factors help drive brand loyalty?
- wylie 14y agoIt's possible that this is a viral marketing campaign to get you to think exactly that. Other comments go into detail, but it seems impractical to do this on a large scale as mentioned in the article.
- djt 14y agoA similar story: I read years ago that there was a gang of people that would steal laptops at airports when businessmen were tired and unattentive. The reason they gave was that it was easy to move them (this was 10 years ago so a Macbook Pro was about $5k) and if they got caught they could pretend they accidently picked it up instead of their own bag. If they got caught it was very unlikely to be prosecuted. The robbers said that compared to robbing a convenience store etc it made as much cash but the risk was extremely low.
- GabrielF00 14y agoAbout five years ago I worked in an office that was above a physical therapy place. Sometimes patients would sneak upstairs and steal a laptop. We were able to recover one laptop: the guy who stole it sold it to a kid for $50 and when the kid came home, his Dad made him tell how he'd gotten it. The Dad found our number and said he'd give us back the laptop for the $50 his kid spent, which we were happy to do. Another time a laptop was stolen the thief wasn't smart enough to take the power cord. I guess if you're desperate enough that you're willing to commit a crime for $50 then stealing a laptop is a better idea than robbing a convenience store but you still have to be pretty desperate.
- drug_toss85 14y agoA power supply is $70 retail from the OEM versus $500-1000 for the entire device. Unplugging and carrying a cable may have increased the risk of detection. Passing morphine withdrawal is an interesting experience. I tried once, and it was by far the most physically intense pain I have ever experienced. Even with the most powerful sedative I could only cry in pain. If I was out of luck and on the streets I'd steal stuff to avoid it again. (Not that I would. Even entry-level coding is enough to avoid a junkie lifestyle. I did it just for the experience. Also, I gave up after a few hours.)
- ericcumbee 14y agoor return it and we wont press charges of possession of stolen property.
- bulletsvshumans 14y agoThis is listed as 'undetermined' on Snopes, for what it's worth. http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/tide.asp http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/tide.asp
- stretchwithme 14y agoI don't quite buy it.
- jlgreco 14y agoYeah, how do you walk off with 20 bottles of detergent anyway, let alone 100? Ignoring the questionable issue of clerk attentiveness, how do you physically hold that many bottles at once? And what are these drugdealers doing, driving around with tractor trailer trucks to hold all their "money"? This article doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
- pixl97 14y ago1. Case the stores camera policy and times that loss management comes and leaves. 2. Watch for lazy employees. 3. Load up a shopping cart (20 bottles would fit, be pretty heavy. 4. Push cart out door. I've seen some pretty brazen theft before. A gas station down the road from me lost a large display of cigarets when two people walked in picked it up and carried it off when the cashier was dealing with a flooding toilet (most likely caused by them before a short time before).
- jlgreco 14y agoI could maybe see it with 20 with a cart, but 100 seems like quite a stretch. Also if they are presumably loosing many thousands of dollars a week to the theft of something so bulky, how the hell haven't they figured out a way to prevent that sort of theft? If it's happening, my money is on them being in on it somehow because it's really just ludicrous otherwise.
- wmf 14y agoMany stores will not do anything to physically stop shoplifting; they may call the police but they won't stop you. (A Whole Foods employee was fired for attempting to stop a shoplifter, because employees are not allowed to touch customers.) So I imagine you'd just fill a cart with Tide and push it out.
- smoyer 14y agoPerhaps the thieves are hoping for a clean get-away? (Sorry ... someone had to do it)
- onethree 14y agoI used to work in a supermarket in Australia, and we had a very similar problem. We'd lose $10,000 a month in Olay products, virtually all of which would end up at the local markets. It's not as uncommon as you might think
- philip1209 14y agoOne page: http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/#print http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/#...
- chrisballinger 14y agoI'm surprised no one has made a money laundering joke yet.
- samstave 14y agoI guess they wanted to be clean from lowly puns?
- troymc 14y agoThose jokes made a clean getaway.
- stock_toaster 14y ago"You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out." -Warren Buffet
- tantalor 14y agoTo channel money through a source or by an intermediary.
- ryusage 14y agoThis isn't reddit.
- bane 14y agoReminds me of a story I can't seem to google where a D.C. council woman was killed and robbed for her credit cards, which were used to rent a tanker truck and to buy thousands of gallons of gasoline, which (the plan was) was to be sold for cash back to another gas station (at a discount) in order to buy drugs.
- eric_h 14y agoI have been curious, since I moved to the LES in NYC a year and a half ago, why the Duane Reade near me had security dongles with metal cables attached to the handles of Tide and other premium detergent and on nothing else in the store. Now I know. [edit] this comment's reference: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5024191 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5024191 suggests that my local Duane Reade may have simply fallen victim to paranoia induced by a viral and perhaps inaccurate news article. I'm inclined to investigate further. [edit again] the end of the article mentions another Duane Reade in NYC that had someone steal a great deal of Tide detergent. I now wonder if there is, in fact, a black market for tide, or if this thief fell victim to viral misinformation, causing Duane Reade (equipped with the same misinformation) to also over-respond.
- eli 14y agoAt my local CVS in DC they moved the Tide to behind the counter.
- uxp 14y agoReminds me of the time I was carded when I bought Baking Soda. I see a lot of weird shit on the internet, I generally like my reality to be a bit more logical, but every once in a while something really does make me say WTF.
- justx1 14y agoStolen bicycles are another example of a drug currency: http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/30393216796/what-happens-to-stolen-bicycles http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/30393216796/what-happens-t... Interesting read about the "Economic Theory of Bike Crime": "...Using this risk-return framework for crime, it begins to be clear why there is so much bike theft. For all practical purposes, stealing a bike is risk-free crime. It turns out there is a near zero chance you will be caught stealing a bike (see here) and if you are, the consequences are minimal. "
- alaithea 14y agoI saw one of these transactions go down a month or so ago in my town (a DC suburb). A somewhat ragged looking woman was lugging a large bottle of tide down the street. Another person waved at her and they approached each other in the middle of a crosswalk. They haggled for a brief moment, the Tide changed hands, and they went on their respective ways. My husband and I were totally confused as to what we'd just seen. Now we know!
- pixie_ 14y agoIs this for real? Seriously this is the definition sensationalism.
- frozenport 14y agothis speaks to effectiveness of traditional regulations on currency.
- mikenon 14y agoHow so? The drug dealers are converting Tide back to dollars, and a significant portion of their business is still done with paper currency. The drug user is who acquires the Tide, and then barters it for drugs. As other have pointed out, shoplifting Tide carries less risk than burglary, armed robbery, prostitution, etc. If anything I think this speaks to the resourcefulness of drug users, and/or, the effectiveness of black markets.
- frozenport 14y agoThey feel the need to use something other than dollars.
- mikenon 14y agoRight, we agree on that. However, for the reasons I explained above, it's not because of regulations on the dollar.
- kleiba 14y ago[...] the average U.S. consumer buys 68 pieces of clothing a year [...] I'm speechless. Can that figure be true?
- cperciva 14y agoI imagine it depends on definitions. I bought a dozen pairs of socks in November; does that count as 12 pieces of clothing or 24 pieces of clothing? Do the hiking boots I bought count as clothing? And if a new parent is buying baby clothes, who is the consumer -- the parent or the baby?
- kleiba 14y agoThe latter point is probably not as important since we're talking about averages anyway. I would imagine boots do not count since we're talking about detergent here, although some shoes can be thrown into the washing machine. There are three comments about socks now :-) But to get to 68 you'd still have to buy 34 pairs of socks. Even if you exchange some of them for shirts, pants and underwear, you'd need a pretty big sock drawer if you keep adding and adding every year...
- cperciva 14y agoThe latter point is probably not as important since we're talking about averages anyway. Well, unless you say that the baby isn't a "consumer", in which case your average is the same total number of items of clothing divided by a smaller number of consumers.
- lmm 14y agoI throw away socks as soon as they get holes in, which is pretty frequent (I don't make any effort to take care of them, they're just socks). To replace them I buy a set of 5 pairs maybe three or four times a year. It doesn't seem completely implausible.
- JoshuaDavid 14y agoIf you include socks. Individual socks.
- GregBuchholz 14y agoBravo. Better than _The Suit is Back_ by a country mile. "If You're Watching, It's For You" (http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/08/if_youre_watching_its_for_you.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/08/if_youre_watching_its...).
- bluedanieru 14y agoOh fucking great, so now we can have the DEA confiscate your car because you have some laundry detergent in the trunk. The last half of the article detailing the "detective work" (read: harassing destitute drug addicts) made me sick.
- elsurudo 14y agoThe undercover cop selling the nail salon $1000-worth of stolen goods for $30, then busting them for a felony is a little harsh and dishonest. They relied on a trick, too (including expensive items, like quality headphones, with the Tide, ONLY to push the "retail cost" of the goods over the felony-minimum).
- Phlarp 14y agoHow is this not entrapment?
- nikcub 14y agoI grew up in a suburb in Australia that bordered a bad area where crime and drug dealing were rife, and I went to school with a lot of people from that area. The network seemed to always have one product or another that was used as an informal currency. For years it was the Energizer brand AA battery, then it became prepaid cell phone minutes after one provider allowed users to send credit to each other (this was shutdown). At one period it was Gillette Mach 3 razors, but then stores started putting them behind the counter so it didn't last long. Cigarettes were always a quasi-currency, I remember the value going from 20c to 50c, and cigarettes being exchanged for everything (and some smaller stores selling or buying them individually). After I left the school I heard that the market had reverted back to batteries (there was always a battery market, I don't think I ever purchased batteries from a store), after a very brief period where the most shoplifted items in the local supermarket were cuts of meat and meat trays[0]. What these items all have in common is that they can be shoplifted from large supermarkets easily, are portable, easy to store, have a long shelf life (well, not the meat) and are essential household purchases even in poor neighborhoods. I find interesting that even if you aren't involved directly in the drug trading, you are taking part in the surrounding economy by purchasing or exchanging these goods. I never bought drugs but my friends and I were always buying and trading these goods. I assumed that they would always end up back with the drug dealers somehow, who would find a way to convert them back to cash. [0] Apparently this is an issue again in Australia - "GROCERY prices are rising because organised crime gangs are stealing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of meat" - http://www.news.com.au/national/organised-gangs-targets-meat-trays-at-grocers/story-fndo4dzn-1226488477632 http://www.news.com.au/national/organised-gangs-targets-meat... Edit: an interesting related article from Forbes that came up in my Google search - "Why do people steal meat from grocery stores?", goes into the economics and details of shoplifting and is US-centric: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2012/12/24/why-do-people-steal-meat-from-grocery-stores/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2012/12/24/why-do-peo...
- speedyrev 14y agoA new take on Money Laundering? rimshot
- trevin 14y agoAfter reading through this a second time, I'm convinced it's an elaborate press release. Way too much of the article is devoted to the benefits of Tide and why people are so brand loyal. Also, many of the quotes and details given appear to be pretty tongue-in-cheek.
- DennisP 14y agoI have to admit that before I caught myself, I was thinking "that's pretty impressive, maybe I'll buy Tide next time."
- nikcub 14y agoThis story is 9 months old, it was first on local news (with the same source from the same police department): http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2012/03/14/tide-detergent-becomes-the-latest-target-for-thieves-across-the-country/ http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2012/03/14/tide-detergent-beco... and again: http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2012/03/23/prince-georges-county-police-bust-laundry-detergent-theft-ring/ http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2012/03/23/prince-georges-coun... Then extended as a feature in The Daily later that month: http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/03/12/031212-news-tide-theft-1-4/ http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/03/12/031212-news-tide-the... Which lead it to becoming a subject on Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/tide.asp http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/tide.asp It seems that the writer at NYMag hit his word count by extending the background on the brand, since he had a ready source available with the marketing/PR department at Procter. I think this could have been more interesting if it went into the direction of exploring the economics at work.
- brokentone 14y agoWhether this story is fully accurate or somewhat sensationalized, it seems as if the market accepts it. I was in a Duane Reade (convenience store/pharmacy, think CVS or Walgreens) recently in the LES, NYC and I was trying to figure out why they had alarm tags on most of the bottles of Tide, but none of the other brands that had similar value and value density. This explains a lot.