How Many Doses Are in a Kilogram of Drugs?

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In September 2026, an operation in Zárate ended with the seizure of 52 kilograms of MDMA. The official statement estimated that this quantity could produce roughly one million tablets. The figure was striking. But it raised a less obvious question: does a million tablets equal a million doses?

Not necessarily. If those 52 kilograms were fully pure MDMA and a reference dose of 100 milligrams of active substance were used, the result would be 520,000 standardised doses. To reach a million tablets, by contrast, one would have to assume that each tablet contained around 52 milligrams of MDMA. Both calculations are mathematically compatible. What changes is the unit being counted.

Nor can we tell, from that equivalence, how many people would have used the substance or over what period. A tablet is not necessarily one standardised dose; a dose is not one person.

The example sums up a common problem in how seizures are reported: kilograms are measured, but doses are estimated. Between one figure and the other lies a methodological decision that often stays out of the news.

The number looks exact. The unit does not always

A seizure of 10 kilograms is, in principle, a physical quantity. It can be checked on a scale and reviewed in an official record. To say that it represents a hundred thousand doses requires something more: deciding what is meant by dose.

In official documents and public debate, the word can refer to three different things: a retail sales unit, the amount a person uses on one occasion, or a set quantity of active substance. They are not equivalent.

The standard I propose takes as its starting point the typical consumption unit used by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to produce comparable conversions. When a forensic analysis of purity or potency is available, the calculation can be expressed in units of active substance. It must always be stated which of the two procedures was used.

The advantage of setting a convention is not to discover how much each person will use. It is to allow two agencies, two provinces or two years to speak about the same magnitude when they use the word dose.

What Argentine official reports show

Reviewing Argentine seizure announcements, I found different conversion factors, even for the same substance.

In November 2019, the Argentine Naval Prefecture (Prefectura Naval) reported the seizure of 8,110 kilograms of marijuana in Misiones and presented it as equivalent to 25 million doses. Dividing one figure by the other allows the assumption to be reconstructed: about 324 milligrams of marijuana per dose.

If the nominal criterion of 500 milligrams per consumption unit used by the UNODC for cannabis herb were applied, the same 8,110 kilograms would represent 16.22 million units. The seizure would not have changed. Only the denominator would have.

A cocaine example shows another difference. In September 2022, the National Gendarmerie (Gendarmería Nacional) reported 787.8 grams and 1,888 doses. That ratio implies approximately 417 milligrams of product per dose. With a nominal unit of 100 milligrams, the same weight would be expressed as 7,878 units. This does not in itself show that the statement was wrong: it shows that, without knowing the definition used, the figures are not directly comparable.

This is no minor detail. When dose figures are used to describe trends, compare operational results or underpin public decisions, differences in criteria can be mistaken for differences in real scale.

Three substances, three different problems

Cannabis: a joint is not a unit of THC

In the case of cannabis, the mass of a consumption unit varies with practices and markets. A study in Barcelona observed joints of roughly 250 milligrams; another field study in the United States found an average close to 580 milligrams. For a nominal international comparison, the UNODC uses 500 milligrams of herb per unit.

From that assumption comes a simple equivalence: one kilogram of marijuana equals 2,000 nominal consumption units.

But plant weight does not tell us how much active substance the product contains. For that one needs to know its potency. The literature also proposes standard units of 5 milligrams of THC. If a kilogram of cannabis had 11% THC — a percentage used here only as an illustrative example, taken from European data — it would contain 110,000 milligrams of THC, equivalent to 22,000 standard units of 5 milligrams.

Do we move, then, from 2,000 to 22,000 doses? No. We move from counting units of plant product to counting units of active substance. They are different measures and should not be confused with 22,000 joints or 22,000 consumers.

In Argentina, moreover, a concrete difficulty remains: this review did not identify a published official series of THC potency for seized pressed cannabis. Without that measurement, it is better to use an explicit nominal factor than to attribute to a consignment a potency that was never determined.

Cocaine: the same kilo can represent different quantities

For cocaine hydrochloride, the standard adopts 100 milligrams of product as the nominal unit when there is no forensic analysis. This gives 10,000 nominal doses per kilogram.

When purity is known, the question changes. The criterion adopted is 50 milligrams of pure cocaine per reference dose, consistent with the nominal unit and with the purity levels observed in Argentine retail-level seizures.

Consider two packages of one kilogram each:

• If the first contains 40% cocaine, it holds 400,000 milligrams of active substance: 8,000 reference doses.
• If the second contains 60% cocaine, it holds 600,000 milligrams: 12,000 reference doses.

They weigh exactly the same, but they do not contain the same amount of cocaine. Argentina’s Early Warning System (Sistema de Alerta Temprana) also recorded differences in purity between small seizures and larger ones. For that reason the nominal factor should not be presented as if it were a chemical measurement of the consignment.

MDMA: a tablet, a dose and a kilo of crystal are not the same thing

With MDMA, two measures overlap: how many tablets could be obtained from a given weight, and how much active substance those tablets contain.

The UNODC uses a gross reference weight of 271 milligrams per tablet for Latin America. If what was seized were tablets and only their weight was reported, one kilogram would equal about 3,700 tablets. That calculation does not say how much MDMA each one contains.

For crystal or powder, by contrast, the report proposes counting 100 milligrams of pure MDMA per reference dose. A kilogram of MDMA with a hypothetical purity of 81% would represent 8,100 doses; if it were 100% pure, 10,000. The 81% purity is a reference assumption taken from European data, not a forensic result applicable to any Argentine seizure.

Let us return, then, to Zárate. On the assumption of full purity, 52 kilograms are 520,000 standardised doses of 100 milligrams. Those same 52 kilograms would allow a higher or lower number of tablets to be estimated, depending on the MDMA content assigned to each tablet. The million in the statement and the 520,000 reference doses do not describe exactly the same thing.

How many reference doses does a seizure represent?

The tool below applies the factors in this section and in the table that follows. It shows how the result changes with the substance, the form and the method of calculation.

A rule for comparing without mixing units

The proposal of the original report is concrete: always report the net weight, the type of unit, the conversion factor and the purity or potency used, if known. A central value is useful, but it needs a range or a statement of its assumptions.

Substance or form	Assumption used	Equivalence for 1 kg net
Marijuana, including pressed	500 mg of product per unit	2,000 nominal units
Cannabis resin	135 mg of product per unit	≈ 7,400 nominal units
Cocaine, no forensic analysis	100 mg of product per unit	10,000 nominal units
Cocaine, with forensic analysis	50 mg of pure cocaine per reference dose	20,000 × purity as a decimal
MDMA tablets, reported by weight	271 mg gross per tablet	≈ 3,700 tablets
MDMA crystal or powder, with forensic analysis	100 mg of pure MDMA per reference dose	10,000 × purity as a decimal

These equivalences do not represent identical units. Tablets, nominal doses, THC units and active-substance doses should not be added together as if they were a single variable. The complete formulas, ranges and application cases are in the technical report.

Where there is no forensic analysis, the nominal product factor is applied and it is declared that this is an estimate. Where one exists, the quantity of active substance is calculated first and then divided by the corresponding reference unit.

The difference can be put simply: for one kilogram of cocaine at 60%, we have 1,000,000 × 0.60 ÷ 50 = 12,000 reference doses. What matters is not that readers memorise the formula, but that anyone can reconstruct how the result was obtained.

What should a seizure announcement say?

A more useful communication need not give up simplicity. It could say, for example:

One net kilogram of cocaine hydrochloride was seized. Using the nominal criterion of 100 milligrams of product per unit, this is equivalent to 10,000 estimated doses. If a later forensic analysis determines the purity, the equivalence can be adjusted using 50 milligrams of pure cocaine per reference dose.

That is two additional sentences, but they change the quality of the information. They make it possible to identify the criterion, check the calculation and compare the figure with other reports prepared to the same standard.

The same applies to MDMA: possible tablets and active-substance doses should be reported separately. And to cannabis: units of plant product and THC units answer different questions.

What the figure does not allow us to claim

None of these conversions automatically estimates the number of people who used a substance. Nor do they measure days of use, health harms avoided, economic value or the future effects of a seizure on the market. Those questions require additional information and different methods.

The standard has limits. Patterns of use change, purity varies between places and moments, and the forensic analyses available do not cover every form of presentation. That is why the proposal is to review the factors periodically and always to give priority to the measurement of the case over general averages.

Standardising does not mean pretending that everyone consumes in the same way. It means making a rule of comparison explicit, precisely so as not to confuse a calculation convention with a description of individual reality.

A public figure is also a methodological decision

When we read that hundreds of thousands or millions of doses were seized, we are seeing the result of two distinct operations. The first is material: weighing the substance. The second is conceptual: deciding in what units that weight will be expressed.

The first is usually documented. The second, often, remains implicit.

There is no need to assume bad faith to find a problem. Two agencies may apply different criteria and produce figures that are equally consistent with their own definitions. But if those definitions are not made explicit, the public cannot know what is being compared and a statistical series can become misleading.

The pertinent question ceases to be only ‘how many doses were seized?’. First we must ask: ‘what was considered a dose, on what information was it calculated, and what can we actually claim from that number?’

That difference, apparently small, separates an eye-catching figure from a datum that can be used to understand and assess public policy.

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About this work. This version presents for a general readership the argument of Estandarización de dosis de cannabis, cocaína y MDMA: criterios y factores de conversión para expresar en dosis las incautaciones informadas en kilogramos (2026) [Standardisation of cannabis, cocaine and MDMA doses: criteria and conversion factors for expressing in doses the seizures reported in kilograms]. The technical report contains the pharmacological and methodological justification, six comparison tables, worked examples and a complete bibliography. The web version reorganises its results but does not replace the reference document.

Main sources

• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). (2026). World Drug Report 2026: Methodological Annex. https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR_2026/WDR2026_Methodological_Annex.pdf
• Ministerio de Seguridad de la Nación and SEDRONAR, Sistema de Alerta Temprana. (2023). Caracterización química de cocaína 2021/2023 [Chemical characterisation of cocaine 2021/2023]. https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/sat_informe_caracterizacion_quimica_cocaina.pdf
• Ministerio de Seguridad de la Nación and SEDRONAR, Sistema de Alerta Temprana. (2023). Caracterización química de MDMA 2021/2023 [Chemical characterisation of MDMA 2021/2023]. https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/sat_-_informe_composicion_quimica_mdma_mod.pdf
• Ministerio de Seguridad de la Nación. (2019, 21 November). Récord de incautaciones: Decomisamos más de 8.000 kilos de marihuana en Misiones [Record seizures: We seized more than 8,000 kilograms of marijuana in Misiones]. https://www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/record-de-incautaciones-decomisamos-mas-de-8000-kilos-de-marihuana-en-misiones
• Ministerio de Seguridad Nacional, Policía Federal Argentina. (2026, 16 September). La mayor incautación de MDMA de la historia argentina: 52 kilos y tres detenidos [The largest MDMA seizure in Argentine history: 52 kilograms and three arrests]. https://www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/la-mayor-incautacion-de-mdma-de-la-historia-argentina-52-kilos-y-tres-detenidos
• Freeman, T. P., & Lorenzetti, V. (2020). “Standard THC units”: A proposal to standardize dose across all cannabis products and methods of administration. Addiction, 115(7), 1207–1216. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.14842