^to drugs, the answer is no. but it is meaningless to compare the prices for every category of goods, the price depends on various factors including geographic distance from source, subsidies by companies, protectionist policies, or compulsory license policies (drugs, education, broadcast etc)
to some extent this may be an intellectual property rights problem, but only to some extent, but that is a smaller danger in comparison to what rampant piracy does to software.
there is the very real problem of software becoming dirt cheap, and more importantly, the failure rate is too high, you need considerable marketing and visibility for software to be success at the current pricing schemes. it is a question of finding sponsors for art, where software is different is there is no other media for delivery. a movie is still screened in theatres, a song is still performed in stadiums. whatsapp is just an app, why do you expect it to be free? kickstarter is a great idea, so is microfinance, but the successful projects seem limited compared to the sheer number of failed projects.
subscription and micro transactions are helping solving both these problems,
there is a direct relation, who knows, maybe google would find it fit to subsidize nexus devices to US prices if people here invested in apps instead of just reviewing them
then there is the question of quality. the argument is that there is free software alternatives for everything paid. there are free music released on jamendo, and free movies released all over the place... legit ones on YouTube as well. why not consume these as against pirate? obviously free content is no substitute for paid content