“Drugs sell
themselves, biscuit. You ain’t shit.”
— Heylia
James, Weeds
Your Friendly Neighborhood Weed Dealer
I know a
guy named Frank. Frank is pretty cool and even sort of a gentlemen. Frank likes
to refer to himself as a “procurement specialist,” a bright enough guy in his
mid-20s who saw a local opening for dealers with a slightly above-average
degree of professionalism. He’s been in the game for a few years now, and he’s
earned his many loyal customers through a natural love of weed and a
willingness to move it from place to place. It’s also because it’s hard for him
to offend most people, even though drugs and hookers are two of his favorite
things to talk about.
It takes an
amiable nature to sell weed successfully in a small college town. The gig is
not hard to get, but dealing is a tricky career path that requires a rare
combination of characteristics. Frank is decent, and somewhere at his core
sensitive and generous, but don’t kid yourself; he will definitely kick some
ass.
Frank
doesn’t offer dime bags. He’s annoyed by the people who buy them as well as by
the people who sell them. As he puts it, “trying to count out singles and
quarters is extra pressure that a professional just doesn’t need.” He’s also
only recently come around to trusting black people again, after that guy he
hired jacked eight ounces from him a couple of years ago. But he’ll sell an
eighth to anyone with $50, no matter what age or color they are. Once a
potential customer has been declared “solid” by a reputable reference and once
they show him their cash, Frank will gladly hook them up: Cash is king, whether
he likes you personally or not.
Like many
professional smokers, Frank is a talker. For instance, he hates the metric
system: “I always need to get out my phone, and oh man, have you seen this app
that does conversions for you?” He’s very proud of his ability to eyeball a
quarter-ounce, though, he says, “I’ll pull out my scale if somebody asks, but
people don’t have to ask.” He likes to talk about the weird new sativa blends
flooding the state market lately, and how he might need a new local hookup
because all the in-town guys are complaining about a bunch of excess manure
getting into their product. Frank has an attention to detail that you just
don’t see very often, in any profession. Sometimes, in his haze, he’ll insist
to me, “Dude, have you ever really listened to The Band? Garth Hudson never
gets the credit he deserves, and dude can blow … ” Otherwise, he might just jaw
on about this crazy movie he stumbled onto last night on Netflix, about–well,
it doesn’t matter, since neither of us is going to remember the conversation
anyway. It might have been Red State.
Conversation
gets dealer and customer comfortable with one another, even if Frank sneaks in
the occasional come-on here or there. It’s always fine, though, because he
genuinely seems like a harmless if slightly crude guy who goes out of his way
to be nice but who would never really hurt anyone. And then, one day, Frank
showed me the small arsenal of weapons that he keeps in his unusually nice
apartment, in the event that the black guy he fired ever comes back to jack him
again. There are a couple of large hunting knives in his desk drawer, a 9mm
handgun in the nightstand, and a double-barreled shotgun that lives behind the
bedroom door. He casually mentions that there’s more firepower in the closet.
Frank has only been robbed the one time, but it made him a more cautious man,
one who recognizes the nature of the industry where he makes his living.
And it’s
some living.
He moves
around 10 pounds a week. I’m still not exactly sure how he does it, but Frank
and his guys sell to over 120 clients a day, every day of the week, including all
major holidays. If 30 percent of them purchase an eighth for $50, and the other
70 percent buy a quarter for $100, that’s over seven grand of business daily,
with nearly $50,000 in revenue by the end of the week. If he’s making a 15
percent profit, that’s about $7,500 of takehome. What he does with his money is
nearly as fascinating as how effortlessly he seems to earn it.
Wait until
he tells you about the prostitute with four nipples and the three-way he had in
Albuquerque.
But let him smoke you out first.
Despite the
stoner stereotypes, Frank is a consummate pro. He is no shirtless teenager
dealer asking for cash and promising to be back in an hour with the product.
Frank insulates himself by keeping a minimal quantity of pot at his place, and
holds most of his product in a safe house across town, the owner of which he
obviously pays in weed. It isn’t until you see what a “minimal” quantity looks
like that you recognize just how successful he has been. We’re talking about
anywhere from two to four pounds. This is what he plans to move over the next
couple of days, almost entirely from the comfort of his couch.
Frank takes
the time to know what he’s selling, and he doesn’t waste quality smoke on the
desperate, on the guys who promise to get him the other 20 bucks next week if
only he’ll just front them a bit, or on the chicks who offer sex in exchange
for a couple grams. He’ll take any of those deals, mind you, but he knows not
to squander his best.
The guy is
a smoker first, and his primary success is being able to blaze whenever he
wants. He usually waits until he’s done taking orders for the day, often around
11 p.m. There’s always a special occasion worth celebrating, and he always
likes to try out his newest pickup before he sells any, like a cross strain of
Blueberry Bud and Purple Haze he was after for months.
Business is
always booming since Frank lives in a part of Florida where both the supply and
distribution are simple to arrange. He can drive a few hours in any direction
and find whatever he needs. The size of his base endears him to suppliers, and
it helps that he deals in a college town where there are plenty of reliable
buyers.
There’s
something that distinguishes Frank, something about him that separates him from
your average dealing loser: He doesn’t let being a pothead make him lazy. The
guy is pure hustle, even with blownout pupils. No matter how chill they seem,
hustlers all have a tell. Frank’s tell is his cell phone.
His cell,
complete with an unlimited texting plan, lives in his left hand, and when he’s
smoking, in the left pocket of his basketball shorts. As he puts it, “What good
is a dealer too lazy to answer the phone?” But don’t ever call him. He refers
to the guys who call him as “needy bastards.” Shoot him a text instead, and ask
if he’s at home or if he’s got anything interesting this week. He answers
within 30 seconds every single time, even if he’s out of town or mid-coitus.
He keeps
buyers loyal because he’ll be there no matter what. He offers particularly
devoted guys a chance to make a little cash or score some free green for
hooking up the rest of his clients while he’s away, with tasks like watering
his plants. These guys camp out in his one-bedroom apartment, eyelids sagging
as they struggle to count out change from two $50 bills. But they know not to
screw up. Maybe it’s the guns, but it’s probably that you wouldn’t want to
disappoint the guy who sells you weed. You have to come through for your
dealer, because he always comes through for you.
It’s worth
considering what will happen to Frank and others like him if U.S. drug
policy gets even slightly more reasonable in the near future. What happens to
him will affect a lot of people at every level of the transaction line: buyers,
distributors, and growers.
It seems
unlikely that the United
States will see complete legalization right
away, though it’s undeniably on the horizon. Voters have so far generally been
more receptive to the idea of legalizing the use and the manufacture of
marijuana than the sale of it. The “dealer” is the guy who stays bad in our
imagination long after the growers and buyers are off the hook. Our legislators
imagine that all drugs, even pot, are inherently representative of a deviant
underworld, a substratum of society filled with the dangerous and criminally
dysfunctional. Maybe it’s the guns.
The
statewide legalization now playing out in Colorado
and Washington
will present us with a fascinating case study, though it’s hard to tell how
quickly or effectively this will scale to the rest of the country. Even if
they’re not much on voters’ minds, it’s worth asking what decriminalization
would do to reliable suppliers. What will become of the Franks of the world
when they have to compete with folks who have business licenses and pay income
taxes?
Though Frank
has legions of loyal buyers, there’s a lot of vulnerability in his model. One
day in the future, federal lawmakers and their state-level counterparts will
vote to make smoking weed legal. Soon after comes the legalization (and
aggressive regulation) of the sale of cannabis.
Given past
prohibition efforts, and experiments-in-progress regarding legal marijuana
distribution, it’s clear that pot smokers in the U.S. will have a choice to make.
Though it’s still largely unknown how distribution will be regulated–and there
will probably be a number of experiments–users will be able to forsake relative
anonymity and the freedom to buy in their quantity of choice that a local
dealer offers, in favor of totally legal weed whose growth and sale will be
controlled and monitored by the authorities.
What if
government pot smokes the way that “government cheese” tastes? Might we be
required to present our driver’s licenses to purchase tightly restrained
amounts of shake weed at higher prices to cover the sales tax? Given our track
record with cigarettes and alcohol, and the way control over those markets is
exerted by the Big Three tobacco companies or the Anheuser-Busch conglomerate,
there’s a clear potential for monopolization. The enterprising, shirtless,
teenaged stoner dealer only a text away could disappear entirely. And what then
will happen to the culture of weed smoking, as it evolves from something wholly
outside the law into something available at your local gas station?
But whether
it’s bravado, experience, or the combination of the two, Frank isn’t worried:
“Well, I guess it would kill a lot of the fun in getting a buzz if you could
just buy it at a store. There’s something cool about your first pickup, meeting
a guy in a parking lot and having him jump in your backseat. I don’t think I’m
too worried, though. Good business won’t get run out by new business. You’re
only in trouble if the new guy is better than you. And there’s not really a lot
of business, at least here, that’s better than me. That’s not arrogance, it’s
just the truth.”
Danielle
King cooks, codes, tutors, & shoots, when not inundated with political
science. She prefers two wheels to four unless it’s raining. Reprinted from The New Inquiry(April 2013), a website and PDF magazine dedicated to the
promotion and exploration of ideas.
