Tale Of A Small Town Weed Dealer...

We always see movies and hear stories about drug dealers rising to notoriety and success. The thing is, most of these stories seem to focus on places like New York, Miami and Los Angeles. But what about small town USA? Who runs the drug trade there? How do the inhabitants of the thousands of US podunks satiate their chemical needs?

In this multipart story we will shed light on one small town drug dealer. Though some of the words have been changed, all the events are true.

Part 1: Getting Into the Biz
It’s funny, when I was a kid I was adamantly against drug use of any kind. I thought cigarettes and pot were the gut fuel of psychos and deviants. Well, that all changed pretty much the instant I got to high school. I started hanging out with some older kids who introduced me to smoking pot, drinking alcohol and myriad other recreational substances. Sometime during freshman year, I invested in my first bag of weed.

Pretty soon, I was buying at least a bag a week. I was also often picking up extra for my friends who weren’t as immersed in certain circles as I was. Eventually, the people I was buying from, who were just conduits at the time really, introduced me to their dealers and connections (probably so I would stop annoying them). This was when I started thinking about profits.

I’m not sure why of all the people I knew, I was the one who decided to try and make money off selling marijuana (and occasionally more powerful substances). Most of my friends smoked. Maybe it was serendipity, maybe it was my personality, or the people I knew. I don’t know. But the fact is, I wove my way through the labyrinth of small town dealers until I found what I consider my first serious connection.

Where I’m from, there weren’t too many people you’d probably classify as ‘drug dealers’. Most people got their stuff from someone who knew someone who went to the city to get it. That type of thing. I saw an opportunity to capitalize on this when I met my guy.

My connection, let’s call him Bill, lived in the closest decent sized city, which was about an hour away. We would set up meeting spots where I would pick up a couple pounds of marijuana. I would then carefully transport the goods back to my town for distribution.

Part 2: A Streamlined Operation
Like I said before, pretty much all my friends smoked, so it wasn’t too difficult getting people I trusted to either make a few bucks or some free pot in exchange for their help. The first thing I made sure to do was minimize my direct contact with buyers. I recruited a few people who I would sell maybe a half pound or a pound to and they would handle the direct sales. I also recruited some friends in neighboring towns to buy from me and handle operations in their location.

As I recruited ‘big buyers’, I also had to start increasing what I was buying. I was unloading 5 – 7 pounds a week at this point. It may not sound like that much, but keep in mind my town had a population of about 2500 people. I was the guy whether they knew it or not. At this point, my connection was having trouble keeping up with the demand. I once again had to graduate.

Though my point of contact didn’t change, the way I was getting my product did. I was to receive a package, through a well known parcel service, containing what I needed. I was smart enough to know the risks of this, so I would find someone who wasn’t and pay them 20 bucks to pick up the package. I’m still a little amazed that they never asked questions. Maybe they suspected what it was and just didn’t care.

Shit was good. I was getting 2-3 packages a week at different locations, in different names, clearing up to 10 pounds a week and distributing throughout the entire county. I was making money, my friends were making money, but as these stories always seem to go, things were about to change.

So things were going well, I was selling a bunch of weed, making some money, felt cool, all that bullshit that comes with being a ‘successful criminal’. But cracks were starting to form in my operation, and in retrospect, they were mostly my own fault.

Good Grounds For Paranoia
I’m not sure if my ego was to blame or if reputation just comes with the business, but somehow, enemies I didn’t know I had found out how much pot I was moving. They wanted it I guess, because on a couple occasions they tried to come and get it. Fortunately at this point, I had long since been storing my product somewhere else. Regardless, they broke in once, I could tell, and I was home the second time to see them lurking around my house. I immediately set up some cameras in pretty obvious spots, and I guess two failed attempts was enough to keep those fuckers from trying again.

What Was Biggie’s Advice?
Another big issue was the classic drug dealer mistake.
Don’t get high on your own supply? Ha! I used to walk around with a cigarette pack full of joints and smoke them as such. If you were down with me, you were high, and it was often on more than just marijuana; coke, pills, whatever. There was no foresight or planning for the future. It was make money, spend money, get fucked up and party.
Don’t get me wrong, for a high school kid in a small town with no real reference on how to do this, I had figured out some pretty clever systems. But I was a bad manager. I was disorganized.

And It All Falls Down
My lack of planning and disorganization is what led to what would ultimately be my downfall. That, and a hint of naive trust. Since I was spending so much of the money I was bringing in and using so much of the product, I was often relying directly on the money I was making from a shipment to pay for the next one.
I was also fronting (selling product on an I owe you basis) to my single largest buyer, we’ll call hime Arnold. Bad idea.

Arnold had always been pretty good about paying me, so I had been fronting for awhile, and the quantities had increased more and more as time went on. Well, one day, I go to Arnold to get my money, and he doesn’t have it. It turns out that he was taking what I fronted him, and in turn fronting it to his guys. And this time, his main guy had disappeared. With my drugs.

The Climax…
Now, you should know something about me. I’m bordering on pacifist. I haven’t been in a fight since 3rd grade, and I’ve never been in a situation like this. But when Arnold’s guy, we’ll call him Richard, stole my drugs and disappeared, It got my blood boiling like I’ve never experienced up until then or since. I was going to do something.

Arnold, feeling understandably terrible about the situation, set out to find out where Richard was. I set out to get a posse together ready to smash (which included literally the only Puerto Rican in my town who stashed a cut-in-half baseball bat down his pant leg). Once Arnold found out where Richard was, me and my crew jumped in a car and started driving.

Richard had taken refuge in a house being shared by about five or six people I can only describe as gutter hippies. The house was in the middle of nowhere, so we weren’t too worried about noise or meddling neighbors. We just pulled up, jumped out of the car, and stormed into the house (nice thing about small towns, not too many people bother locking the door). The first person we encountered was some stoned chick who kept yelling at as “go away! What are you doing!” and similar pointless chants. There was also a guy who darted into another room as soon as we got in, I assume to warn Richard.

Me and my crew, about five, were pushing shit over, opening closets, throwing blankets. I kept yelling “Richard! Where the fuck is my money?” in a voice that was hardly mine. We stormed around the house for a bit, searching, until that first girl we encountered started shrieking “I just called the cops! They’re on their way!”
And this was enough to shake us out of the moment.
We ran out of the house, got in the car and drove, but the police caught up with us.
We didn’t have drugs in the car, so we got summons for trespassing, and were on our way.

The Final Chapter
Seeing as how those gutter hippies I mentioned would have had a pretty awkward time explaining why we were at their house, they ended up not showing to court, and the charges all got dropped. But after this incident, I realized I wasn’t really cut out to be a drug dealer. I strategically throttled back my shipments as quickly as I could until I simply cut off my guy, and eventually stopped selling all together except as a favor to friends. I managed to never get shot or arrested in my time selling, although in a town like mine I think those risks are exceedingly small. And I eventually left that town altogether.

Every once in awhile I wonder if someone else had picked up where I left off. If someone else wanted to be that big fish in a small pond. But the thought fades pretty quickly and I think about more important things.