Your Friendly Neighborhood Drug Dealer | Hacker News Reader

Your Friendly Neighborhood Drug Dealer

theatlantic.com

211 pointspyduan159 comments

"If you get jammed up, you can become a convicted felon and that damns you to do it for the rest of your life, because you won’t get anything but a $7.50 an hour job—if that. You give somebody a felony record for life, what did you accomplish? You’ve just created a lower-class idiot that has to commit more crimes to survive.”

That's the problem right there. We can spend tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars incarcerating a simple marijuana dealer, and then remove most of them from the chance of ever having a productive life.

There are exceptions. I have an old friend who spent a few years in prison for LSD traffic back in college. He's one of the smartest people I ever met. Eventually he got out, finished his PhD in chemistry, and now is the co-founder of a startup doing new chemotherapy drugs. But like I said, one of the smartest people I've ever met.

Aren't they already entrepreneurs? Who says they have to have a job? LOL

The idea that anybody you'd label an "entrepreneur" can pull money out of thin air legally, without any capital, without any connections and without working for anyone else is rather peculiar.

Is the American dream not based on that?

...no? To my understanding the American Dream is based on the idea that anybody from any background can come to America, build something, and become successful; the freedom and opportunity to start small and build up. It's not about pulling money from nowhere, it's about turning sweat into capital.

Actually the American Dream includes folks that don't need to "come to America"...i.e. Americans.

They can come from anywhere in the world, including their mother's uterus.

Pretty much.

straw man much?

I said that they are entrepreneurial, perhaps you would prefer that I said they're self employed?

The point is, they have skills and mindset that make them not just want a job anyway

I would prefer that you explain what you think they are supposed to do other than turn back to crime when they get out. The comment you were replying to was talking about how difficult it is for ex-cons to become productive members of society, and you just replied, "Aren't they already entrepreneurs?" This seems to imply that you believe the problem he was describing is not real because of their inclusion in the category of "entrepreneurs."

They may not want a job, but we definitely want them to have options other than crime.

While I am against the lack of learning and internet usage that inmates get (missing chances to prepare them for the real world and raising rates of recidivism), my point is that drug dealers in particular have the skills to be self-employed and run their own business. They already engaged in sales and formed customer relationships, etc. They can do that in other fields.

You know, Adam Smith talked about being self-employed so that people wouldn't turn into mindless employees of companies, and the productivity of man could be unleashed. I really doubt that the only options for people with such a mindset are to turn to crime or get a job. There are plenty of enterprises they could embark on that are legal.

Not without any resources. Approximately nobody is going to fund a guy whose only demonstrable skill is getting himself arrested for selling pot. They may have what it takes to run a business, but they're going to need to live until that business hits a relatively high level of profitability — which means they need a job.

Additionally, not everyone who sells drugs necessarily "doesn't want a job." Many are simply attracted to the easy money, which is not a trait drug dealing shares with most legal businesses.

Either way, ex-cons by and large do need jobs.

So you don't think that it would be far better for inmates to be taught, say, to become programmers or translators or do some other business that is in demand, allows them to be self-employed and requires low start-up costs?

Why?

And the same conviction that means regular employers not trust the person mean that potential partners in crime know he's actually a criminal and therefore more trustworthy for their purposes.

"Criminal" as in the label. Was there not a statistic recently that the average American commits 3 felonies every day? Being a criminal just means you got caught.

That's a quip, not a statistic.

This is a nice take on the reality of the middle to upper middle class drug economy.

It's not all episodes of the Wire. If you're picking up ecstasy or high-grade cannabis, chances are you're doing it like this.

I have to admit that I miss MDMA. I haven't touched the stuff in over 10 years, but it was awesome to use once a year or so. I'm pretty thoroughly convinced that I overcame some issues with trusting people and forming human connections as an accidental side effect of wanting to have a good time.

Was it the war on drugs what kept you from using it more than once a year or so, or something else?

It was health concerns. I had read and heard that the huge amounts of serotonin released in the brain had no bad effects provided it wasn't too often.

The metabolites of MDMA are thought to be neurotoxic. Though it's known the chemical itself is not. In a sane world, we would use drug discovery to find drugs with similar effects but without the toxic metabolites. But we love to punish people for their vices, so there is no research on creating safer alternatives to existent drugs.

> But we love to punish people for their vices, so there is no research on creating safer alternatives to existent drugs.

And even in the areas where people are creating safer alternatives (e-cigarettes), there are politicians nearby ready to use their banhammers.

> And even in the areas where people are creating safer alternatives (e-cigarettes), there are politicians nearby ready to use their banhammers.

I don't think this ("banhammers") is a fair comparison.

To my knowledge, most if not all of the major regulation regarding e-cigarettes is around restricting the sale to minors or restricting the areas in which they can be used, as opposed to a blanket ban on the sale or possession of e-cigarettes.

All of that is analogous to existing regulation regarding cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana[0]. The only difference from marijuana is that we're starting from the other end of the spectrum (zero regulation) instead of starting from a blanket ban, but the theoretical convergence point is the same: use of marijuana and e-cigarettes are permitted, but regulated in some way around the age of purchaser and location (setting) of use.

You can make the argument that restricting the use of e-cigarettes indoors (or by minors) is incorrect, but people have been arguing that 18-year-olds should be able to drink (like in the rest of the world)[1] or use marijuana, so the details of the regulation regarding those aren't necessarily perfect or justified either.

A better example of "banhammers" would be Salvia divinorum, which was legal in every (or almost every) state ten years ago, and is now prohibited in 8 states (and there were attempts to prohibit it outright, like marijuana, in several more)[2].

[0] in (e.g.) Colorado, where recreational sale and use is permitted.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvia_divinorum#US_legality

> All of that is analogous to existing regulation regarding cigarettes

But this is why e-cigarette campaigners say that politicians are just meddling out of personal distaste, rather than any scientific backing. The two core reasons why cigarettes cannot be smoked indoors are:

1) Doing so (potentially) causes deleterious effects to people who inhale the second-hand smoke. At the very least, it can be agreed that it's not preferable to breathe smoke.

2) It makes it likelier that the smoker will give up their dangerous addiction.

Neither case can be particularly easily applied to e-cigarettes, which emit harmless water vapour, and are to many smokers a means of giving up their dangerous smoking addiction.

I must say I agree with the e-cigarette campaigners that attempts to apply the same laws to e-cigarettes as cigarettes is just yet another example of politicians wanting to control something absent of any scientific proof that they need to do so.

While many may emit water vapour, I believe there's studies which show that there are non-negligible amounts of other substances in some e-cigarette vapours. I do not think there's enough scientific data to make a long-term decision; perhaps just regulating the manufacturers so that we know what's putting what into the air is enough?

My personal opinion is that no matter the safety, I cannot cope with the smell of e-cigarettes, having been around people who use them indoors, and would like to have at least some recourse for being forced to smell it all day in my workplace. If vapers manage to convince companies that it is their "right" to vape in the workplace, I will not be able to work. I would thus like some regulation around using e-cigarettes in places where I have little choice to be.

I don't think that either smell nor "non-water compounds" are reasons to regulate e-cigarettes tighter than we regulate perfumes, colognes, or spray deodorants.

Similar regulation for all four seems reasonable to me.

Those things don't tend to protrude more than a few inches, maximum, from a person's body, and there's an established culture whereby people will be reprimanded if they do.

Heh, tell that to the elevator in my office building. You find e-cigs offensive? I don't, but I do have those sort of problems with perfumes.

This is the reason I stopped going to malls. The olfactory assault emanating from some of those stores is quite unpleasant and will give me migraines. Applies to the weekend bar scene, too, but I was never wont to hang around drunk people anyway.

Quite a few perfumes give me a migraine with even fairly limited exposure. By the time I notice the smell enough to run away, it's usually too late. If someone is wearing axe body spray I have to immediately leave the room.

http://www.ewg.org/research/not-so-sexy

> I cannot cope with the smell of e-cigarettes

Okay, fair enough. Have you tried asking the vapers if they would mind not smoking them indoors? I know I've stopped doing so in confined conference rooms after a coworker commented that they didn't like the smell.

I appreciate it sucks that vaping is just one more thing which intrudes on your personal space and freedoms, but so do so many things at the office, from people chatting, to coughing, to cracking their knuckles or delighting you with the irritating buzz of their headphones. I'm not really sure that e-cigarettes warrant regulation any more than any of the other annoyances that are encountered throughout the day.

EDIT: Also, for anyone interested in learning more about the science of e-cigarette safety, Dr. Siegel of the Boston University School of Public Health pretty vociferously supports e-cigarettes and writes a blog on the science and politics of the matter:

http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/comparison.htm...

Yes, I realize that's a shameless appeal to authority.

> Have you tried asking the vapers if they would mind not smoking them indoors?

Yes. Unfortunately, some people do not seem to care about others, especially when they see what they're doing as "harmless". There seems to be a certain militancy among some vapers that doesn't exist around most other things.

The apathy is not a cigarette/e-cig problem, sounds more like a personality trait. A little mindfulness would do our culture good(real practice, not the Time magazine version).

I posit the militancy is a possible result of persecution.

Yes, I am a 2nd class smoking citizen.

Wow, arseholes. It's hard to recommend any course of action really, because I can't think of any coworkers I've ever had who'd refuse a reasonable request like that. I guess I'd offer to buy them some flavoured nicotine gum and ask them to try that for a while?

I think it's reasonable to ask vapers around you to take it elsewhere if it bothers you. Similarly, if someone is wearing a very strong perfume that bothers you, take it up with them. As a vaper, I'll generally ask first before vaping in a closed area, but if I don't, I'm totally okay with someone asking me to take it elsewhere. If you run into large groups of people who don't, those people are just dicks. That doesn't mean we should start legislating away everything that's irritating to some group of people.

It seems to me that the argument for legislation seems to come from the idea that smoking is bad, smokers are bad people, so anything that looks like smoking is also bad.

Aye, it probably does come from that. I'll wait to see what becomes of "vaper culture" before making an opinion, but before then, I'm honestly not going to get involved either way on this process.

> which emit harmless water vapour

Considering how few e-liquids contain water…

The base is usually vegetable glycerin [0] and/or propylene glycol [1], sometimes a low amount of distilled water or alcohol is added (I think up to 10%; usually with glycerin to lower it's viscosity) and finally food-grade flavours for taste. And of course nicotine in varying amounts from usually 0-36 mg/ml (36mg being rather rare in EU but I heard vapers in the US sometimes go that high)

Harmless is a very strong word. The Clearstream study [2] concluded that it "could be more unhealty to breath air in big cities compared to staying in the same room with someone who is vaping.", which is great but wouldn't make me use the word "harmless".

As a vaper for over 2y now after being a smoker for 8y, I obviously disagree with regulating vaping the same way smoking is, but imo we need some kind of regulation, sadly, as people are idiots. There is everything from Chinese liquids of strongly varying degrees of quality (that was the problem with the 2009 FDA study) to people who think they can just blow huge clouds in restaurants.

My personal policy is not to vape at all where people are eating and anywhere else indoors, unless it's specifically vaper friendly, to stealth vape (a technique where you inhale deeply and breathe out slowly, avoiding visible vapour).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycerol

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propylene_glycol

[2] [PDF] http://clearstream.flavourart.it/site/wp-content/uploads/201...

Google for David Nutt in the UK. An scientific expert in the area of drugs. British government asked him to conduct a study of the relative dangers. Didn't like the result. They sacked him.

Cannot locate the item right now, but didn't the entire brain-trust leave with him, too? Sucks working for an org that ignores the results that don't suit their ends.

Heh, not only that but the person who fired him got sacked for doing so [1] and Nutt ended up helping start what is, essentially, a political competitor to the organization he was thrown out of [2].

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8349300.stm

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Scientific_Committe...

And worse people cycle through novel compounds to avoid drugs laws to create "legal highs" which have bery little data to show how safe or not they are.

It's weird just how sub optimal current laws are.

> so there is no research on creating safer alternatives to existent drugs

That's not entirely true, MDAI was created as a safer alternative to MDMA, however reports say it's somewhat lacking in the experience.

We already have a non-neurotoxic version, it's called MDAI.

It doesn't work if you use it too much.

I've personally seen MDMA fix two marriages, with one session each. Its divine stuff. I'm very happy that new studies have been completed or are being planned to further explore the psychotherapeutical side of the drug.

But aside from that, I agree. It's the best. No hangover (if it's pure), short duration, music sounds amazing, an amplified sense of intellectual focus and compassion, and good times with friends. You can't ask for anything more from an intoxicant. Its the best.

agreed. I take one whenever i go to a job interview. Without it I'm a stuttering idiot during an interview. where as with ecstasy I turn in to the dos equis beer guy.

you probably feel like dos equis beer guy but to the interviewer you just have pupils the size of saucers and can't stop feeling the fabric of your clothes really earnestly

How often to you go to job interviews? If you have lots of them and take MDMA before each one, I think it might not be as helpful as you feel it is.

good point!

No hangover? Except for, let's see, a short list:

Severely depleted serotonin levels, causing irritability and possibly depression

Loss of focus, concentration, and attention (good luck programming competently the day after)

Bruxism (jaw clenching/grinding)

Hangovers tend to occur when you've had MDMA mixed with one of the ever-more-frequent mixers such as methamphetamine, cocaine or even MDA, which actually targets dopamine receptors far more prominently than the serotonin and knock you out for days. Pressed pills are usually the culprit, and I would avoid them unless you know exactly where they're coming from.

From a wide array of experience, pure MDMA (in recommended doses, meaning 200mg or less) produces less of a hangover than two beers, with a very real "afterglow" which lasts for days after. Excellent focus and concentration included.

This is a good read: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/pure-ecstasy-...

From your own article:

"The drug's letdown can include feelings of confusion, irritability, anxiety, paranoia and depression, and people may experience memory loss or sleep problems, jaundice or liver damage."

And:

"Dr. John Halpern, a Harvard Medical School assistant professor who led the research, said pure MDMA can change core body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure in the short-term, and decrease immune resistance for a few days."

Sounds like a hangover to me:

"2a : disagreeable physical effects following heavy consumption of alcohol or the use of drugs" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hangover

I'm not saying MDMA is terrible for you, but it certainly does cause hangover effects (and of course, this will vary by person).

It definitely varies by person. I know people who say they consistently get an afterglow and feel even better the next day, whereas others consistently feel the serotonin deficiency and can feel a bit depressed. The jaw clenching seems to be more universal.

There are also supplements that help prevent the negative side effects plus protect against some of the toxicity.. magnesium + gum for the jaw clenching, Vitamin C [1][2] + ALA [3] + Vitamin E [4] + others for antioxidants and preventing neurotoxicity and hepatoxicity.

1: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15212815 2: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1098-2396%2820010... 3: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10619665 4: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11931860

Bruxism (jaw clenching/grinding)

This happens when MDMA is cut with meth. I think he mentioned "pure", but when it's illegal it's hard to guarantee purity, so legalization would have at least that benefit.

I'm pretty sure that jaw clenching happens with pure MDMA. I've experienced it on every roll, with stuff sourced from a variety of highly rated Silk Road vendors.

Careful. MDMA can have beneficial effects, but there's mounting evidence that it's some degree of neurotoxic. If you use it weekly, you'll likely cause some amount of permanent damage in the long run. I can also tell you that MDMA can cause anxious/depressive episodes that last a few days after use. There's even a name for this (suicide Tuesday). Not everyone experiences this side-effect, but like any other drug, it's not for everyone, and people should be careful with it. It nearly depletes your brain's serotonin reserves, and some people don't deal with that very well at all. A large proportion of users (most?) are not careful: they do not supplement, do not use test kits, do not know how much is in a capsule/pill and will redose multiple times in a night.

I agree with this completely. Like everything, moderation is absolutely key.

But that being said, unlike many drugs MDMA has a built-in cut-off switch (another perk) which basically prevents you from feeling anything more after about three doses. That's not saying that eager people wont continue to do more (especially if they're on other drugs or at a festival and not thinking clearly) but the effect is basically nil once you get into the 300mg range.

I used a lot of MDMA 20+ years ago. I was immediately aware, on trying it, that it was neurotoxic. I don't know how I knew that, but I did. However, after I quit I saw no evidence of permanent damage. As a fairly high-level software developer, I'm pretty sensitive to the state of my brain, and I don't recall ever experiencing difficulty working more than 2 or 3 weeks after taking MDMA.

Also, I only heard about this right before I quit, but a lot of the toxicity can be averted by taking 20mg of fluoxetine 3 to 4 hours into the experience. (It diminishes the drug effect, so you don't want to take it too soon.) The theory I heard is that MDMA or, more likely, one of its metabolites, binds to serotonin receptors and damages them. Taking something else that binds to the receptors, then, can help protect them. I tried it once and it seemed to help. St. John's Wort might work too, and is easier to get.

All that said -- I agree that people should be more careful with it. It's a potent psychoactive drug that's harder on the body than most of them, dehydration being a real risk.

You're correct in saying that fluoxetine (prozac) can reduce the ability of the chemical that causes MDMA neurotoxicity (whatever it is) to get inside the axon and cause damage. However, in doing so fluoxetine reduces MDMA’s ability to work (as you stated).

People regularly dosing with SSRIs may be safe from neurotoxicity, but they usually don’t feel the normal effects of MDMA either. The idea of using SSRIs to prevent neurotoxicity is something of a catch-22: If you take the SSRI after coming down from the MDMA, it’s probably too late to do a lot of good. On the other hand, taking an SSRI before-hand tends to reduce the desired effects of MDMA, making it more logical to simply take less MDMA in the first place.

All things considered, it’s unlikely that taking an SSRI before or after MDMA is a very useful prevention strategy. Since SSRIs have their own side effects and potential risks, the practice should probably be avoided.

source: http://www.dancesafe.org/drug-information/is-mdma-neurotoxic...

> This is a nice take on the reality of the middle to upper middle class drug economy. It's not all episodes of the Wire.

It may still be there, just slightly beyond the frame of this picture. The article doesn't go into how the drugs actually get across the Canadian border, for example.

The show Weeds was unrealistic in some ways, but one thing that the first couple of seasons did reasonably well was to depict Nancy's descent into progressively more dangerous situations and the beginning of her relationship with organized crime.

At any appreciable scale, the drug trade[0] gets messy very quickly - not always to the end user, but certainly one or two degrees removed. If it looks clean, either it's because it's a very small scale and vertically integrated (eg, the marijuana equivalent of "microbrew"), or you're just not looking far enough down the supply chain.

[0] Of course, this is not a comment on the inherent nature of the drug trade, but on the inherent nature of any illicit trade; legal (or "less illegal") supply and distribution channels will have far less crime associated with them.

I found this sentence interesting -

  I surmised that Viktor serves a large segment of the East
  Coast and personally takes in $24,000 to $32,000 per month
  after all his other costs are covered.

Let's say he takes in an average of $30,000 per month. Does $360,000 annually sound like quite a small amount of money for running a highly illegal business that serves a large chunk of the East Coast?

Small-to-medium sized business owners, Wall Street traders, quants and very good engineers make that much money with none of the associated risk.

My economically ignorant analysis: Every link in the chain demands a large danger premium. The cellular nature of the black market prevents him from sucking up all the profits himself: he has no way to influence the business models of those between him and the eventual user. Except by starting his own distribution chain, which is more risk than any sensible person would take on, even by drug dealing standards. Ever seen breaking bad?

Do you pay taxes on that money, or have an expense to launder it somehow (and then pay taxes?)

If not, then no. There are still plenty of small towns here East of the Mississippi River where working to retirement age and cashing out with $1 million and a generous continuing (for now) return from a lifetime of working, paying taxes, hiring and firing, and making various contributions into Social Security, is enough to set up a trust fund for your family and go on living the dream in a house worth about $100k.

Reality is you would probably end up paying taxes on that money somehow or other, and if you ever want to get out of the game, then it's probably not worth it.

>>> Small-to-medium sized business owners, Wall Street traders, quants and very good engineers make that much money with none of the associated risk.

Of course it's not a lot. The corner boys are earning less than McDonald's burger flippers.

But you comment makes it sounds as if a dealer one day can say "screw it, I will be a quant". It's not a lot but it's the best he can get.

We're not talking about the corner boys - I've read Freakonomics too, I know they are earning next to nothing. We're talking about someone running a large scale distribution operation supplying a huge metropolitan region in the US with goods that are in short supply and high demand.

I guess I thought that the guys at the top would be earning more. It's a lot of money, but it's not private jets and weekends in Aspen kind of money.

Just because he's serving a large segment of the coast, doesn't mean it's exclusive. I've known of people serving larger numbers than mentioned in the article, but they're one of 100s in the city. On any given weekend in London huge numbers of drugs are purchased and consumed. A single supplier is a small part of that.

To be fair, the article mentioned that he uses his government relationships to limit his growth to a safe size. He seems to be actively limiting his upside to protect his downside, which in a high-risk, illegal industry, is probably the logical move to make.

I had the same thought but I doubt he's as big of a player as he makes himself out to be.

Fair point. I expect the people making serious bank aren't the kind to grant an interview to a journalist at The Atlantic.

That, and his criminal life is a second job. He has no financial need driving this; he's fulfilling different needs like "access to what he wants when he wants it" and "experimenting with strains because it's interesting".

$360,000 tax free, remember.

It's not tax free. That much cash is useless unless it's laundered.

"other costs" might include laundering overhead.

10% laundering "tax" is much less than the almost 40% the government would take otherwise.

I don't think you're avoiding the 40% once it's laundered.

I don't know what "laundering tax" you're referring to but the whole point of laundering money is to make it seem like real profit from a legitimate business, and thus, regular corporate and/or income taxes must be paid.

Heh good point, not sure why I was excluding taxes on the laundered money.

Bitcoin

Those are very different skillsets - someone who is street smart may not be able to do the simplest of coding tasks, and a very good engineer may not have any skillset to survive the streets. This comparison doesn't make much sense.

So there's no risk in committing tens of years and tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to become a business owner, Wall Street trader, quant, or a very good engineer?

There's no risk of going to jail for 10+ years.

Look, weed makes no money. It never has, really, unless you're a mogul running an international empire.

You can't cut it, it's cheap, and it's much much harder to move around. Straight chemicals are where the billions are made.

I know someone who makes a little more than that and only works part-time (although with MDMA, not pot).

This guy is talking up his role because he obviously likes the image of being a drug dealer. Chances are that he is the mid-level supplier in one of thousands of organizations serving the East Coast. There is no real 'east coast head' of all pot supply, the drug business is very very broadly distributed.

$30k+ a month for a guy in the middle of one of these orgs sounds right. Remember, there isn't much work - you aren't going door-to-door 12 hours a day and grinding out, you are handling a package or two a week plus some re-packaging.

He'd likely has a normal job (the person I know does) and a business that he uses to launder his extra income.

It's become obvious that laws can't stop drugs. Imagine a world where the level of convenience described here was normal, but without the bullshit.

No more money wasted on police trying to stop it. No sales to minors (at least, no more than cigarettes and alcohol have now). Taxes on income by drugs dealers (Colorado is showing a hell of a windfall). Reliability and safety in quality, so that you get exactly what you expect.

We might even get there soon.

> We might even get there soon.

I don't think the country, as a whole, will, but I do believe the more liberal areas will get there much quicker (as we're already seeing).

I live in Indiana, the only state where one cannot buy alcohol on a Sunday. I don't think marijuana is gonna be legal here anytime in the near future.

Marijuana is probably going to be federally legal very soon. What's currently happening in Washington and Colorado is a good example to the rest of the world that marijuana is not the devil-drug that they thought it was.

The best thing that will come out of all of this, imho, is that people will stop looking at marijuana and methamphetamine like they're the same thing. We might actually get sane drug policies, and we might end up getting people who need help (drug addicts) the help that they need, instead of just locking them in prison.

The U.S. was responsible for marijuana being internationally portrayed as the "devil-drug" in the first place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_...

> What's currently happening in Washington and Colorado is a good example to the rest of the world that marijuana is not the devil-drug that they thought it was.

The Netherlands have been showing it to the world for the last 30 or 40 years.

> What's currently happening in Washington and Colorado is a good example to the rest of the world that marijuana is not the devil-drug that they thought it was.

This raises an interesting point: it is very useful to have a diversity of government because then one can see the effects of a variety of different legal and governmental structures and learn from them.

Except for stubborn stupidity. Diversity in how heath care is delivered worldwide, for instance, has delivered plenty of examples to learn from. Yet the US quite intentionally refused to learn from it when redesigning our health care system -- suggesting that a plan had learned from the experience of other countries was a sure way to kill it. I don't have any idea what to do about this sort of jingoism.

> This raises an interesting point: it is very useful to have a diversity of government because then one can see the effects of a variety of different legal and governmental structures and learn from them.

Federalism at work. :)

> I live in Indiana, the only state where one cannot buy alcohol on a Sunday.

I'll allow that it's been 14 years since I lived in the area, but NC and TN still had dry counties where you couldn't buy liquor at all, let alone Sundays.

Born and raised in Indiana, where you could buy hard liquor in one of two places: the liquor store (duh) and the drug store. I'd love to know the origin of _that_ law.

"What about the grocery." "Nah, too accessible." "Drug store?" "Well, ya know, alcohol has been known to be used for medicinal purposes. And Osco Drugs just dropped twenty grand in my campaign fund, so why not?"

Warm beer? Buy it in a ton of places. Oh, you wanted it pre-chilled? Liquor store only.

Not to derail the conversation, but my point being that if 80 years after the end of prohibition we still have whacky liquor laws like IN does, some places just aren't going to get to enjoy a nice bowl of Purple Kush anytime soon.

Meanwhile, here in WA, I feel majorly inconvenienced because Winterlife Coop won't deliver to the Eastside.

> I'd love to know the origin of _that_ law.

During prohibition, it was still possible to get alcohol with a doctor's prescription (does that sound familiar?). So pharmacies started carrying whiskey and such to fill those prescriptions. Once prohibition ended, they just started selling it over-the-counter.

Technically not the same, but in NC you can't buy it on Sunday before noon.

Used to be that way when I first moved to Nebraska in the mid '90s.

The only state? News to me, as a Minnesota resident.

"No sales to minors"

If law enforcement cannot stop drug sale en masse, how do you propose that sale to minors will be prevented? The analogy with cigarettes and alcohol is not very apt: a lot of chain stores sell these (although some are pulling out: http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2014/02/05/cvs-to-...). It's clear that such outlets will not be open to drugs like heroin or MDMA.

Social pressure would take care of a lot of this. Imagine a Shell or Walgreens that tried selling marijuana or MDMA to minors. That wouldn't last long.

You can ear a lot of money by selling drugs to masse. Much harder to get that much by selling it to minors. Incentives are different in both cases.

Plus, most people do not feel like they are doing something wrong using/selling little pot. It is just illegal, not "bad". It might be different with selling to minors.

When I was a kid, it was much easier to get illegal drugs than alcohol. I assumed this was because one of them was only available to those over 21.

That's basically correct, with a bit more nuance.

There's no profit in selling alcohol to kids. Not only does the law come down on you if you get caught, but they can't provide enough demand to make it worth the risk. Plus, a chunk of your clientele will get antsy about it.

Illegal stuff, on the other hand, already has fully-operational structure measuring risk versus reward. The law is going to come down equally hard, so there's no increased risk, just more customers. Plus, the clients who find out are already incentivized to keep quiet.

tl;dr, prohibiting something to a minority is ridiculously more effective than prohibiting something to a larger group.

Same here. In my high school the rich kids with fake ID's drank and everyone else smoked pot.

The pattern that's emerging is for sales to happen at dedicated dispensaries.

Morgan Spurlock had a good episode about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gx4-wS1nrM#t=337

I'm sure the one they highlighted is among the more professional, but looking at how it's run and the stakes involved I'd imagine it's no more possible for a minor to make a purchase there than at a state liquor store.

Yeah the dispensaries I've been to have "bouncers" at the doors. There's no way a kid is going to make a purchase there. Of course a kid with money and an older friend can still buy...

This would be the effect of legalizing the sale of drugs to adults: legal dealers would be able to offer lower prices than illegal ones (assuming that the taxes are not sky-high), so would price illegal dealers out of the market. However, for legal dealers (who are also risk-averse, like most businesses), it's very risky to offer drugs illegally (e.g. to minors) - they get all the disadvantages of illegal dealers (risk of jail/closing down the business) with few of the advantages (high price, but only on the amount of drugs sold to minors, which is presumably not a lot).

Therefore, your market would partition into two groups: illegal and legal dealers (who would follow the law to the letter, like most businesses). The first group would also be extremely tiny - unless the state's taxes are higher than the risk premium illegal dealers are charging, which is unlikely.

Through licensing, taxation and regulation.

We don't limit alcohol to minors terribly effectively, but we're very good at nearly universally collecting excise tax revenue.

States can aggressively police liquor licenses and enforce regulations with respect to sales to minors and get better compliance there. In my state, they clamp down regulation of kegs and made the traditional keg party much harder to execute on than it was in the past.

In Washington (state), it is legal for people who are over 21 to buy cannabis. However there is nobody that is currently legally allowed to sell cannabis (to non-medical patients).

Nevertheless, a few groups have popped up that are willing to sell cannabis to you (buying from them is legal, selling to you is illegal, only one party in the transaction is at risk). These groups are hyper-vigilant about only selling to people who can legally purchase from them (are over 21). They do this because the officials have publicly stated that their policy is to tolerate this, as long as they are operating within the general spirit of the legalization laws.

Bars rarely card me anymore. These guys? Every single time.

> We might even get there soon.

For pot, sure.

For cocaine? I seriously doubt it.

As someone whose sister just died of a heroin overdose, I hope that we will get to the point that all drugs are legal. My sister died alone in a locked bedroom because of the shame and stigma associated with her addiction and related mental illness. I have no doubt that if there was a safe place she could go to use pharmaceutical grade heroin with clean needles that she would be alive today.

You're probably right. One of the most interesting things about heroin is that there are no long term negative side effects other than the addiction itself. This is as opppsed to something like meth that will make your teeth fall out with regular use. All the pitfalls of heroin addiction are socioeconomic. I'm sorry for your loss.

Thank you. It has been a challenging couple of months.

She was also a methamphetamine user (as a bipolar person she used meth when she was depressed and heroin when she was manic) and suffered no such "meth mouth" complications. The generally accepted reason for that side effect is a failure of dental hygiene and chronic dry mouth when dosed improperly, not necessarily the drug itself. If that were the case, the thousands and thousands of people prescribed Adderall would be toothless.

The major problem with the illegal "hard drug" market is that these substances are synthesized in abhorrent conditions and it is impossible to know what you are getting and in what concentration. For instance, there has been a recent rash of heroin overdoses across the country due to it having been "enhanced" with Fentanyl, an anesthetic designed for exclusive use in a closely-monitored hospital setting.

It took her death for me to change my stance on all of this. She found drugs that made her feel better. Heroin, meth, MDMA, etc. are no different than Seroquel, Xanax, Prozac, or any of those psychoactive drugs.

Constipation and weakening of bowel can be quite inconvenient side effects of opiate use.

Methamphetamine is also fairly safe (mainly psychosis and heart issues right?). Teeth falling out is more of a result of people tweaking for days without taking care of themselves. After all, methamphetamine is a Schedule II, prescribed, commercial medication.

Meth at recreational doses is not safe. It's highly neurotoxic.

Much more so, dose-relative, than amphetamines that you find in, say, Adderall? Do you have a reference; I'd like to read more.

Amphetamines are not neurotoxic, methamphetamines are. If you want to read some scientific research search pubmed for methamphetamine neurotoxicity and you'll find a ton of results.

Here's wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Neurotoxicity

Teeth falling out is more a consequence of smoking its hydrochloride. The vapor condenses to hydrochloric acid which has a predictable effect on teeth.

The reason I'm a productive member of society now after kicking my 6-year heroin addiction is due to this little known fact, coupled with Australia being surprisingly progressive when it comes to Opiate Replacement Therapy.

As far as I know, meth does very little harm to your teeth as such. Habits associated with being a person who regularly uses meth do much more. Add to that selection bias - if somebody uses meth every day but is otherwise a nicely groomed stock broker, how would you know he is a drug user? OTOH, seeing a "typical meth addict", esp. in the news and propaganda, rotten teeth and all, is readily recognizable.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

It's worth taking a look at Portugal. You don't need to allow the sale of drugs, you just need to decriminalise them for recreational users. I'll link to the report (that was on HN a while back) once I'm not on a mobile.

See, I've always wanted someone like this, but never found it. I've always found people that sell one thing only (cannabis), or maybe a couple, but not the "drug supermarket". I mean, it makes sense as the article points out, if you're going to take on a big risk you might as well not do it halfway. I probably travel in the wrong circles, to put it lightly.

> if you're going to take on a big risk

It's not only the risk, it's also finding the right whole-sale provider, which I imagine is not the easiest thing to find.

The guy in the article mentioned his supplier of MDMA explicitly. I assume he has a different supplier for his different drugs.

http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetmarkets

Yep. I may stumble upon shrooms or acid/LSD every once in awhile but for the most part, it's unknown-strained marijuana. I don't really have the type of friends to make those kinds of connections, has always been my take on why.

Sometimes your "weed guy" will actually sell much more but simply not tell you. If you ask (the right way) they might reveal this, or connect you with another guy but I would suspect a lot don't want you (or anyone) to know they deal in the "harder stuff".

I have had that happen once or twice. But also I've encountered a lot of people who "aren't drug dealers", who only sell weed to their friends, basically so that they can smoke for free. This type takes the "not a drug dealer" thing seriously, and if you ask for large quantities or other stuff they will say no.

>> See, I've always wanted someone like this, but never found it.

Start hanging out at bars and clubs.

So, um legalize harmless recreational drugs already.

While we're at it, how about adding "no victim: no crime" to the constitution.

In the UK (at least in my anecdotal experience, I know people in London, Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire) it seems there's hardly any money to be made in selling weed any more. I'm sure further up the chain there is, but at actual dealer levels (I've never come across a "street corner" sort of person, just those who either sell from their home or travel to deliver) there's very little profit available. I don't know how long this has been the case (seems to have become so much more over the past couple of years I think), and having never been a dealer myself I don't know exactly how much can be made now, or in the past.

But essentially, it seems there are very few weed dealers left, other than two types: pot-heads who sell to a circle of friends to subsidise their own smoking, or people who sell harder drugs (in my experiences: cocaine) and have a bit of weed on the side but don't focus on it.

Cocaine on the other hand... I've had friends who sell it (not in a "I became friends with a dealer" way, but just people who I found out deal unrelated to how I knew them), and there is a lot of money to be made there, even selling fairly small quantities. It's been a few months since I've had a conversation on this topic, but afaik it's still the case, even with people who sell to a few dozen people, mostly small quantities, can make a hell of a living from it.

All that said, it's possible my knowledge is from a fairly affluent middle class angle (hell, the last person I met who randomly turned out to be a coke dealer was somebody who held a decent job in the PC hardware industry, though he's stopped dealing now).

Would love to know more about the economies involved (for example I've heard rough numbers of cost for cocaine from its origin in South America to UK consumers, but not in huge detail), but it's very hard to find out this sort of information without being directly involved yourself.

I disagree somewhat, dealing marijuana is still quite profitable, even in west coast USA where ubiquitous medical/legal marijuana has driven down prices a lot. As for east coast? From what I hear, the markup is still huge, with retail prices roughly double of west coast.

The only people I know of making a living exclusively selling marijuana (on the west coast) are small-time growers, though.

You're definitely right about crack/molly, the profit margins on those are ridiculous - because what's truly valuable there are the connections.

It may be that it's different in the UK (where I am), apart from anything weed generally travels much shorter distances here. I heard from friends in one region here that after the police busted a local farm with a few million £ of weed grown there, there were a couple of months where every dealer had incredibly limited supplies, mostly coming in from Holland rather than elsewhere in the UK. There definitely isn't as much growth here as west coast USA.

Of course it's also possible that there are dealers making good money off weed here and I just haven't come across them. But my anecdotal data points are at least reasonably varied, from well off people in good jobs to a couple living off benefits in council estates.

I agree they're definitely the exception to the rule, most of that 'last mile' of going from ounces to a gram or two seems to be made up of people doing it on the side for a bit of extra money.

It does sound like the supply chain there is quite a bit different.

"Customers in Colorado and Washington State no longer need to pay a premium for black-market marijuana."

Colorado, maybe. Since the retail operations are not open for business yet in WA, we still don't know if retail is going to be cheaper. That's the part that worries me. I look at the tax structure (25% on each of the three players involved: grower, processor, retailer) and wonder how they're going to keep it under $100/quarter ounce.

It's happened already in WA: tax the hell out of something and then wonder why revenues dropped. A few years back WA jacked up the tobacco tax a ridiculous amount (I think a pack of smokes was like $8). Shortly after, the state complained that revenues took a dive. Duh, ya think? They raised taxes so much it was now practical to either order via the Internet (KY has smokes for $3, IIRC) or drive out of your way to the American Indian reservation.

If a quarter ounce of legal weed comes out to $150 because of taxes, this grand experiment isn't going to end well. (If someone has some hard math on what the consumer-level price might be, I'd love to be corrected on this.)

Ha. I've seen $22/gram recreational with a max of 3 grams, and people are lining up in downtown Denver. Things aren't much better in Boulder, where the city is dragging their feet on recreational. You can get 1 gram of wax (concentrate) for $25 black market (the bicyclists love their sativas), or from $40 to $65 in one of the shops (lower price typically medical).

I think the pie is probably growing. Good number of senior citizens are waiting patiently in line for 15 minutes; favorite line: "Sativa edible? I can't wait for bingo tonight."

I purchased a quarter on the street for $100. It was a medical strain that came in a jar labeled with all of the manufacturers information - somewhere out in California. I looked it up on the manufacturers web site, and they were charging $200 to customers with a card. If that is the standard, then they are going to have a hell of a time overriding the street market with retail.

It's funny that they didn't interview any actual neighborhood-dealers. The people sitting on the corner slinging dope have a much more dangerous job than people with clientele who are discreet and wealthy. I suppose it's because they're perceived as so dangerous that reporters never talk to them. But ask a corner man his life story and he'll tell you about serving time, getting shot, and paying off cops to stay alive. Stories like this one really gives you a romantic - and unrealistic - idea of dealing.

it's because the angle you mention has been covered plenty of times. watch a few episodes of Drugs Inc. and you'll see.

this covers the end we rarely hear about and is far more interesting as it's far removed from the street.

This story is neither romantic nor unrealistic; this is just a different kind of drug dealing.

If anything, those exotic "street" stories full of violence and danger seem awfully romanticized to me; they certainly have nothing to do with any experience of drug culture I have ever had.

"actual neighborhood-dealers"

Actual neighborhood-dealers in my neighborhood are more like the one depicted in the article, than the "corner" style inner-city dealers you see in movies and on TV. They might not be hustling around NYC selling to business people in office buildings, but they aren't "on the corner" packing a gun and paying off cops either.

"Corner" style inner-city dealers definitely still exist.

If you're in SF, walk by the corner of Turk and Leavenworth and you'll have quite a few entrepreneurs of a different sort offering you "Roxies and Ps" or "Chiva".

Vice is doing that all the time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvN7fKmCoXA

Part of the point of the article is exactly that - what is your "neighborhood dealer" now-a-days?

The people sitting on the corner slinging dope is itself an image, and may not be reflected in reality anymore. Especially with police wise to that kind of behavior, surely it makes sense to be able to blend in?

>> The people sitting on the corner slinging dope is itself an image, and may not be reflected in reality anymore.

Have you been in a bad part of town lately?

The places to buy drugs are liquor stores and car washes in bad neighborhoods. Plenty of people standing around willing to sell you $20 worth of your drug of choice.

Why do you think so much gun violence occurs in those areas?

It's because upper-middle class white people need to see an upper-middle class white person doing something in order to reflect on their previous thoughtless condemnation of it.

Of course the problem with that is that a large percentage of those readers will leave the article with the message that "not all drug dealers are bad, some of them are like me." That's how you end up with cocaine/crack sentencing disparities.

"At one residence, a businessman in his 40s opened the door, still dressed for the office in a suit and silk tie, still, by phone, issuing stern instructions to one of his colleagues"

Not very professional for a drug dealer, bringing a journalist to his customer's house (not to mention the customer accepting this fact without batting an eye). It reads like something Stephen Glass could have written.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/8/headlines/hilary_clinto...

> In many circles, drugs are nearly as easy to find as liquor.

I can't figure out if this is a mistake, deception (liquor is not a drug, it just contains one), or implying that "drugs" means "illegal drugs".

I think the reason why you are getting downvoted is because, especially from the context, its very common to know that 'drugs' means 'drugs taken for fun' (not all of them are illegal either).

See, this is why I'm not sure I like computer people anymore - overly pedantic, not advancing the conversation. I call that 'smart-stupid' -- so smart, yet dumb at the same time.

> See, this is why I'm not sure I like computer people anymore - overly pedantic, not advancing the conversation. I call that 'smart-stupid' -- so smart, yet dumb at the same time.

I'm pretty sure most computer people don't like "smart-stupidity" either (hence the downvotes). If anything, I think engineers are more annoyed by bullshit/irrelevant pedantry than others.

I wasn't trying to be pedantic. I probably should've been more direct but what I mean is that it's a disservice to the article to distinguish alcohol from all other recreational drugs like that. The way it's worded makes it sound like alcohol is not a drug at all, which opens up people's minds into treating the two differently even though one literally IS the other.

The article talks about drug dealers. Unless you call the cashier at the local liquor store your dealer (and you're super weird if you do that; don't do that), it seems exceedingly clear from context that they're referring to illegal drugs. Blatantly ignoring contextual clues like that is obnoxious at best.

Wow, wtf? Why are you guys downvoting [username-redacted]? Of course a local liquor store is a drug dealer. You do realize the USA is not the only country in the world right, and that the USA is leading the world in cannabis legalization variously across different jurisdictions in the USA? Which drugs fall in the illegal set and which fall in the legal set depends on jurisdiction. Just because your mom and pop told you that drugs were bad, doesn't mean your mom and pop were expert ontologists / semanticists. "Drugs" includes alcohol and MDMA and cannabis. "Illegal drugs" depends on jurisdiction. I'm surprised computer programmers are having trouble with this.

Scientifically alcohol is a drug, culturally it isn't called that. Even go somewhere where people don't drink and they wouldn't use the term "drugs" as an umbrella to include alcohol.

> "Of course a local liquor store is a drug dealer."

Yes, technically correct, but just like jschmitz28 it's incredibly pedantic. The phrase "drug dealer" isn't used to mean "someone who technically sells drugs", it's used to mean "someone who sells illegal recreational drugs". In this case the mom and pop version is what absolutely everyone uses.

> Even go somewhere where people don't drink and they wouldn't use the term "drugs" as an umbrella to include alcohol.

Ah, interesting, I didn't know that. How many muslim cultures and languages are you familiar with?

That's my experience when people are speaking English, whether first language or not, in other languages I have no idea.

Right, but alcohol is currently legal in most English-speaking jurisdictions. So the places you're referring to are the least relevant to the question of whether alcohol is considered a "drug" by modern humans.

Yes, but in an article about people who make a living breaking the law by selling illegal drugs illegally to people, it would actually be obnoxious and insulting to specify "hey guys when we talk about drugs we're only talking about the illegal variety"

Everybody understands that you're very clever for pointing out that alcohol is a drug too and that it's only ~The Man~ which makes some drugs illegal and others legal, but it's actually entirely irrelevant to the discussion being had in the article and your insistence on trying to appear clever is actually very tiresome.

How is 'drugs taken for fun' a definition that excludes liquor? GP is right to point out that intelligent people should not blithely assume a distinction between illegal drugs and liquor; the distinction depends on jurisdiction.

It doesn't even imply that liquor is a drug specifically, as opposed to containing a drug. And in the context it's perfectly acceptable to use "drugs" to refer to illegal recreational drugs.

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