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Code of the Suburb
Inside the World of Young Middle-Class Drug Dealers
By Scott Jacques, Richard Wright The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2015 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-16425-0
CHAPTER 1
The Pursuit of Coolness
At Peachville High, and other suburban high schools like it, illicit drug use leads to drug selling only in the sense that kissing leads to teen pregnancy. Many middle-class high school students use drugs, but few of them become drug dealers. How and why did the drug dealers make the transition from user to seller?
Coolness and Conventional Status
In time, most of the young suburban drug dealers featured in this book will adopt the lifestyle enjoyed by their parents. Day in and day out, they will wake up, travel to and from work, labor, eat, watch TV, and fall asleep. They will see their colleagues at work, and only there. They will walk or drive by their neighbors, waving hello or goodbye without stopping. They will spend time with their spouses and kids in the evening and on the weekends. Like their parents, they will come to appreciate and enjoy a steady, compartmentalized, isolated "social" existence.
But as teenagers, the dealers' day-to-day lives are far more peer dominated and communal than those of their parents. This is due in large part to the disjuncture between what they perceive as conventional success and their present station. These suburban youth, for all their privilege, lack what they view as the foremost signs of social status: a professional career that generates enough money to buy what they need and want. They know achieving that status will take many years. As a result, their aspirations are bifurcated: the long-term self is concerned with graduating and staying out of trouble so as not to jeopardize their future life prospects; the short-term self is oriented toward obtaining and maintaining a more immediately achievable kind of status—coolness. Many grown-ups could not care less about being cool, as teenagers will no doubt tell you. Adults with a well-paying job do not need to be cool to feel socially valuable or to be treated with respect.
The dealers see coolness as the opposite of lameness. Coolness and lameness derive from two traits: attractiveness and likableness. The first is a feature of physicality; the latter, of personality. Both can be inherited, learned, or purchased. Attractiveness is how pleasant someone is to look at; while it is inherited to a degree, it is bolstered or diminished by things like working out or overeating and dressing well or poorly. Likableness is the extent to which someone's character makes them enjoyable to be around; they may be generous or greedy, fun or boring, interesting or dull, nice or mean, confident or apprehensive, and so on. People are perceived as cool to the extent that they are attractive and likable.
The benefits of coolness and the costs of lameness are both psychological and social. It feels good to be cool, humiliating to be lame. The dealers understood that their coolness, or lack thereof, reflected evaluations of their looks and characters. That weighed heavily on their minds because those appraisals affected how they were treated by peers on a daily basis. Among the dealers and their peers, being seen as cool was the surest and safest path to feeling socially valuable. To be labeled as lame was to be a social failure.
Cool kids were respected, were befriended, and received numerous invitations to "hang out." They were openly complimented by others, greeted with fist bumps or hugs, and asked to partake in recreational activities, including dates. The cooler someone was in others' eyes, the more those things happened to them. They had that "special something" that made people want to be around them and, therefore, treat them well. What these cool kids had—what in fact made them cool, respected, and socially desirable—were good looks, a particularly likable personality, or both.
On the other end of the continuum were the lame-os. They were stigmatized and disrespected: ridiculed and ostracized, forced to hang out with other lame-os or no one at all. Some would eat lunch in the classroom rather than face the fact that no one wanted to talk, or even sit, with them. When cool kids and lame-os interacted, the lame-os often were treated as though they did not exist or, worse, made fun of for being fat, ugly, pimply, poorly dressed, a dork, or any number of other stigmatized traits. In an effort to avoid such treatment, many lame-os surrounded themselves with other individuals like them, creating a peer network of "losers" that—while making them look lamer still—nevertheless provided a support system and sense of self-worth.
These two "social classes"—the cool kids and the lame-os—do not represent an inflexible caste system. Mobility is possible. Someone who was once widely regarded as being lame can become cool, and vice versa. The traits that make someone cool—attractiveness and likability—are not stable. Teenagers' looks and personality can change dramatically as they age. A high school freshman can appear to be a totally different person by his or her senior year, for better or worse. Changes for the better make someone more respected and desirable, while changes for the worse do the opposite.
And of course not every student is regarded as being very cool or very lame. Whereas some people come to widely be seen and admired as good-looking and nice to be around ("upper-class"), and others as unequivocally ugly and annoying ("lower-class"), still others are viewed as falling somewhere between these two extremes. It is probably safe to say that Peachville High was mostly populated by individuals falling into this middle range of coolness.
In order to be perceived as cool, adolescents obviously first must demonstrate that they have the traits that make them so. High school offers them a perfect opportunity to do this; its compulsory nature brings hundreds or thousands of youngsters into close proximity with one another for hours on end, day after day, year after year. Adolescents see and interact with each other in the classroom, hallways, lunchroom, auditorium, stadium, and parking lot. These in-school assessments affect who hangs out together and who is (dis)respected during and outside of school hours. With that said, school is not the only place to gain and lose cool points. There are other staging grounds and activities in which to win respect and make friends.
The Allure of Drug Use
One way dealers and their peers sought to demonstrate coolness was by using and sharing drugs together. Drug use was not cool or lame in and of itself; in other words, there was nothing inherent in consuming a psychoactive substance that increased or decreased the user's status. But when a person used drugs and others got wind of it, the user sent a signal about who they were to their peers. In the dealers' subculture, drug use signaled "I like to have fun" or "I do what I want, not what the law or my parents tell me to do." And sharing those drugs with others proclaimed "I'm generous." One of the dealers we spoke with, Bruce, explained drug use among his peers this way: "They want to be able to go out and do stuff. It's just like, 'Hell yeah man, I just bought this big ol' bag of weed man! Let's gosmoke it!' And then whoever they're with—a bunch of their friends—are going to be like, 'Hell yeah dude!' They just go and get so fucking stoned." Doing drugs allowed students to exhibit traits that made them likable and desirable to be around. Once adolescent suburbanites concluded that they would be perceived by their peers as cooler if they used drugs, they had taken the first step toward this deviant career.
Presumably, almost all adolescents want to be cool to compensate for their lack of conventional status. The question of why some youths are drawn to drug use—and later to drug selling—as a way of achieving this while others are not is largely unanswerable at this point. Nor is it known why some students emphasize just one or draw on multiple coolness-generating activities. For instance, some of the sellers also played sports or music in a band, which were widely recognized as cool things to do. Certainly, choices as to how to be cool have to do with personal attributes such as attraction to and tolerance for risk and with social factors such as peer friendship networks. Suffice it to say, however, that a large body of research suggests that drugs and drug use are widely popular in US high schools, so it is only to be expected that some students will be drawn to supplying the demand for them.
Whatever set it in motion, the suburban adolescents quickly developed a habit of illicit drug use to maintain and enhance their coolness quotient. After initiation, they rapidly learned a wide array of methods and motives for becoming intoxicated. They learned, for instance, how and why to pack a bowl but not a bong; whether to snort or eat ecstasy pills; which kinds of weed or pills or other intoxicant were perceived as being the best. At first, they were ignorant of these matters and appeared lame. But such knowledge was quickly cultivated, helping to confer status in the form of enhanced coolness. And once individuals were confident about how to operate in the drug world, they became even more deeply embedded in it. Their drug use increased from a "monthly thing" to a "weekend thing" and, especially for marijuana, to an everyday occurrence—and not simply every day but every chance in the day: before school, during school, after school, up until bedtime. Drug use effectively became routine.
Not only did the adolescents' rate of consumption increase over time but so too did the quality of the drugs consumed. More experienced users knew how to distinguish between "grades" of a drug. Mark, for instance, described three different grades of marijuana:
Shwag would be your normal, basic grass that's old, it's been bricked up, it's real seedy, it's not very quality weed, it's real cheap. But it tends to give you a headache. Midgrade was dank at one time; obviously, it got pollinated by the male plant, which causes it to have seeds, and it's a little bit drier than dank, but it's better than shwag though. But then dank is the highest quality of weed, no seeds, it's fresh, it's moist, it's a different high, it makes you feel good, good aftertaste, good everything, all around great bud.
Like most products, drugs have telltale signs that attest to their quality: how they look, smell, taste, or feel. According to Phillip, with marijuana "you know by the smell, the color, by the shapes of the buds. You know by the looks of it in general, mainly color though." For any drug "there's a lot of things that tip you off; you just gotta get a feel for it" was how Jeff put it. The coolest users knew how to use clues to decipher whether a substance was good, bad, or just okay quality. That understanding is what set cool connoisseurs apart from uninformed lame-os.
With experience these individuals developed a preference for higher-quality and hence more expensive product, believing that it delivered more bang for the buck. For example, Phillip estimated that "shwag isn't gonna do much for you. Smoking mids will get you about three times higher than shwag, and same for dank—it'll be about six times higher than smoking some mids." And Dave noted that "mids is just old shit that has seeds in it, which take up some of your weight, because you're paying for those seeds, and they're just not as good. They're usually bricked up so they've lost all their crystals. If you know your shit, it's just not a good way to go if you're going to smoke."
There is more, however, to consuming the best drugs than merely getting the best high for your money. By using only the best drugs, these consumers signaled "I'm cool" to peers. The message was "Not only do I know which drugs are better than others, but I can also afford them and know where to get them. You should like me, treat me with respect, and make an effort to be around me." The impact of this message was amplified when users shared with others because people tend to like those who are generous.
Unsurprisingly, as the quality of a drug increases, its price follows suit. At the time of the study, for instance, low-grade marijuana, or "shwag," sold for $25 a "quarter," which is seven grams; the price of midgrade, or "mids," was twice that; and the highest grade, known as "dank," sold at twice the cost of mids. For the dealers, a weed habit cost as much as $50 to $100 a week to support. Christian's experience is typical:
I remember senior year: I'd been smoking pot all the time for like two years. I probably smoked a sixteenth to an eighth a week. Me and my friends try to figure out how much money we spent on pot, and it's embarrassing, but god, we spent so much money, it's ridiculous. I mean, let's just go with the low end of how much I did: a sixteenth is 25 bucks and I'm smoking that a week, so a hundred a month, so 1,200 bucks in a year, and it's probably more than that. I'd definitely say that it's more because this is when I got my $75 a week allowance, so I'd take 50 bucks and buy an eighth. That would last a week, like smoking before school, after school, smoked all the time.
Why did these suburban teenagers devote so much money to getting high? Certainly one reason is that "they" could afford it owing to their parents' incomes, which provided them with a nice allowance. Dave, for example, pointed out, "We kinda live in a rich area around here. So there's a lot of people who just have the money to throw down $50 for a half-quarter like every couple days." Referring to why many people preferred to smoke dank, Trevor said, "There's lots of rich- ass kids with money to throw around like a motherfucker—people with daddy's cash in their pockets just ready to buy. That's what everyone smoked, and the reason is because they were all rich kids. You attain the best that your means can provide, and all these kids could provide for the best that there was."
Expensive drugs, of course, were only one avenue to coolness. The youths also wanted fashionable clothes, electronic gear, music, car accessories, sports equipment, and more. And whereas their parental allowance or part-time work might be sufficient to cover the cost of such items, it seldom was enough to sustain their heavy consumption of illicit drugs too. How was this problem resolved? One potential solution was simply to "slow down" or "back off" on their drug use, but that was widely viewed as lame by members of the dealers' circle. Another option was to ask parents for more money, but doing so, especially repeatedly, risked inviting a parental financial audit. Yet another possibility was to get a part-time job or, for those who already had one, to try to increase the number of hours worked. But the jobs realistically available to them, mostly in fast food and retail, paid poorly and could not generate enough cash to meet their perceived needs. The final possibility was the riskiest but also potentially the most rewarding: drug selling.
Drugs for Free
The most important reason that these young middle-class suburbanites turned to drug dealing was not to make money per se but rather to "smoke for free," "trip for free," "roll for free," "tweak for free," whatever the case may be. For them, dealing was primarily a money- saving venture as opposed to a money-making one. When asked why he sold ecstasy, Phillip answered, "Free pills. I mean you get a little bit of profit on the side too. But it wasn't for the money, just pretty much for the free pills. Dealing was a way to save money." Referring to his motive for dealing ecstasy, acid, and marijuana, Justin said simply, "To offset my own use." Responding to the same line of questioning, Bruce answered, "I wanted to be able to smoke for free. I never had any profit out of it." Andrea was motivated by "just the free pot." Katie told us, "I want to eat free pills," meaning Percocets. Frank and Trevor went so far as to say, respectively, "I couldn't care less about making money" and "I'll go through all the profit just happily smoking. Money really isn't an issue."
As these dealers sold mostly just to finance their own use, their business was restricted to drugs that they themselves consumed. When asked why he sold dank, Dave said, "That's what I smoked, so that's what I sold." Tom told us, "It's 'cause that's all I would smoke." And Mark explained, "'Cause you get high on your own supply, and that's what I wanted to get high on, so that's what I sold." These dealers viewed it as only logical to sell what they consumed, as Christian pointed out: "If you're getting into it to pay for your habit, then it makes sense to buy what you're doing anyways."
Dealers earned free drugs by purchasing a large quantity of the substance below retail value and then selling most of it at a higher price to cover their own use. As an example, if an eighth of marijuana cost $50 but an ounce—which is equal to eight eighths—costs $350, then a person could buy an ounce, sell seven eighths for $50 each, and thereby be able to smoke $50 worth of weed (retail value) "for free." This is what Pete did initially: "The first time I bought an ounce [of weed] I bought it for 350 bucks and sold all of it but an eighth, and I got an eighth for myself for free." Christian told us how it worked with ecstasy: "You buy like ten pills at a time for 180 and you sell those for 25 each, so you're making like 70 bucks. But you wouldn't use the 70 bucks; you eat the free pills. I completely got into it for the free pills; it had nothing to do with profit. You're gonna have no profit once you have the free pills." By buying in bulk and paying less per pill, mushroom, gram, or whatever, users could finance their consumption indefinitely. They might not generate a profit in the traditional sense, but for them, the upside was not spending any—or at least not as much—money to finance their own drug use.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Code of the Suburb by Scott Jacques, Richard Wright. Copyright © 2015 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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