The Business Secrets of Drug Dealing

Taibbi, a writer of striking intelligence and bold ideas, is as hilarious as he is scathing. Publishers Weekly

From coverage of the hardback:

A welcome, lyrical defense of 'coaxing a beautiful thing out of the ground and bringing it to your door.' The Bohemian

Lays bare the link between organised crime, the state and policing Morning Star

An entertaining fictional pusher reveals sobering real-life truths Washington Independent Review of Books

[An] honest and humane approach to the nasty business of business under contemporary capitalism People's World

Préface

• Leverage author’s popular newsletter and substantial social media audience to promote paperback edition of the book.
• Pitch reviews to both special interest and national publications including High Times, Cannabis Culture, Crime Reads, Cannabis Now, DOPE Magazine, Skunk Magazine, Cannabis Business Times, Green Entrepreneur, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, The London Review of Books, Bookforum, Current Affairs, Book Riot, CounterPunch, The Baffler, and more.
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Auteur

Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and winner of the 2008 National Magazine Award for columns and commentary. His most recent books are Business Secrets of Drug Dealing and Hate, Inc. He’s also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Insane Clown President, The Divide, Griftopia, and The Great Derangement.

Reggie Harris is the co-founder of Hyphae Labs, which is leading the industry in psychedelic mushroom potency testing, and the creator of Oakland Hyphae, which hosted the Psilocybin Cup and The Oakland Psychedelic Conference. He has over 10 years of domestic experience in the US cannabis industry, is a member of the Advisory Board for Decriminalize Nature, and is active and passionate in The Movement for Black Lives and an abolition of the police state.

Texte du rabat

• Co-written by a successful marijuana dealer, this controversial but exuberantly written almost-true-account provides an eye-opening insider view of the business of drug dealing.
• Matt Taibbi is a bestselling author. He is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and winner of the 2008 National Magazine Award for columns and commentary. His most recent book is Hate Inc: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another. He’s also the author of I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street, about the infamous killing of Eric Garner by New York City police officers, Insane Clown President, The Divide, Griftopia, and The Great Derangement.





Résumé

The Business Secrets of Drug Dealing tells the story of a hyper-observant, politically-minded, but humorously pragmatic weed dealer who has spent a working life compiling rules for how to a) make money and b) avoid prison. 
 Each rule shapes a chapter of this fast-paced outlaw tale, all delivered in his deliciously trenchant argot. Here are a few of them:




• No guns but keep shooters.

• Stay behind the white guy.

• Don’t snitch.

• Always have a job.

• Be multi-sourced.

• Get your money and get out.

 Part edge-of-the-seat suspense story, part how-to manual in the tradition of The Anarchist Cookbook, The Business Secrets of Drug Dealing is as scintillating as it is subversive. Just reading it feels illegal.

Échantillon de lecture

Chapter Seven:
Embrace Racial Stereotypes

Here's how you rig a cross-country load. It's four cars:

You want two cars in front, one car in the back, with a load in between. Same principle as in the wild. Buffalo and zebras travel in packs, too. There's strength in numbers.

And here's the other advantage we have: we know police profile. We use it against them. That's an important rule: Embrace racial stereotypes.

In business, racism is your friend. If you master the nuances of it, you will prevail. Race is everything in America, especially in law enforcement.

If you're one Black guy driving from California to anywhere east, you're going to be stopped. A Black man behind the wheel looks out of place anywhere west of Chicago, really. So use that to your advantage.

The guy driving that first car in the parade, the dummy car, we want him to be a caricature. We want him wilding out. We want a fucking criminal. We want in baggy pants with a hat turned sideways and tats and a record as long as his arm. We want him to be filthy.

The idea is for the cops to pull him over and say, Son, what are you doing out here?

The second car is the buffer. He's watching to make sure that the cops don't profile someone else, keeping an eye out, making sure that the guy behind him is safe.

You don't really need that second car. It costs more and doesn't do anything specific other than add a set of eyes. But it's an extra buffer, one more layer of confusion for authorities. Three cars is too few, five cars is too expensive. But four is perfect.

The third car is the load. He's carrying the shit in the trunk. That's a rule: No drugs inside the passenger area of a car. A corollary to that is, Always drive a car with a trunk. No SUVs. No Muranos. None of that. An ordinary boring sedan with a trunk.

The search and seizure rules dictate these rules. Cops can't say they saw a suitcase full of weed in plain view. They need a reason to open that trunk, and if you play it right, you never give that to them.

One of the reasons for that is the fourth car. He stays tight behind the load car, so police can't get directly behind him. He's getting in the way, so they can't run plates easily. He's running interference.

Rule: every time you enter a state, change out your cars. Rule: drive rentals but make sure you've got in-state plates as often as possible. Iowa cars in Iowa, Colorado cars in Colorado. And so on. And you don't stop except to sleep and go to the bathroom.

But the key is that first car. Your dummy car needs to be a real fuckup. He's gotta be conspicuous. It's the others who need to keep their heads.

Late December, 2015, Oakland, California. I've been sending loads out of state fifty pounds at a time from the different farms. Two suitcases of 25 pounds apiece in the trunk of every third car is standard. Caravans to different states: some to the Pacific Northwest, some to the Midwest, and some all the way east.

The first few loads were all right. Then on the third load I broke one my rules. Hell, even Biggie said it:

This rule is so underrated;

Keep your business and your family separated.

In the movies, you often see mobsters working together in family businesses. But family members in real life are liabilities. You can't walk away from a family member. Not easy to have one's legs broken, either. Once family members get inside the tent, they're hard to remove.

I had a cousin named Buddy. His real name was Darnell, but people in his neighborhood started calling him Buddy after this ugly, flea-infested dog he had. I swear to god that dog had more sores than hair, more fleas than follicles. People started busting on him about that dog, naming him after it.
It caught on. At first Buddy didn't like it, then he did.

He was out of St. Louis, the son of my aunt Sonja, my father's sister. Aunt Sonja treated me like a son of her own. Whenever I was in town, she'd drop everything to make me catfish. We were tight, which is why I made a mistake and brought in her son.

Buddy was a street dealer out there, a younger guy. He thought he was a real dealer until he met me. Then he saw what real money and real product looked like.

Buddy didn't have a clue what he was doing. He didn't k…