Any avid smoker knows that shit adds up. No matter how much of the tab your job at the MAC or Cafe Gato Rojo covers, your blunts end up burning into your savings. Between the two of us, we’ve racked up a $1200 tab with our dealer this year alone. And after we broke three bongs earlier this fall, with only three-quarters of a job between the two of us, we knew we needed a new source of income.
First, we tried cutting costs. Late last spring, we considered purchasing a pound of weed on the dark web to stockpile and share amongst our friends. We poked around on the darknet for a while, but when we became worried about the legitimacy of Vice City—one of the world’s largest darknet marketplaces—we decided to place a limited test order of 100 king-size joints to the Harvard Yard Mail Center for less than a dollar apiece. They never came, and our supplier messaged us with moral reservations about shipping to a university. Our short-lived stint on the darknet died, but our dreams of buying in bulk lived on.
Earlier this year, we were offered a pound of weed by a security guard. His asking price of $700 was attractive—we could sell half of it and cover our expenses completely. However, we questioned if we could truly move eight ounces, so we got his contact information and went back to our room to deliberate over burning incense.
Since many casual smokers only purchase a few grams at a time, selling this much weed requires a wide net. To sell eight ounces, we knew we would have to move outside of the realm of our close friends. While we had organized group buys in the past—even by up-charging a few dollars to turn a modest profit—pushing half a pound would mean selling to our friends’ friends’ friends. While most of our close friends are serious smokers, this would inevitably attract first-time and inexperienced users.
Many stoners are careful when smoking with new users, let alone selling to them. People do not want to be responsible for creating a habit for others, even if they themselves are regular smokers. Parts of the smoking community feel that first-time smokers should start this journey on their own. However, first-time smoking, like drinking, is best done with experienced users. Bad smoking experiences are all too common, whether from being unprepared or from having something laced, but these issues can be avoided if you are smoking with someone who has safe weed and can guide you through the high.
People will inevitably seek out new experiences like drinking and smoking, and when they do, it is always better to be informed rather than to blindly thrust yourself into the abyss. Yet, there exists a double standard in which society condones the support of first-time drinking but not smoking.
While some people believe that alcohol is less dangerous than weed—despite it being more addictive, dangerous, and costly—the principle is the same. Everyone loves their hometown liquor store or dive bar that never cards, but the school plug is ostracized. In both situations, a vendor decides to sell a vice to someone with relatively less exposure to it.
Countless teenagers can walk into their local Ralph’s or ACME with a peeling fake ID and walk out with a handle, two thirty-racks, a twelve-pack of Twea’s, and a Fireball party bucket—enough booze to have a dozen kids yacking in the bushes. Kids who lack a fake ask an older sibling or friend to use theirs, and those with neither find a middleman. With recreational weed now legal in 24 states, drug dealers enable underage smoking just as lax bartenders and older friends do with underage drinking, allowing a workaround for arbitrary age minimums for consuming weed.
Many people fondly look back at finding ways around our 21 minimum drinking age as a rite of passage. However, when weed is added to the underground substance market, society often adopts a more hypocritical stance.
So, if we generally don’t oppose selling weed, why did we opt not to this time?
We were unable to reconcile the uncertain modes of production. Whether selling handles or joints to underage kids, providing a legal age loophole is only justifiable when you take precautions to ensure their safety. Just as a liquor store would not sell moonshine to a minor, we thought it unethical to sell weed of unknown origins to our friends’ friends’ friends. We could very well be providing them bottom-shelf strains or even something potentially laced.
Had this weed been from our dealer or a known source, we would have flipped it without a second thought and smoked soundly after. Instead, since both the dealer and his weed were completely foreign, we knew that distributing his product would have weighed on our consciences. Without having taken any steps to protect the well-being of our customers, we would never have been able to come to terms with supplying someone’s bad trip.
And so, we slunk back to our dorms to scrape together the rest of our weed for one final bowl, uncertain of how to fund our next order.
Sir Gwaine and Sir Galahad have been high since high school.