Just wondering how do people go about buying illegal drugs?

I know at least a dozen people who smoke weed. Were I so inclined, I’d just have to ask them who they buy their stuff from. At least a few would oblige with a name and number.

After you make a couple marijuana purchases, you ask said dealer if he’s got anything heavier or if he can point you in the right direction. He likely will.

What @cookieman says, but I have not had that sort of experience since the 70’s now. haha
My modest and infrequent consumption of marijuana comes either from my old gardener buddy with a horticulture degree that grows his own, or a friend of a friend from a legal dispensary. I’m way too old and low key to involve myself with a “dealer”, I just want my occasional happy brownie, rice krispy bar or wee bit of the smoke. haha

I’d say it’s really just connections. Kind of like when parents say their kid is “hanging out with the wrong kind of people.” I have no statistics, but I’d think that’s the main way people get into drugs. But still, there are plenty of people who’ll ask me “You smoke spice?” as I’m walking home from work. Go to the Park St side of the Boston Common and you’ll run into plenty of people with drugs there, too.

I’ve never even done any illegal drugs, yet I know of all the above methods. Even with no interest, I have found out about many users, dealers, etc. People get them from friends, or ask friends who use. Or they go to bars, clubs, or places where there are parties and listen for anyone who talks about it (or who start using it at the party), and/or make new acquaintances at such places and ask.

They have also frequently approached me when walking around slightly sketchy parts of towns. In my experience, one can just go to the edge of the completely safe & clean parts of a town, look for people who look possibly slightly sketchy standing around, and walk down the street past them looking like you (aren’t too “clean cut” and) might be willing to talk to them, and see if they don’t ask you if you’re looking for some sort of drugs. I’ve never said yes, so I don’t have any data on how risky that is, though.

When I was younger (young adult), in the city I lived in, people would drive to the “bad” neighborhood and get out of the car and cop it. The driver would have the car idling a half a block away or something and then they’d leave. The dealers would be standing around on the street, hanging out, waiting for people to come cop. Around 4 a.m. the dealers would go to sleep.

Well from what you all have said it isn’t that hard to obtain them if you know who to ask, even though they are all banned substances, interesting.

People who use and are away from home end up having casual conversations with bartenders, waitresses, co-workers. A conversation that runs along the lines of, “I was so messed up last night” but without going into specific drug use can lead to a conversation where the other person will respond with a war story.

Pretty soon, the out of towner can ask the local if he would like to party. Then they work out the logistics of getting cash to a connection for some product.

Drugs are not guns, @SQUEEKY2.

Both seem to be able to obtain with the right connections, @dappled_leaves and the right amount of money.

Back when I was in high school there was 13th street next to the University of Oregon. People would just walk up and down the street announcing what they had to the point of being annoying when I wanted to get to my optometrist that was on the same street. But if you needed weed you would be asked if you needed weed at least once while walking a block. And the weed guy knew a LSD, or cocaine guy. And it was pretty much fine to do the transaction right on the street.

Then the Ducks went to the Rose Bowl and football became a big thing and the police started to care since they needed to recruit and a open drug trade next to the Universities book store wasn’t good for the Universities image.

But by then we had solid relationships with suppliers. 25 years later and I can walk 5 blocks and legal buy some weed at a store.

You could kill a cop and loot his corpse. I am sure a lot of them run around with a stash to plant on people.

@SQUEEKY2 Everything is obtainable with the right connections and the right amount of money. But the nature of the connections and the amount of money changes when things are made illegal. Because a thing is not impossible to get, does that mean that we should put zero effort into making them harder to get? Why put a lock on your front door if your house has breakable windows?

Get a labor job in a factory. You’ll have connections by the end of your first week.

@SQUEEKY2 I am not going to enable you to look for black tar heroin on the street.~
I have no idea where people find drugs.

@dappled_leaves and how well has all this effort worked at keeping drugs out of the hands of school kids?
@chyna that is isn’t really the point of the question.
And yes hard drugs need to be banned but how well has it worked at keeping the streets safe from drugs?

@SQUEEKY2 Drugs and guns cannot be compared in this way. Drug use creates an emotional and chemical dependency. Some people argue that the only way to reduce drug dependency is to ensure that people’s social needs are met, so that they don’t “need” the high to escape their real lives. Have a look at the rat park study if you haven’t yet.

This means that people who crave drugs will work harder and more creatively to get them if they are made less available. There is no such dependency on guns. Strict gun regulations have indeed been effective where they have implemented; see Australia or South Africa for examples.

And you haven’t addressed my analogy. Do you have locks on your doors? Why do that if you have windows that can be broken? Surely burglars can get into your house, they can if they try hard enough. Then why expend any effort at all to keep them out?

Put out some feelers with certain friends, a contact is made or you find a supplier, and you pay cash.

Drugs may not be guns, but I’d be willing to bet that more people in this country know where to find a gun than dope.

@SQUEEKY2 I’m surprised that you haven’t been approached at one of the larger 24 hour freeway truck stops on your journeys. I am sure you would have been by now, especially if you do any driving down in the States.

What I am comparing to @dappled_leaves is Drugs are banned and people just turn to the black market to get them, same with guns people that are going to use them in a crime will just turn to the black market.
I am not against sensible gun laws, but so far all I have seen proposed target the law abiding gun owner or the firearm itself, lets target the problem people and leave the law abiding person alone.
Did you know the Orlando shooter was several times under the feds watch list, and the gun shop where he bought the weapon alerted the authorities about him and yet he still got it and did the crime.
He should have been declined just because he was on their watch list.
But even if he was he would have just bought the weapon on the black market and went from there.
Tell me I’m wrong.

@SQUEEKY2 “all I have seen proposed target the law abiding gun owner or the firearm itself, lets target the problem people and leave the law abiding person alone.”

No law can be written to apply only to “the mean people”. A law must be written for everyone to follow, and then there will be consequences for those who break that law. I’m not sure what you’re proposing here. How specifically are law abiding gun owners “targeted”? What proposed measures would make these people suffer?

“Did you know the Orlando shooter was several times under the feds watch list, and the gun shop where he bought the weapon alerted the authorities about him and yet he still got it and did the crime. He should have been declined just because he was on their watch list.”

Yes, I agree with you, and I have not seen one person argue against this, though presumably the NRA and a majority of senators fought it successfully last year.

“But even if he was he would have just bought the weapon on the black market and went from there. Tell me I’m wrong.”

I have absolutely no idea whether this specific shooter could have successfully navigated the black market to purchase an AR-15. What if he could? What if he could, and ten other people could, but ten more people couldn’t? I’d still call that a very worthwhile effort.

And now, to come back to your other point, how are the “law abiding gun owners” punished by making an AR-15 illegal? They have no need for that weapon or others like it. Tell me I’m wrong.

guns unlike dope don’t get “used up”. There may be repeat customers, but the numbers in total must only accumulate. But to demonstrate exactly just how absurd and hopeless the gun situation is here, the Congress of the United States enacted legislation prohibiting the government from compiling statistics on all firearms, registered or otherwise. I wonder why? But here are some sobering facts that aren’t legislated beyond revelation. Gun production in the United States doubled from 5.5 million weapons in 2005 to 11million guns in 2010. To be fair 400,000 of that 2010 total were exported, but there is only one conclusion to be drawn from yearly production figures for a product with no expiration date, and that is that there are probably enough guns in this country to arm every man woman and child along with most of their pets. How many of those guns are registered? 1 in 10? 1in 50?

which means that come ww3, a lot of cities in the colonies will have to be nuked.
to save lives.

(Serious answer) the internet.

It’s definitely just connections. Most people ask someone they know (and trust) if they know anyone, or know anyone who knows anyone, and eventually you will find someone who can supply.

The Deep Web, possibly? You can only access it by downloading Tor, and you can access the Deep Web. I’ve never been but I know you can find a lot of messed up things, like drugs, weapons, child porn, even snuff videos. All the links are in weird codes, and there are a bunch of dead links. You just need to know where to look.

Who knows, it might not even be real, but if you do decide to go on, be careful. I’ve heard a lot of (possibly not true) horror stories about it. There are a lot of sick, twisted people on there.

If I were a man in my twenties or thirties, I could probably visit the neighborhood of any bridge near downtown, and especially one over the creek, and loiter a little. Someone would come out.

(I would expect that person to be both armed and suspicious. I would be very careful about how I looked and what I carried.)

I hear there are spots where you only have to drive up and lower your window, and someone will approach you. There are also certain 7-Elevens and other designated locations for transactions. I think a downtown park is also a distribution spot. News reports that tell you where arrests are made offer a clue.

My generation is gray-haired now (parenthetically, I think my generation has remained kids longer than any other), and so I’m guessing that there are a lot of gray-haired customers these days. But I also think that if I, as a decently attired, conventional-looking, non-tattooed older woman, approached one of those connection points alone and on foot, especially by night, I would be regarded as a potential victim and not a prospective customer.

If I were really, seriously after some drugs—not for recreation, but, let’s say, to help a dying relative who was in intractable pain—I would try to make contact through a young person. Drugs are so common that it wouldn’t be hard to find someone who knows someone. The hardest part would be getting them to trust me.

I have to add that I made a decision many years ago that if someone I loved were ever in that situation and couldn’t get relief by legal means, I would be willing to obtain heroin for him, any way I could.

And, not too cynically, if I had no other resource I might begin at an AA or NA meeting and look for someone who still looked very raw.

In February a close friend of mine lost a 34 year old son to an overdose of Fentanyl. Tragic. To help his sanity he asked me to help find the person who sold it to him. It was easy. We followed his son’s FB breadcrumbs.
We also used Tor and did a search for larger quantities of Fentanyl to track his supplier. We found a lab in Mexico and one in Ottawa selling it in preloaded syringes in sealed blister packs. It took us about 20 minutes.
Why can’t the police do this?

@LuckyGuy Wow. Did you report them? What ended up happening?

It was awful… The family was a wreck. Police there asking about his phone and electronics, his mother going through his mail and bills. Looking for his car registration, contacting his work…

We did not report it but we watched the traffic to confirm our suspicions. We saw who his friends were and read their comments. I will not say more about it.

@SQUEEKY2

The Orlando was not on any watch list. He was investigated by the FBI a couple of times for statements he made, but was cleared as the FBI determined he was simply running his mouth. Since there’s no law against running your mouth he was still a law-abiding citizen. Thus, as a law-abiding citizen, he should not have been prevented from buying guns.

Then perhaps such weapons need to be restricted as they are here in Canada, you need a special permit to buy and use them .

but then he would have just gone to theblackmarket.com and mail ordered a fresh AK.

That’s what I have been getting at, if these nut jobs can’t get a legal gun to an ILLEGAL crime then they will just get an Illegal gun to do it with, oh what that is illegal we can’t have that.

@SQUEEKY2

What are the regulations for this permit and how would they have prevented a law-abiding citizen like Omar Mateen from obtaining firearms?

@SQUEEKY2
riddle me this then, since my post went right over your head.
why did he not get a fully automatic rifle, instead of a semi automatic one, if, according to you and all the others making that claim, it is just as easy?
Or build his own small nuclear bomb with weapons grade plutonium from his local iranian black market plutonium dealer right across the road, like Doc Brown in BttF.
Should be child’s play.

I can only speculate that buying the weapon legally was to show how easy it was to obtain that weapon, and didn’t want to go through the procedures of getting one from the black market.
Probably cheaper as well.
Like I have stated many times I am not against sensible gun laws, just outright ban on them.
He was under the FBI list for mouthing off, and the gun shop itself alerted the authorities on him yet he still got the gun legally,something isn’t making sense.
You have to make tougher laws, and yet isn’t MURDER against the law?
Why didn’t that law alone stop the law abiding mad man from killing all those people?

“and didn’t want to go through the procedures of getting one from the black market.”
exactly.
If you make weapons less available, a lot of those would be shooters would not bother going the extra mile to get a gun on the black market.
To get back to the Omar boy, the guy tried to buy body armour at 2 different gun shops, but failed twice.
He did not even bother to try a third shop, let alone get one on the black market.

There you have it. There are only 3 sensible explanations for America’s tenacious grip on the mass murder trophy. We either have an inordinate surplus of madmen or a weaponry horn of plenty. The 3rd possibility involves some combination of the 2. Now when it comes to the FBI failure to intercept Omar from available clues, here’s a hint. Put yourself in the place of an agency with the task of monitoring potential killers in a land with a limitless supply of weaponry. I wonder just how many phone calls go to the FBI in a single hour regarding such matters from a country as paranoid and fear driven as our own.

When I was 22, I was working Cable Maintenance for the Phone Company in San Francisco. I had long hair, and the other, much older splicers thought I looked like a hippy, so of course they thought I had drugs.
We would be working late (the average hours for cable maintenance splicers during winter is 14 hours a day, 7 days a week), and the old guy I was working with would start in: ” Geez, I’m tired! How are you staying so awake?”, to which I’d reply “You’ve been doing this a lot longer. Plus you’re old as fuck!” They were all sure I had uppers, speed, or something. They were all very much mistaken. While I had long hair, I was very anti-drug. The result was they all thought I was holding out, so I was disliked. I was also disliked because I frequently mentioned what fossils most of the guys on the crew were.

@filmfann ” I was also disliked because I frequently mentioned what fossils most of the guys on the crew were.”

Surprising. Insulting the people you work with usually goes over well.

@SQUEEKY2

BTW: You didn’t address my question here.

but it was okay for them to call me The Kid or The Punk or the FNG. Fair is fair.

Up here to a PAL possession, aquasission licence,you have to be clean of an violent crimes on your record and 2 people have to vouch for they like one to be spouse and the other can be a cop,preacher,lawyer,co worker,or even your boss.

I think there must be a word or two missing from your quip, @SQUEEKY2. And would I be correct in reading that seventh word as “acquisition”?

@SQUEEKY2

So, basically you just have to make sure you haven’t been caught (or maybe just convicted) of anything, and you have to have two people who cannot be assumed to be unbiased, say “yeah, he’s ok”. That doesn’t really sound like a better system then anything we have in place down here.

Yeah well murders committed with registered weapons up is under 10 a year.
Yeah there are shootings but nothing like in the states.

Oh and what about that British Politician murdered with a gun, how can that be with guns banned over there?

Well shit, ya got me. Not at all relevant to what I posted, but ya totally got me.

Yeah, I’m lost now too.