In an exclusive, anonymous interview, a former drug dealer tells The Malta Independent on Sunday how he went from selling a gramme of cannabis for €20 to earning around €3,000 a week.
At 17, he was handcuffed, strip-searched and – as he put it –had the stuffing kicked out of him, but the police failed to find the 60 pills in his jacket pocket.
In the interview, the former dealer was asked about the steps and decisions that took him through the whole cycle, from user, to dealer, to rehab, to prison and, finally, to becoming a beneficial member of society.
From when he first got into dealing, it was that allure of status that kept him in ‘the game’ – not to mention the money, the parties and the girls.
“The status is what I enjoyed the most – it fed into everything happening around me. The recognition, the girls – it was a great time.”
With legalisation of cannabis very much on the Government’s ‘to do list’, he believes that this would make the drug “less and less of a problem,” along with essentially ripping away dealers’ ‘safe income’.
“Legalisation would mess up dealers’ business because it would hit their wallets really hard.”
How did you first get into dealing?
The basic premise is that you need money to do drugs – and the only way for me to get money at the time was by dealing, because people are always going to want to buy drugs.
Plus, it was a whole validation scenario too, because of the social status behind the profession, particularly in my social groups of the time.
When someone is a dealer they have a certain reputation attached to them, in the sense that people know who they are and will not mess with them – especially other dealers (because dealers have a habit of doing that).
Was that (the social status) what you were looking for?
The social status yes, because at the time I didn’t really have an ‘identity’ so to speak. And it did help my financial situation, even though I wasn’t really screwing people over as is commonplace in this kind of business.
If I had to try to analyse my motivating force at the time, that would definitely be it.
Walk me through the process of building your business
Weirdly enough, it’s usually through friendships or girls that you get your first contacts, and then, considering that in Malta everybody knows everyone else, your network of associates grows very quickly.
As you go around you’re meeting different people and there is a very large group of dealers in Malta, so everyone is trying to get better deals for themselves.
At one point I was going through a couple of ounces a week (56 grammes), which wasn’t that much in the grand scheme of things. But here’s the thing, back then I was dealing a gramme for €20, and that’s a lot of money when you really think about it.
Although a Maltese gramme is more like 0.8g, and for some weird reason dealers in Malta considered an ounce to be 25g – a ‘Maltese Ounce’, they called it. The mentality of ‘indawwru lira’ extends 100 per cent into the drug world, even though nowadays, from what I understand, prices have got better.
After weed, did you sell other substances?
The profit margin gets better, depending on what you sell. Weed, being what it is and being so accessible, offers a very low-level gateway into dealing. When it comes to dealing, since weed is illegal it definitely contributes as a gateway to the whole realm of trafficking in ‘harder’ drugs. So, it is a gateway drug, just not in the way the prohibition camp is thinking about it.
Here's the thing: imagine if – to deal illegal drugs – you would have to start from pills (ecstasy), it would be a much higher barrier to entry as opposed to people starting with weed. It’s much easier to move from dealing one drug to another than to start dealing in something that is so easily accessible.
Did you ever feel a sense of dread, paranoia, or even an adrenaline rush when you used to deal?
A little bit of everything, you get a rush out it – in a weird kind of way – it kind of gets you off – although I must admit that a feeling of paranoia was definitely present, and smoking a tonne of weed all the time definitely didn’t help. I’d love to say weed doesn’t have any negative side effects, but when you’re doing crazy quantities, just like anything else, it’s going to mess you up.
It’s just that, with weed, you get incredibly paranoid and get the weirdest thoughts.
What kind of money were you pulling in?
Initially, I started dealing to simply break even with what I was consuming myself – the profit motive came eventually as time went by.
I had a bunch of people working for me, maybe about six or seven, and I was definitely making more than my mum and dad put together. What they would make in a month, I would make in a week, so I was making on average about €3,000 a week.
Still, that’s nothing in the drug trade – selling weed isn’t as profitable as moving other substances.
Cocaine dealers make crazy amounts of money. It’s almost unbelievable how much money they make.
How far ‘up’ would you say you got in the business?
Before ‘it’ ended I topped out at about a mid-level dealer, and even then, Maltese people don’t really get to the high levels. There’s only maybe a couple of high-level people. In the global scheme of things, it’s pretty much negligible.
What was it like getting caught?
It’s the most dreadful feeling in the world, particularly right when you get caught because you feel as if your entire world is being ripped away from you. Then there’s that whole procedure of trying to clear your name, clear out your life, etc. Kind of like discovering yourself, I’d say, because you’re trying to build a new you.
Prison is also very hard to deal with but it’s not as bad as rehab, weirdly enough. Rehab is more challenging because they try to change your beliefs and behavioural system.
I would say that, in spite of it being more challenging, rehab is definitely more rewarding than prison. You don't get anything out of prison.
You spend the whole day messing around, playing Xbox, watching TV – imagine, in my division you’d be in a room with about half-a-dozen inmates, we’d be on bunk-beds, and each bunk bed would have a television or something. Everyone would get their own stuff, although I wasn’t given a television.
What was it like when you got out?
Since I had already gone through a considerable amount of time in rehab before my stint in prison, it was exactly the same by that point. I had already moved on from all that stuff. It’s as if it was just another interruption to my life.
Where do you stand on legalisation, which is on the cards for the near future?
It would greatly reduce drug-trafficking rates, especially with regard to cannabis, because it would increase the barrier to entry.
Here’s the thing: a lot of people get into weed when they’re kids, and then they need their own ‘local supply’, so they would try to fill in that hole themselves by becoming dealers. Then, once you become a dealer, you start getting involved with certain social circles and this leads you down certain paths.
If you legalise it, and you put everything through legal structures which would prohibit kids gaining access, you would see fewer kids getting super wasted. We saw the same thing happen with alcohol consumption – over time it became less and less of a problem.
Cannabis is a dealer’s bread and butter – legalisation would mess up dealers’ business because it would hit their wallets really hard. It’s the safe income because it’s not the kind of drug that will have people banging on your door at three o'clock in the morning.
What was the worst experience you had to go through in your time as a dealer?
I remember one time the police beat me up in Paceville. They strip-searched me and, somehow, they didn’t find the bag of 60 pills in my front jacket pocket. I thought I was going to jail for who knows how many years.
I was 17. I was handcuffed, searched and got the stuffing kicked out of me.
And the best experience?
Throughout my time dealing, the status is what I enjoyed the most – it fed into everything happening around me. The recognition, the girls – it was a great time.
Do you regret anything?
No. Everything I did contributed to making me the person I am today, and I wouldn’t be where I am today without having gone through that experience. I feel like I’m getting somewhere in my life.