Near where I live, there is a family. The father, in his early 50’s, passed away abruptly about 3 years ago. They live in a $400-500k home in a nice subdivision. They had two kids, daughter and son, 19 and 17, respectively. The husband apparently had no life insurance, and the mom in her late 40’s must have been a Showtime subscriber, because she took a page directly from the show Weeds, and started growing and distributing marijuana. She enlisted the kids in her new business venture, to keep the house and the current standard of living.
So would you do something similar, to keep your current lifestyle? Would you even consider it?
The family in my 1st paragraph have been busted. Apparently the son, got shot in the hand, during a robbery drug transaction gone bad. You can’t just show up at the ER with a gunshot wound, so they called 911 to report a robbery and shooting. When the police showed up to investigate, somehow, they discovered the huge grow operation in their 4,000 square foot home. I wonder what dearly departed Dad would think.
Absolutely not. It’s morally wrong and illegal. Selling drugs is, one way or the other, eventually going to ruin your life, with some combination of turf wars with other dealers, addiction, family disintegration, paranoia, prosecution, fines, prison, etc. No, thanks.
You read about situations like the OP, but you don’t read about the grow ops that are done with extreme caution, where sales are isolated from production.
No, I’d probably do something far more sensible like becoming a male prostitute or opening my house to a reality TV show or better yet, selling all my vital organs.
Here, maybe if I was in really dire straits and the opportunity arose but probably not. More hassle than it’s worth IMO and you’d have to deal with all kind of gobshites(~morons).
I’d probably start small at first, trying to find other ways to make money. For the first batch of customers, I’d give them special titles and let them buy for half price–for as long as they bought at least once a year. Everyone else would have to pay full price though. But as I said, I’d much rather find other revenue streams, and would likely go back to giving it away for free as soon as I could. I’d still let some people pay to avoid the hassle of trying to sell them other stuff, but hopefully in the long run things would reach a good equilibrium.
Of course. Been there, done that. (Years ago). Only problem was, no big $$. If memory serves, net income was around $5000/year. A nice little nest egg to be sure, but a far cry from great wealth. And, for he record, I declared the money (though not the source) and paid income tax on it.
I have no moral problems with cannabis, the use and production thereof, nor with breaking the stupid and arcane laws that prohibit it. And I despise the fact that the police and media trumpet every grower-bust as having MILLION$$$$ in “street value”, when in fact their “estimate” is based on an absolute best-case high-value scenario which most weed never obtains and which in any case never accrues to any one individual, and certainly not to the grower.
At the same time, my conscience would never allow me to operate, say, a meth lab or sell cocaine to kids, although I might consider running a backwoods whiskey still if there was any money in it;)
SS
In order to sustain [what I consider] an upper-middle-class standard of living? No.
In order to pay the elctric bill? Sure.
My [del]dealer[/del] independent pharmaceutical contractor has a good job and makes decent money. He just likes having some extra bucks to blow on… whatever the hell he blows his money on.
Although I recognize that any thread about illegal drugs[sup]1[/sup] can make posts of this kind almost inevitable, please keep in mind our rules about discussing current illicit drug use:
No warning issued, but please keep this in mind.
[sup]1[/sup]While recognizing that selling and using cannabis for medicinal purposes is legal under the laws of some states, and carried on there openly, it’s still technically illegal under Federal law.
Trying to send a kid to college. Lost my job. Two kids - two ER visits. Defunct fuel pump on van. Can’t afford to buy graduation gown for my HS senior (honor student), she will not be allowed to walk in graduation. Can’t afford cleats for son to finish baseball season.
I often look at son’s Adderall perscription and wonder ‘How much could I get for these?’ I would have been the first one to say I would never, until I watched my HS senior try not to cry when all her friends recieved their graduation gowns from the distributor and she didn’t.
The whole jail, criminal record is a big enough deterrent for me.
I’m not very materialistic so I would adapt. If I was in the scenario described in the OP. I would sell the house get a smaller one or an appartment and start over.
I am in the medical field, so I do come in contact with a fair number of people with substance abuse problems. It is just staggering to me how much suffering occurs because of drugs (including legal ones like alcohol and cigarettes). I don’t want any part of that. There are other ways to make money.
I have nothing against marijuana, and think it should be legalized, but no, I wouldn’t do this. It’s the safety thing, and to drag my kids into that…no.
I mean, did she only watch the first season of Weeds, or what? 'Cause it gets pretty damn dark after that…
My husband was stationed overseas for a few years, while he was in the Air Force. I married him and was overseas for a couple of years myself. I’ve never seriously smoked anything. And that’s relevant. At the time, service members and their spouses were issued ration cards to purchase cigarettes (and, I believe, alcohol) on base, at a dramatically lower price than the regular price off base. Everyone, including my husband’s NCO, was telling us that we should buy cigarettes on my ration card at the base store and sell them off base to make money. Apparently, we could have made quite a lot of money from this, enough that we wouldn’t have had to scrimp and stretch every penny.
I feel very frustrated that this was so commonplace, and that my husband’s supervisors advised us to do it. It seems that virtue is NOT its own reward, at all.
My grandfather and a couple of my uncles were rumrunners during Prohibition, and were very low level Mafia members.
Why, what did you hear?
But seriously, if had a family to feed I would do it. I don’t know if it’s just a Pacific Northwest thing, but all of the dealers I’ve known in my life were all laid back granola types, or just mellow in general. None were certainly the crazy paranoid gun toting gangbangas like the media likes to portray.
I find it hard to understand why buying a legal substance for X and selling it for higher price Y is something to avoid. What’s the difference between your opportunity and any other profit making enterprise? What was going through you mind when you refused to do this?