Born to the Culture

A lot of the political and corporate media discourse about drug-use assumes that users and dealers have made a choice to become what they are. There are many reasons people use drugs - some folk do it because they're bored, some are self-prescribing against various ailments or insecurities and some are simply trapped in old habits.

A lot of the political and corporate media discourse about drug-use assumes that users and dealers have made a choice to become what they are. There are many reasons people use drugs - some folk do it because they're bored, some are self-prescribing against various ailments or insecurities and some are simply trapped in old habits. There are, though, a growing number of souls for whom the drug culture is all they know; we're talking about the people who've been born in to it. SSUK is proud to present this reflective and philosophical interview with ‘Bob', a 37 year old English guy who was born in to the drug culture...

By The Red One

SSUK: Thanks for agreeing to the interview Bob, can you tell us a bit about your early years?

Bob: No worries. My parents were both drug users, but my father also worked in the music industry doing art work for record sleeves. He realised quite early on that he'd have a lot better chance of getting the contracts to do the art work if he could also sort out the record company execs with good drugs, so he started dealing. By the time I was around five years old both my parents were chasing the dragon and by the time I was eight or so they'd fallen in to a grand-a-day habit which they sustained through dealing - they'd started off selling hash but by this time it was nearly all heroin. They were stuck with this grand-a-day habit for about three years.

How did this affect you?

Back in the seventies and eighties there was far more of a social stigma attached to drugs so the threat of arrest was a lot greater. This meant that me, my bro and my sis grew up with a strong distrust of cops and the authorities in general, we also had pretty restricted social circles - we had to keep shtum about my parents activities so we had this barrier between us and the rest of society. Another major problem my parents had in this era was the fact that if they'd gone to ask for any official help from the state the social consequences would've been massive - it was almost inevitable that me, my bro and my sister would've been put into care. In the end the only way they could get off the gear and keep the family together was by moving to the remotest part of Scotland and sorting themselves out with a private doctor. We lived there for quite a long time.

So when and why did you get into smoking hash?

Back when I was about fourteen I'd started drinking a bit - I was quite angry at that age so I'd go out, get a bit pissed and start fighting. I also suffered from bad migraines. One day my Dad told me that if I stopped drinking and fighting he'd sort me out with a couple of grams of hash each week to calm me down a bit - this is when I started smoking. At first the pot chilled me out a lot - it gave me a new, more philosophical perspective on life and it also stopped my migraines. Through conversations I'd have with other, older, pot smokers I also became more aware of my responsibilities and how my actions affected others - it made me a far more stable member of society! It was over the next few years then that the hippy lifestyle and hippy ideals became my lifestyle and my ideals, just as the Rasta culture is to many of the Jamaicans or the Hindi culture is to so many Indians; pot is part of my cultural identity.

What about the progression from using to dealing? How and when did that happen?

Well, the dealing started off when I moved to Edinburgh and got in to the rave scene around 1990. One of the things we found though was that the quality of the drugs in Edinburgh, particularly the ecstasy and the cannabis, was really bad - a lot of the hash around Scotland then was called diesel, it was either contaminated through bad smuggling practices or it'd been mixed with crap to bulk it out. It was the same with the ecstasy. I had friends in Manchester so I was going to get my pills off them, but then my mates in Edinburgh were asking us to sort them out so, before we knew it, me and a friend were going down to Manchester and buying pounds and kilos of hash at a time and a hundred e's here and there - I was still only seventeen or eighteen. This really was all about the quality - even some of the bigger dealers who were selling shit would come to us for their percy because they knew our drugs were clean and safe.

What about the growing?

I didn't get into growing weed until I moved down to the Westcountry - some friends of mine had a big outdoor crop, 500 plants or so and I actually got a job one autumn helping them bring it in, dry it, trim it and all that. Well, that experience taught me a lot about how to grow weed outdoors and I had other friends who were getting good results on their indoor grows so I was learning a lot about growing weed in general. It wasn't long after that when I started growing my own with a friend - at this stage it was still just about sorting out a few friends and keeping ourselves in smoke, we weren't interested in making huge amounts of money or intending on going in to this as a profession or anything like that, we were just normal smokers trying to help other smokers out when we could - that's what our scene has always been about really. Anyway, we were only in to our second grow when we got arrested.

What happened there?

A friend of ours got nicked with a load of drugs, he grassed us up and we were busted the next day - simple as that! I was annoyed and gutted but I didn't feel as though I'd done that much wrong and I wouldn't get in to that much trouble - we thought they'd realise it wasn't a professional grow or anything like that, it was just for personal use and any supply would've been minimal.

How many plants did you have? What sort of set-up was it?

We had about fifteen to twenty plants in flowering and the police found the remains of ten plants which had been a failed outdoor experiment. As far as the lights go, we had two 150 watt sodium lights and a bank of flourescents as a booster, we also had a very large Velux window which allowed about five hours of strong sun light into the room each day.

We still didn't think we were in that much trouble though - we were very polite and cooperative with the police and they were polite to us; they told us they'd been thinking of giving us a caution but they also felt obliged to pass it on to the magistrates court. That they did, and then, to our surprise, the CPS felt that it was a much more serious case and we ended up in crown court. We pleaded guilty to cultivation of cannabis for personal use and we both ended up getting six month sentences.

Where did you go?

I didn't even realise this at the time, but my mate was still under twenty-one, I was twenty-two, so he ended up in youth prison and I got sent to Exeter. Luckily for me, I knew people who knew people in Exeter and I got on well with my cell mate who was also inside for the first time so it was pretty cool for me - we were both just looking to keep our heads down and get out as soon as possible. The worst thing about prison was the way it affected me; first off, the food was really bad and I actually suffered from really bad stomach problems after three months of eating prison food and I had general bad health issues.

When you got out did you change anything about your way of life?

Yes, as far as I was concerned I'd been a political prisoner - I hadn't done anything to or harmed anyone else so the crime I'd committed was a political crime; it was, and is, against the law because of the attitudes and interests of certain people not because it's a crime in which there are any victims. After I came out of prison I got very angry with the fact that society had put me in prison for something that hadn't caused anyone any harm so I started dealing quite vigorously in weed and hash - if that's the brush they wanted to tarnish me with then that's what I'd be. I hadn't come out with that attitude but after a few months of looking for a job and telling them that I'd been to prison for drugs I kept hitting brick walls - no-one would give me a job. Up until that point, from eighteen to twenty-two, I'd had a full case of employment, maybe a couple of months off here and there but I'd always earned honest money. Now, by circumstance and intention, I was making money out of dealing - it wasn't like the first time round in Edinburgh when it'd just grown out of trying to help mates out, this time I needed to pay bills and it was the only way I could get the money... Although I'd come out of prison determined to keep smoking and not change who I thought I was, it'd also given me a bit of a kick to sort out a few other things but the cultural stigma of being inside for drugs prevented me from getting any legal work just as I was trying to get back in to society.

So have you been dealing and growing since then?

Yes, pretty much. I never bothered about being a big-time dealer though, one of the things I learnt was that if you don't try and make loads of money out of it you probably won't get caught - generally it's the people who try and get rich out of it that get caught. I try and keep it to sorting my friends out, I'm socially responsible in that I don't sell to young people and I try to sell it as cheaply as possible so I'm not ripping people off; one of the things that I'm proud of is the fact that I've managed to keep my prices lower than anyone else in this city. The other thing I learnt was that if you charge people too much and they get caught then they're far more likely to grass you up! I don't make much out of it, even at my busiest, when I just got out of prison, I was only making between ten and fifteen thousand a year. I also stopped growing for quite a while as well, even though it was the morally responsible thing to do - growers aren't putting money into criminally controlled black markets or financing the lives of violent and nasty characters. Growers also know exactly what it is that they're growing so they're not smoking any chemically-loaded rubbish, but growing a few plants is a lot riskier than selling kilos as far as the police go.

You've used cannabis for pain relief in recent years, can you tell us about that?

Yes, after about four or five years of dealing I decided that it wasn't getting me anywhere as far as life's ambitions go so I decided to knock it on the head, go back to growing again and, also, to go to university. Just before I started uni though, I got hit by a car and very badly injured - I had chronic pain from my leg injuries for years and years afterwards, I still get mild problems now. The only thing I found that could get rid of the pain was the cannabis - the pharmaceutical pain killers were far too strong and they were turning me into a bit of a zombie, disabling me to the point where I couldn't even do the simplest of things whereas the cannabis would get rid of the pain and I could get on perfectly normally with life. Growing pot was the only way I could ensure that I had a continuous and reliable enough supply of pain relief; I struggled without it.

So, just to wrap things up, what do you think are the major impacts of the criminalisation of drugs?

The laws benefit no-one, they don't stop the supply and they don't stop people taking them. The criminalisation of drugs also allows career criminals to become rich and successful. Criminalisation also stops a lot of people seeking help if they become addicts, and it separates people who take drugs from the rest of society in many ways.