To compliment today’s article by Matt Harvey exposing the media bullshit behind New York’s supposed heroin epidemic, here are a couple of drug-related stories we published in the past year or so that you might have missed.

1. Pancho Montana’s maiden dispatch from deep inside Mexico’s drug war about neighborhood drug stores called “tienditas.” They’re sort of like your local Rite Aid, but they don’t carry any Tylenol. Here’s an excerpt:

MONTERREY, MEXICO — In my neighborhood there are two tienditas. Mainly they sell crack and powdered cocaine. A tiendita can be set up in any place. It does not have to be a store, but for the sake of keeping up appearances they usually are. I guess they don’t want the continuous flow of clients and taxis double and triple-parked to raise unnecessary suspicion.

They don’t need to advertise on billboards, although they could if they wanted to. (I don’t want to talk much about police/government involvement, but I’ll say this: the cops protect the stores and patrol the streets like regular cops should, only that they report to the Zetas.) Anyway, word-of-mouth spreads the message that there is a new place, right across the street, where you can get your fix easily and without hassle.

The buying process is simple. You walk into the store, go to the counter, ask for your drug of choice (crack, blow or weed), pay, walk out and enjoy. It’s that simple! It’s very impersonal, you don’t have to go through all those trust issues I hear you people have for scoring shit in the US.

The inventory is simple, too. These aren’t boutique medical marijuana shops I hear you have in California that offer 50 types of weed. No, the main business of a tiendita is piedra, slang name for crack cocaine. But after a drug shop becomes more established, the management expands into powder cocaine and pot. The quality is not very good. They cut it too much. That’s why a bolsita (baggie) of zetas pase (blow) is usually calledrabia (rabies). Imagine why.

But even if you start foaming at the mouth like an infected dog, you will never complain about the price. The minimum amount for a cocaine purchase — either crack or blow — is 1/2 gram for $120 pesos ($8.50 USD). Until very recently it was $100 pesos ($7.00 USD), but the zetas added $20 pesos to the price. The general druggies now think the zetas are a bunch of greedy fuckers. But if you look at it from the zetas point of view (remember, they are businessmen), that little price increase multiplied by the thousands of tienditas they run in Mexico increases their earnings big time. So they are more like greedy fucking geniuses, because the average addict doesn’t care about another measly $20 pesos. They will pay the price as long as they can get a fix. If you ask me it is a good business move for them. Sure there is a small price increase for the consumer, but using one of their tienditas is safer than going to a bad neighborhood and it’s just around the corner.

As for pot, one should stay away from the shit they sell at the tienditas…READ MORE

2. Yasha Levine goes on a mission to score smack on the streets of LA and winds up getting a full-frontal view of a modern-era speakeasy: the gay spa. Here’s how it starts out:

It was just past 2 a.m. on a Saturday and I was standing at a busy intersection in a dirty corner of Hollywood, just a few blocks away from Grauman’s Chinese Theater. People were spilling out of bars and heading home. The strip was emptying out quickly. But where I was standing, prime time was just beginning. Hookers were pouring out onto the sidewalk, circling the block slowly in packs of twos and threes and causing a traffic jam as cars slowed to a crawl to check out the selection. There weren’t too many females among them. This part of town specializes in tranny whores and gigolos.

I was there to score, too. Not shemales—I’m no degenerate, you see— but an entirely different and altogether wholesome product. I was there to score some good old-fashioned heroin in order to celebrate a special day: The 75th anniversary of the end of the Prohibition. The celebration had officially ended that midnight, and alcohol-loving revelers were now stumbling out of bars all across the country. They had been marking the occasion in their own ignorant way. All that week, newspapers were reporting on the planned boozy celebrations. Drink discounts, speakeasy-themed restaurant events and kegger parties raged all across America. Even a few people I know had gone to a flapper-themed house party. But as far as I was concerned, they had it all wrong. America’s Prohibition never really ended. Sure, alcohol was legalized, within limits, of course. But the real Prohibition continued and intensified. Laws against other drugs became harsher and more severely enforced. So I went out that night to pay homage to the unspoken Prohibition the only way I knew how: hit the streets looking for the best illegal drug money can buy.

I came to this particular corner on a tip from a friend of mine who lives in the area. “Go down to the parking lot at the strip mall there. I’m sure you can get something. I see people buying shit all the time. You’ll know you’re at the right place when you start seeing transvestites.”

What kind of drugs did they sell there? Was it smack? Crack? Speed? All of the above?

He had no idea. Like most white people, he had never bought drugs off the street.

I parked my car in a side alley and approached the corner by foot. A pack of about a dozen thugs loitered in the shadows of a brightly lit doughnut shop. Inside, two pimp-looking black dudes decked out in gold chains and teeth grillz, surrounded by a couple of haggard, masculine-looking prostitutes, were eating doughnut holes, laughing and boasting. I bought a pack of smokes and lit up in the parking lot, trying to look as nonchalant as possible while I surveyed the scene. One thing was clear: there was no way I was going to blend in with this underworld. I was the only white face around, and I wasn’t dressed right at all. My dorky white-boy jeans and sweatshirt stood out among the oversized baseball caps, do-rags, crisp baggy jeans and Nikes. Plus, I didn’t have the gangsta spring in my step. My freshly-shaved white scalp glowed like a silent alarm. It was painfully clear I was a white boy in a bad neighborhood for one purpose only: to score drugs. Here, decent white folks didn’t get out of their cars for anything. Not for junk food, not for whores and definitely not for drugs.

Which is why I came out here. On this special day, going through a dealer would be a cop out. Discreet drug buys are a huge reason why the modern Drug Prohibition still goes unchallenged. As long as casual drug users don’t have to be sullied or criminalized by drug consumption, they are able to block out just how demeaning our country’s drug laws are. Without a connection, you go from upstanding citizen to lowlife in the time it takes to get out of your car and cross the street.

I finished my smoke and edged a little closer to a Latino dude leaning up against the shop’s exit… READ MORE.

Read more: drug war, drugs, mexico, smack, Team eXiled, What You Should Hate

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