Paying the price for a high These scenes are true. Only the names and places have been changed to protect the guilty. The summer of love-peace and good vibes — the dawning of a new age. For a young fella just out of high school, the burgeoning scene around Lair Hill Park was an easy ride on TransLove Airways to an exciting new life. The fuel for that flight came in 95dollar, 2.2-pound bricks that seemed to make everyone grow into cosmicpolitico new beings. What could be neater than to supply all of your friends with this wonderful substance and at the same time make rent for your $99-a-month hippie shack, A dozen years later our friend Emmett is in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city awaiting the shipment of a precious substance. Around him are men dressed to kill — with bulges at their waist and holsters at their side that would do Don Corleone proud. The lastest drought has put many of these folks in perilous financial straights that only a big score can reverse. Everyone is screamin’ and yellin’ to get their bid in to Mr. Big who is in touch with the proceedings by telephone. The tensions and the octave level gets higher and higher as Mr. Big’s agent refuses to let the dealers see any of the offered merchandise. The agent threatens to cut off telephone contact with Mr. Big unless everyone agrees to the then unheard of price of $500 a lb. Finally Emmett cuts the tension and at the same time almost cuts his own throat by breaking into the bags of this suddenly very precious substance. The 10 pounds Emmett will purchase are already spoken for. Tomorrow his phone will be constantly chiming with requests for more. There’s never enough to satisfy the habits of a generation hooked on weed — needing better and better stuff to satisfy their habits. Hooked like they warned us in Reefer Madness? Well, not exactly — but veteran dopers have built up a tolerance level that continues to require high grade reefer. And as the dope culture has spread far and wide across These men are believed to be ARMED AND DANGEROUS America, the demand has far exceeded the supply. It’s a seller’s market and they’ve discovered, as have most American businessmen, that the consumer will pay any price for the desired product. Just like the oil companies discovered in 1973, major marijuana dealers in Portland have found that holding the product back just whets the consumer’s appetite. Our man Emmett, up until December ’78, was able to get bales of high-grade Colombian for $350 a pound — then before Drug dealers are circulating these composite drawings of two young men wanted for several recent armed robberies in Portland’s drug community. The suspects burst into their victim’s home, often when children are present, demanding money and contraband. the holiday season, the big operators held back and only sold the old, driedout summer leftovers. This garbage went like hotcakes through the holiday season and encouraged the top echelon to raise bale price to an average of $450 a pound. It also encouraged the big timers to continue to short shrift the average buying public. The 5-10 top cats are making so much money (a great deal of which comes from coke sales) that they no longer care to serve marijuana smokers with any kind of quality product at a reasonable price. When a number of middlemen refused to move the lowgrade holiday smoke, they we-e summarily cut off. Most of these folks believe in the magic of the weed and try to provide the best possible produce at the lowest possible piice. They came into the business when it was a family affair and high morality governed the trade instead of high sleaze. There is only one ball game in town and you either play by the rules or else. . . . And or else has not been very pleasant of late. It seems that a number of people who have been fronted large quantities of weed have suddenly been ripped off — putting your local tradesmen forever in the debt of certain businessmen — while other tradesmen seem to be setting up private fiefdoms in certain sections of the city that will be defended at all costs. Usually an anonymous tip to the gendarmes will do the trick in moving a tradesman out of the wrong neighborhood. The few remaining respectable dealers like Emmett are facing serious problems. Because of the high demand for weed, the quality continues to be more and more suspect. A lot of the seedy shit movin’ about of late is just the Columbian Connection trying to make weight in a year of severe drought through most of Colombia. If it’s not drought, then it’s increased drug enforcement practices by the U.S. government. The good ol' U.S. of A. ruined the Mexican Connection (remember Acapulco Gold, Oaxacan, and Michoacan) and is now stopping some ships beyond the 2(X) mile limit. Combined with the avaricious nature of those at the top of the trade and the enormous demands of local consumers, Emmett has his work cut out for him if he's to in any way stay true to the vision of that first joint those many moons ago in Lair Hill Park. Whatever Happened to the Mexican Connection? The cutting off of the supply of Mexican weed to the U.S. began with ex-President Nixon’s worldwide “war on drugs” in 1971. The program called for economic assistance to foreign governments, tightening world drug laws and building what Nixon called a CIA-style intelligence operation in the Drug Enforcement Administration, and training foreign narcotics police to form a frontline defense against illicit substances headed for America. In 1975, the State Department, CIA and DEA drafted the Narcotics Control Action Plan for Mexico. The State Department channeled funds and equipment through its Office of International Narcotics Control Matters (INC) to the Mexican attorney general’s office. The equipment included over 30 helicopters, remote sensing devices, high aerial reconnaisance, computer terminals, and telecommunications systems. Combined with the DEA sponsored spraying of paraquat, Operation Condor proved remarkably Successful in disrupting our most substantial source of marijuana. The Mexican government’s acceptance of the program was largely the result of their desire to acquire more police hardware to supress peasant insurgency movements in the mountainous northwestern Mexican states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihauhua (The Golden Triangle) where peasants were trading drugs for guns. The DEA sponsored Operation Condor has led to a system of illegal arrests and tortures that makes a mockery of President Carter's Human Rights Policy. Craig Pyles in the June 4th Village Voice reported that “during the two years it was in Culiacan Mexican Operation Condor arrested over 2.000 people — all duly labeled “narcotraficantes” (narcotics traffickers). But according to a study in the Culiacan correctional facility in 1977 by the Prisoners’ Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, 90 percent of the 457 inmates interviewed were not major narcotics traffickers but poor peasants from the sierra and juveniles from the towns who had been illegally detained and forced to sign confessions under torture in the Ministerio Publico. The method of obtaining these confessions is called by both prisoners and police “la calentada” — the “heat-up.” Specifically, the methods include beatings by fists, rifle and pistol butts; smashing inward with palms open over both ears to break the eardrum; bondage in extended positions, often to extreme dehydration in the hot sun; forcible induction of carbonated beverages through the nasal passages; electric shocks administered over a wet body, especially on the genitals; rape of detained women; submerging the head in buckets of excrement; cigarette burns; prying apart fingers — and toenails, and various spontaneous inventions. “Since the United States continues to fund the Mexican program with an estimated $12 million a year, continuation of that funding should be subject to the constraints of the Harkin Amendment, which prohibits the granting of military and economic aid to countries that engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. Given the level of concern shown by the government for the health of America's pot smokers; a turn for the better amongst our Mexican Connec- ■tions is as likely as Doonesbury’s Duke being appointed head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. 7
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