What Happened to All Our Old Weed Dealers?

When we all grow old and decrepit, we will undoubtedly tell our youth long belaboured tales of antiquated contraband-begetting practices from our glory days.

"When I was your age," we'll say, "if we wanted to get weed, we used to have to text Tony's brother Tyler several times in a row because he always forgot to respond. Before that, way back in the golden years, I used to have to call him. Imagine that? Anyways, I'd have to text him, then hope I could get him between going to class and going to his job at the call centre. Half the time he'd fuck it up and we'd have to drive across town to see his cousin, and then you'd get to this guy's shitty basement. He'd think you were there to make friends. He'd expect you to light him up, and half the time he only had bushweed! Shake! Fuckin' guy."

In some parts of the country, this scenario is already getting kind of retro. Despite the recent bustups in Toronto, I have memberships at three different dispensaries in three different neighbourhoods. All of them stock a healthy selection of indica, sativa, soda, brownies, capsules, and gummies.

Is the self-employed, small-scale dealer becoming obsolete? Did we all put them out of business by bowing down to the convenience of the dispensaries? What will happen to them when we deprive them of our crumpled twenty-dollar bills and start using our credit cards at the corporate weed stores? This lead to see what my old dealers (those I could remember, at least) were up to now and if they had any tips from moving on in life and in business.

I grew up in small town New Brunswick, where there was fuck all to do but get fucked up in the woods. So that's what we did. I had numerous dealers, but one that stands out well. I worked at a fast food chain in high school, and I would trade him late night munchies for weed out the drive-thru window.

For a year or so—until he got arrested, at least—McDonald was a kingpin of weed sales in this podunk town. Pretty much everyone who smoked weed had his number, and that meant everyone in our age group. People in this town, you see, could afford to be hippies. Read: they drove their parents' BMWs around whilst flaunting their white person dreadlocks and hemp-adorned Birkenstocks. Everyone knew McDonald was good for at least a few grams at any given time. (Hence, how he came to be arrested. He wasn't exactly on the DL). Appearances may have had something to do with it: Back then, he was a religious Deadhead (in a way that was not cliche at all!) and he could often be found either bumping the hackey sack around or ridin' round on his skateboard to god knows where. He says he misses the good old days and gets a little overcome with nostalgia as we talk. I mean, he used to trade drugs for cookies. Now he has to be a real adult.

"Life was more simple back then," he tells me now. "Our only concern was who was throwing the next party." And party we did. Everyone knew everyone, and we used to take turns offering up our parents' garages/basements/camps to turn up in.

Now, ten years later, McDonald is still living in the same small town with his girlfriend, who went to high school with us and is the definition of Type A. She is his polar opposite in every way. She knows he used to deal (and bought from him a few times) but he says she wouldn't be pleased if he picked it back up again since he has a "real job" now.

"I'm an electrician for a company based in Saint John (N.B.)," he told me. "I worked out west in Fort Mac for a year. I was doing electrical out there until oil went down, then the whole site was shut down."

(All Maritimers work in Fort Mac for a bit, it's a thing.)

He and the boys from high school still party together.

"I golf a lot…party! In the winter I snowboard in the summer drive my ATV, like to go camping and fishing."

McDonald only stopped dealing because he got arrested for it in Grade 12. Cops in this town, you see, have little else to do. He still smokes weed, but after high school and post-arrest, he says it was simply nonsensical to keep dealing. A lot of his clientele moved away, and once he went to school for electrics, there was no need to keep pushing weed. He was good at what he did tho. Happy belated retirement, Buddy.

I went to school at the University of New Brunswick. I had a long line of dealers when I was there, but the only one whose name I can remember is Quinn Donald. And that's only because he lived in the same house as myself. Like so many other houses in the town, it was a ramshackle dwelling built in the late 19th century, painted red. I lived on the top floor with two other girls in what must have formerly been the maid's rooms. We had a little balcony which was visibly falling off the building, and also a haunted compartment in the floor that led down into the other apartments.

One of them was Quinn's. He had a smart businessperson job even then—something to do with pharmaceuticals, I think. We used to meander downstairs and buy $40 worth of weed off of him every week. Sometimes he'd feed us edibles that would knock us out for a solid 14 hours, which was great for people who were always cramming and partying and who never slept as a result. Most of the crowd he sold to lived a similar life: they were either trustafarians, or a certain kind of true hippie that seems to only remain in existence in backwoods New Brunswick.

When I texted him for an update, he had just returned from a trip in Singapore and Thailand, where he went to visit his brother.

Quinn moved to Toronto from Moncton, NB last May after asking for a transfer from his boss. He lives downtown with his partner and a couple of other guys. His life has taken a turn for the white collar.

"I work as an auditor," he tells me. "Unfortunately, Ontario is rife with fraud, so my day job is quite busy here." He stopped selling weed years ago, he tells me, because all of his clients grew up and moved away. They were mostly university students, and in New Brunswick, people make the switch from fratboy to home-owning father of three faster than you can shotgun an Alpine.

One could imagine that weed-shilling would be a somewhat stressful part-time job to the fact that it's (largely) still illegal, but Donald says that wasn't the case for him. He only sold to about ten people at any given time, and it wasn't something he tried to hide from anyone. His partner knows he used to be a dealer, and thinks it's funny. While he doesn't regret leaving his old side hustle behind, life is a little lonelier without it.

"I think it's a great side job for any student or young person," he tells me. "But I don't miss it, other than perhaps the social aspect—meeting with customers, who were also friends, and sharing a smoke."

My first dealer after moving to Toronto. (Well, after my dear friend M, who used to bike courier weed to close friends only.) Fontaine lived first in one beautiful Victorian home, then moved a little north, as my foggy brain recalls. His room had a glorious fireplace and ornate white moulding. We used to hang out and avoid his roommate, getting high, listening to Pink Floyd (can this really be the way it was?!) and arguing about the media landscape in Toronto. Fontaine is a small man, and usually wore pajamas to our meetings.

When Fontaine started dealing, he was in an entry-level position at an ad agency, and it didn't pay especially well. He decided to sell to 15 or 20 friends to make extra cash and also smoke as much weed as humanly possible for free. Mostly, he sold to people on the periphery of his friend group who went to Ryerson or U of T.

Fontaine quit the biz because he started climbing the ladder in earnest at his ad sales job, at which point he started making legit money. (He was also paranoid about being found out). Now, he works a 9-5 and lives in Little Italy with his girlfriend, a 26-year-old phD student. The girlfriend is minorly mortified at Fontaine's former enterprise.

"My girlfriend is, like, kind of ashamed of it. Like she would be horrified if I did it now. She's a very 'adult' kind of adult."

That's fine, he says, because dealing was never a huge part of his life. That doesn't mean there are no regrets, though.

"There was a social loss. Where I might otherwise have been having an evening of not seeing anyone socially, people I wouldn't otherwise see (and sure enough, didn't after I quit) would come hang out for half an hour. I have nostalgia for that."

Dealing also afforded him the chance to flex his business prowess.

"I also miss the side hustle—actively making money in a way that requires some sort of entrepreneurial spirit," he tells me. "Now, I get paid the salary they tell me I'm worth rather than going out and finding my own business."

…And there you have it, folks. Our old dealers were never in it for the long game. None of them feel bad about quitting. They just wanted jobs that weren't quite so likely to get them arrested and so, like everyone else, simply decided to grow up and get a real job. They're shitty corporate sellouts just like the rest of us (present company excluded, obviously).

Photo via Flickr user tanjila ahmed

*All names have been changed to protect anonymity.