Chapter 3

I thought it was interesting how the author compared a capitalist business, like McDonalds specifically, to the crack business. There are similarities, like how the customers aren't usually known, product is sold fast, and relatively cheap. I also liked how he compared a turf war between drug dealers with a price war between Burger King and McDonalds. Then I was very interested when he went into the details about a student, named Venkatesh, who lived with a Chicago crack dealer for around six years. What was really amazing was how the student got the spiral notebooks from a dealer that was ahead of the financials of his drug dealing business that consisted of four years of finances. It showed an interesting view of the crack dealing business. JT, who was the head of the crack dealers in his area in Chicago and had a college degree, made $100,000 tax free, and this doesn't include extras that were pocketed! This is a very powerful factor that attract's smaller dealers who want to make it to the top. Small time crack dealers, or foot soldiers, who try to become leaders only make around $3.30 an hour, which is far less than minimum wage. This was the obvious reason of why crack dealers live with there moms. The most shocking figure out of the notebooks was that the "board of directors", who led the leaders of the crack dealers, made $500,000 tax free!! These were crazy numbers to me, because I knew that crack dealers could make money, but six digit figures is pretty shocking to me. These big numbers obviously came with a big risk, in JT's gang case there was a 1 in 4 chance that a member of the gang was going to be killed. It was also interesting how there weren't old drug dealers, dealers in there 30's, until crack exploded in inner city's. What was really fascinating, and which I had heard about before, was how the CIA was responsible for the introduction of crack cocaine in inner city's. The "Johnny Appleseed of Crack", named Oscar Blandon, said that he was able to sell crack with impunity for years because of the CIA. I can see how corrupt officials in the CIA would be able to be bribed by drug dealers, because of the enormous amount of money that is made from crack dealing. I think a majority of people will probably disagree with that, but a majority of people were convinced that Iraq needed to be invaded, because of "WMD's."