FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2002
HIGHS AND LOWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 5A
Drugs
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
"Selling pot is wrong because of that very moment. There's nothing that's worth that feeling of anguish." Watson said. "It's the worst feeling in the world.
It's emasculating - you feel totally helpless and hopeless."
He was 19 and about to begin his junior year at the University of Kansas.
Authorities took Watson to the sheriff's office and interrogated him. After spending the night in jail, he returned to his apartment - wrecked by a thorough police search.
"They destroyed my apartment. They ripped it up," he said.
The police confiscated about three-quarters of a pound of marijuana and about $800 in cash. Although that was only a fraction of the pot Watson sold and the money he made during the spring of 1999, he said his lifestyle as a pot dealer didn't add up.
"There's no compensation for getting busted, regardless of how much money you're going to make and what scale you're doing it on," he said. "There's just no reason to sell pot, period.
use may be higher than national trends. The town's college atmosphere, which includes KU students and faculty as well as students from Baker and Haskell universities, affected marijuana use, said Sgt. Tarik Khatib of the Lawrence Police Department.
"I think the demand is pretty high," said Khatib, head of the Douglas County Drug Enforcement Unit, a task force of officers from the police and sheriff's departments. "Part of that is there is a very diverse culture - you have a lot of college students from across the country and from around the world."
This cultural diversity mirrors the town's ideological diversity, Khatib said.
"It's a more open, free-thinking town," he said. "And I think that attracts people who are more willing to use drugs."
The task force focuses on drug dealers who have a large influence on the local drug culture, Khatib said.
In 2000 and 2001, a total of 38 people were reported for felony drug violations, involving depressants, stimulants, steroids or hallucinogens, which includes marijuana, according to lawrencepolice.org. In 2002, 23 similar reports were recorded by
Watson said he didn't intend to become a pot dealer when he started his sophomore year at KU in the fall of 1998. At the time, he said, he was only getting enough pot for himself and his friends. But by the spring semester, a clientele emerged as friends of friends started buying from him.
"I was never really trying to make money. It just happened, honestly." Watson said. "It went from getting a half-pound and having it for a week or longer to getting a pound, vanishing in an afternoon."
A pound of marijuana cost Watson about $800 and could be sold for a profit of $400 to $600, he said. Although he wouldn't say exactly how much money he made, he admitted it amounted to several thousands of dollars. He said he spent most of his money on kind bud for himself, marijuana with a higher percentage of THC than the average, low-grade pot he sold. THC is the chemical in marijuana that triggers the high. He also bought expensive cognac, Grateful Dead CDs by the score, organic food and paid for a spring break vacation in the Southwest.
"Marijuana is the most readily available and widely used illicit drug in the United States," he said. "The same holds true for Kansas."
"There's certainly quite a bit of marijuana in town," Dunbar said. "And I don't think people have to go to Kansas City to get it."
Kirk Thompson, assistant director for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, said pot was the preferred drug locally and nationally.
Sgt. Tarik Khatib of the Lawrence Police Department said, "If you're 18, 19 and you're going to school and you don't know what you're going to do with your life yet, and you've got a felony on your record now, guess what — you no longer have the choice to really figure out what you want to do. A felony is going to limit what you can do, you can't be a lawyer, you can't be an architect, there's just a ton of things you can't do."
Kansan photo illustration
In many respects, Watson's experiences are typical of other pot dealers in Lawrence because he was young and had no criminal history before his arrest, said Dan Dunbar, assistant district attorney for Douglas County.
Fat City
"I would say that most of my felony cases in some way are related to students or people that age - typically the 18 to 25 crowd." Dunbar said.
But in Lawrence, mariuana
He said most of the marijuana cases he prosecuted involved people who were caught and charged with the sale of no more than two ounces of pot. Dunbar, whose primary responsibility has been prosecuting felony drug cases since he began working with the county in 1995, said pot and ecstasy were usually the two drugs of choice for local college students.
Aug. 1. Khaib said about 90 percent of those cases involved dealing marijuana.
Watson said he began smoking pot on a daily basis during his junior year in high school and became acquainted with members of the pot culture in Wichita. With these connections, Watson began pooling money with his friends to buy an ounce or two of pot to save money.
Watson came to KU in the fall of 1997. He was a graduate of Andover High School near Wichita, where he served as editor of the school newspaper, president of the debate team and president of his senior class. He also played on Andover's cross country, soccer, baseball and basketball teams.
Back in the Day
Former pot dealer and KU student Andy Watson said, "I never saw myself as a drug dealer. I saw myself as someone who was helping others smoke pot. It's a dumb idea, but it's not a morally bad thing to do – it's dumb because it's illegal. It doesn't make you a bad person, and it doesn't hurt anyone."
"I think that's how it starts for anybody who's going to sell pot," he said. "They realize that all of a sudden that they could start making money at it if they just got a little more."
Despite Watson's expensive tastes, he said he exclusively sold pot and would not sell other, more lucrative drugs such as cocaine.
Khatib said pot smokers became dealers for two reasons.
"One, I think they get tired of paying for it and decide to sell it to offset what they consume themselves," he said. "Quite honestly, the other one would be money - people want to make money with it."
"I didn't approve of doing those types of drugs," Watson said.
He said he thought the situation of exploitation and dependency were more intense with cocaine users with pot smokers.
Pyramid Scheme
"If I'm your supplier and have five or six people under me, I can exercise power over those people," Khatib said. "I'm their source, so they have to come to me."
However, dealers from all walks of the drug trade often feel empowered because of the clout they have over people who buy their drugs, Khatib said.
He was majoring in sociology and was a full-time student during the spring of 1999.
Despite such distractions, dealing pot did not compromise Watson's studies.
He said he almost never missed his favorite classes that semester and earned his best grades to date.
Another former pot dealer called Jack, who would only speak if his real name was not revealed, said selling pot actually helped his grades. The illegitimate income meant he didn't have to juggle a busy work schedule with his studies.
"A lot of people have to have jobs and might have a test the next day, which they'll have little time to study for," said Jack, who grew up in the Kansas City area and began attending KU in Fall 1997. "Focusing on school is a lot easier when you have money."
Watson and Jack agreed that selling pot could raise questions about who your friends really were.
Bitter and Sweet
"You wonder if they want to be friendly with you so that they could get a good deal or because they're friendly and they're just cool people," Jack said about his customers.
"It's all very business-like and superficial," Watson said. "It's very fleeting, and it's difficult to establish what you'd call any real trust with someone because of how your relationship works with them."
Still, Watson said, he wasn't worried about getting arrested because he didn't sell pot to anyone who seemed to have a hidden agenda. He talked carefully over the telephone in case authorities were listening and tried to keep a low profile in public.
Although Watson thought he was too low-key for authorities to care about his business, his life as a pot dealer ended on June 28, 1999. One of Watson's customers had been arrested and agreed to set him up.
"I know or knew so many more people that were doing so much more than I was," Watson said. "I just couldn't imagine that I would be worth anyone's time."
When he returned to his apartment after spending the night in jail, a woman from the Kansas department of revenue was waiting for him.
She was there to confiscate his possessions to pay for marijuana taxes he owed to the state.
Watson told her which items were his and watched her take nearly all of his belongings, including a hand-made knife his grandfather used in the Korean War.
"He died before I was born," Watson said. "I never met the guy – I don't have anything of his."
Jack's friends sometimes criti
cized him for being too overt about selling pot, he said. But Jack was luckier than Watson - he never got caught dealing pot and to this day has a clean record. His clientele graduated and moved out of town, ending his lifestyle as a student pot dealer.
"I knew it had to go sometime," he said. "You can't live it forever."
Jack graduated from KU in December 2001 and attends graduate school elsewhere.
All in all, Jack said he enjoyed his experiences as a pot dealer.
"I had a pretty good ride," he said. "It allowed me to live a life like my parents did, and I was just in college."
End of the Line
In August 2001, only two weeks before his statue of limitations expired, the district attorney prepared to prosecute Watson - less than three months after he graduated. Dunbar said anyone convicted of intent to sell or distribute marijuana was subject to imprisonment.
Although Dunbar said pot use might not be as harmful as other illicit drugs, he warned about the risks of selling it.
"I think most people take it pretty lightly - it's marijuana; it's not meth; it's not crack. What's the harm?" he said. "But when you get to that selling stage, you're obviously into it for that monetary benefit or smoking enough to try to get free dope."
Dunbar and Watson's attorney agreed to a plea bargain, reducing his seven felony charges to two: intent to sell and sale of marijuana. He was also charged with misdemeanor possession and sentenced to a year of probation.
"It normalizes your life - the requirements on you are to be a steady, boring person," Watson said.
His father, Rick Watson, said he was not embarrassed by his son's conviction but worried about his future.
"I was concerned about how it would affect his record and how it could limit him for the rest of his life," the elder Watson said. "It doesn't seem that there's anything I can do about it. I can't call anyone and tell them what a good guy Andy is."
Probation required Watson to keep a job, work 40 hours a week, stay within the confines of the county unless he had special permission to leave, be subject to visits from his probation officer and attend drug counseling sessions.
After initial success with probation, Watson stumbled. Police pulled Watson's car over in the spring of 2002 because he was seen leaving a house under police surveillance, Watson said. Police searched his car and found about a gram of marijuana.
He had violated his probation.
A more intensive probation period of 30 days followed, Watson said, and his probation officer visited about four or five times and kept a closer watch on him.
In November, he was sentenced to another year of probation and had to serve 30 days in a work-release jail in Douglas County.
He spends his nights there and works full time for a finance company in Overland Park.
Although Watson is hopeful about his future, he regrets his past.
"I got arrested when I was 19 years old," he said. "I am 23 and going to be on probation until I'm 24. Tell me, is it worth it?"
—Edited by Amanda Sears
■ Contact Dayani at ndayani@kansan.com
Kansan photo illustration
"People in the same age group were a helpful source," said Jack, a former pot dealer. "It's not even like I was looking at these people like targets to make money. I thought I was helping them out, like,'Hey, I can help you out and make you $50.' "