Terror Tax on Stoners
Drug dealers avoid subways, take taxis.
Bag searches are costing New Yorkers more than just time. With the police declaring they’ll arrest subway riders if they find anything nonexplosive but still illegal, the price of drug deliveries is rising. Nervous purveyors are passing along the cost of taxis to customers. “My dealer won’t take the train anymore,” complains Wiley, a 30-year-old marketing executive and avid pot smoker. “He charged me an extra $12 for his cab fare today. It’s ridiculous.” Call it the anti-terror tax. “If the runner’s gotta give a little extra, you’re gonna give a little extra,” says Flower, a grandmother and coke dealer who runs her business from a bar beneath her Lower East Side apartment (and says her clients before the crackdown included a network-news executive). She pauses on her bar stool. “Otherwise, come down here and get it yourself.”
—Tim Gray