The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 62, No. 15, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 21, 1974 Page: 4 of 24
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Students urged to "whip" dope inflation now
[The following article is reprint-
ed from The Daily Texan, stu-
dent newspaper of UT-Austin.]
by MIKE AUGUST
It was about this time of year
in 1969 when Jim went to the
back door of a Houston steak-
house. The restaurant had been
closed for a couple of hours, but
Jim wasn't there to eat; he had
business to attend to.
For the last six weeks it had
been the same routine. Every
Thursday night he would walk
to the back door of the steak-
house. Waiting for him would be
two lunch-size paper sacks sealed
with masking tape. He would
take the sacks, leave an envelope
containing $150, get in his car
and leave.
Once home, he would break
the seals on the two bags and
empty the contents on newspa-
per spread on the living room
floor. Then he would begin
weighing out the contents in
one-ounce lots and place them in
32 plastic baggies. By the end of
the week he would have made
$170 clear profit.
In those days the marijuana
business was different. Jim was
not interested in making a for-
tune. He was performing a ser-
vice for a group of friends. Jim's
friends never had to clean their
pot. There were no sticks, seeds
or stems in those 32 one-ounce
baggies.
Things were different then,
because marijuana use was con-
fined mostly to lower income
areas of the city and especially
to members of what was called
"the counterculture".
Today it is hard to find some-
one between 18 and 25 who has
not tried marijuana or at least
seen it. Marijuana has reached an
all-time high in sales. It has
become big business, where the
big dealers no longer sell a
pound or two"here and there but
2,000 or 10,000 pounds at a
time.
The marijuana business is a
good example of a free market
system. If the demand exceeds
the supply the price goes up. If
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the supply exceeds the demand
the price goes down. Right now
the supply can't quite meet the
demand.
Sometimes external factors
may bring about a price increase.
For example, during the federal
crackdown on drug traffic
through the Mexican border
(called Operation Intercept), the
price went up.
Because of the risk involved
in drug trafficking, there has
always been a high margin of
profit in the business. Jim
marked up his prices 100 per-
cent. Of course, if he had been
caught, the penalties were two
to life, just for possession.
Marijuana costs about the
same to raise as tobacco. The
retail cost per ounce of tobacco
is about 50 cents (including fed-
eral tax). Until recently the cost
per ounce of pot was $10.
According to the Austin Drug
Dealers Association, the cost will
now rise to $12 per ounce for
marijuana. The reasoning is the
increase in wholesale price from
between $75 and $85 a pound in
1969, to $100 and as high as
$180 a pound this year. Mean-
while the price in Mexico is still
$30 to $50 per pound,
(unchanged from 1969). The
reason for the wholesale increase
is simple- people are willing to
pay the price.
The solutions to rising prices
are equally simple. Either stop
buying until the price goes
down or turn in your neighbor-
hood dealer. I find the latter
solution a bit drastic. If you pay
$160 per pound for dope, you
can't make any money selling
one-ounce lids for $10.
There are ways to make the
price go down if you are not wil-
ling to boycott pot altogether.
Here are 10 tips for fighting
rising prices. They were col-
lected from members of the Aus-
tin drug community.
1) Shop around for the right
price. THERE ARE STILL $10
LIDS AROUND AUSTIN. Some-
times the $10 variety may not
look as good as those selling for
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more, but once dealers find out
that Austin dope buyers are not
willing to pay more than $10 for
a lid, the better quality stuff will
come down in price. Remember,
even the worst stuff in town is
usually better than most high
quality northern pot. The price
of marijuana won't go up unless
buyers allow it to. If everyone
sits back and pays any price for
pot, it will go up.
2) Try cutting down on your
intake. Reserve serious smoking
for the evening hours.
If everyone reduces their use
by one-fourth, dealers will find
themselves overstocked. No one
likes to keep a lot of dope
around very long because dealing
is still a felony. One secret of
not getting caught dealing is to
sell it fast for what you can get.
If someone has 10 pounds and
they can't get rid of it fast
enough, chances are the price
will come down.
3) Save those roaches. There
are still plenty of good tokes left
in roaches. Five average size
roaches have the same effect as
one number because of the resin
trapped by the paper. This tip
alone could decrease waste by
20 percent.
4) If you don't like to save
roaches, use a pipe, bong or
water pipe. This method is even
more efficient than roach col-
lecting (especially in group
smoking). Not only will you
eliminate the harshness caused
by rolling papers, you can also
scrape the resin out of the pipe
and smoke it again.
5) Clean dope carefully. You
would be surprised how much
smokable dope is left in those
sticks and stems.
6) Sow your seeds, but don't
forget to germinate them first.
7) Don't settle for less than
one-ounce lids. A lot of dealers
will short you if they can. An
investment in a good scale can
be returned many times over.
8) Establish neighborhood
dope co-ops. Volume purchases
will save you money.
9) Don't wait until your sup-
ply is exhausted before you look
for more. When the pressure is
on, a person is more likely to
buy the first thing that comes
along. When you see your supply
getting low, start looking for
more.
10) Finally, the people who
call themselves the Austin Drug
Dealers Association are in the
minority and in no position to
dictate price. There are plenty of
independents in town, and they
can be influenced by an orga-
nized opposition.
Join with President Ford and
Whip Inflation Now. DO YOUR
PART.
Ewing gets posthumous award
The Geological Society of
America (GSA) presented one of
its two highest awards posthu-
mously to Maurice Ewing, Rice
University Governor Advisor and
adjunct professor of geology and
founder and director of the
Lamont Observatory. Dr.
Ewing's widow, the former Har-
riet Green Bassett, accepted the
Penrose medal, which is awarded
in recognition of original con-
tributions which mark signific-
ant advances in the geological
sciences. The presentation took
place Tuesday, Nov. 19 at the
87th Annual Awards Banquet of
the GSA.
Dr. Ewing's thirty-'plus year
career included many outstand-
ing achievements — development
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Call for Reservations.
I
I
I
a
i
■
of the seismograph, devising seis-
mic wave exploration of the sea
floor, proposing a theory that
cyclical ice ages may be control-
led by the amount of warm wat-
er carried into the Arctic Ocean,
and development of SOFAR to
communicate underwater with
explosion-induced sound waves.
His magnetic, gravity, seis-
mic and other oceanographic ob-
servations led geoscientists to an
appreciation of magnetic map-
ping techniques applied to the
sea floor. These techniques
proved the key to understanding
the history of sea floor move-
ments. Without Dr. Ewing's
computer-bred techniques, it
would have taken many years to
decipher the history inscribed
magnetically on the sea floor.
His list of honors is long, ex-
tending from a Guggenheim Fel-
low in 1938 to the National
Medal of Science in 1973.
Among others are: the Arthur L.
Day Medal of the GSA in 1949;
a U.S Navy Distinguished Public
Service Award in 1955; the Wil-
liam Bowie Medal of the Amer-
ican Geophysical Union (AGU)
in 1957; the Vetlesen Prize in
1960; and the Sidney Powers
Memorial Medal in 1968. Eleven
institutions in three nations
awarded him honorary degrees.
The Geological Society of
America, with headquarters in
Boulder, Colorado, was founded
in 1888 as a society of earth
scientists for the purpose of the
"promotion of the science of
Geology." The Society has more
than 12,000 members, with ap-
proximately 20 percent residing
outside the United States. The
annual meeting is one of the
high points within the com-
munity of geological scientists.
the rice thresher, november 21, 1974—page 4
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Brewton, Gary. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 62, No. 15, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 21, 1974, newspaper, November 21, 1974; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245210/m1/4/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.