From sketchy drops and Tinder swindlers to based grandmas and roleplaying dealers, buying drugs is an experience that can go a lot of ways.
Figures from the NZ Drug Foundation show that 80% of New Zealanders have tried the ol’ Wacky Tobacky by the age of 21, and 44% of adults will have tried other types of illicit drugs in their lifetime, too. All of these people have to get their hands on the drugs somehow, and unless you’re in the 6% of medicinal cannabis users able to get a legal prescription, that means buying drugs illegally. In an unregulated black market, it’s mostly luck whether or not you’ll get a relatively wholesome quirky deal, an annoying waste of time, or a messy, dangerous experience. We spoke to students with a wide range of experiences when acquiring drugs: the good, the bad, and the downright bizarre.
As long as recreational drugs remain illegal and unregulated, buying them often means going to great lengths, and often with great risks, to do so. Hana* recalls meeting up with her friend Patrick at Meridian Mall to hang out before he disappeared to ‘get money out’. Hana and her friends followed Patrick to three banks, before realising that he was meeting his dealer in the car park behind Lincraft. “We didn’t see him for several hours after he’d left us to wait for him. We assumed he’d been trafficked.” He hadn’t.
Aaron described the wild goose chase he went on with his friend to find weed. After settling “for anyone who would reply to us”, Aaron and his mate found a dealer. “It took us a while to get any replies or information from him, so we started the deal feeling pretty frustrated. He finally told us he was in Corstorphine, and that he wouldn’t be able to drop off anything to us – we had to pick it up ourselves.” They walked from North East Valley to town, then bussed into Caversham, before being told to instead meet at Bayfield. The dealer then changed the pick up location to Musselburgh. “He gave us directions to meet down an alley by LJ Hooker, which was hardly any help, because we didn’t know any alleyways in Musselburgh – let alone the one by LJ Hooker. When we finally got a hold of him and traded a $50 note for a tin, we quickly realised we did not get our money’s worth.” Aaron described the weed he got as bad quality, and that it tasted “like it had been saturated in diesel”.
The first time Riley bought weed was as a fresher, in 2019. He arranged to meet a dealer from Snapchat at Woodhaugh Gardens. He “headed there nervous as fuck, looking for weirdly shiny Holden Commodores on the way”. Riley’s pick up went smoothly, but he complained that the dealer “pulled out his Supreme x LV wallet and spent 10 mins talking about it… all the other deals I’ve done in public took about 10 seconds and that’s about as long as it should be.”
While buying weed is usually an inconvenience, it can be a danger too. Megan told Critic Te Arohi of her experience trying to buy weed for a family friend who was suffering from chronic pain. “Normally she got a family member or something to get weed for her, but for whatever reason she wasn't able to do this anymore and so my friend asked me if I could suss for her. I was like ‘sure, how much?’ and she said ‘an ounce or two’.” Megan was nervous, as this was ten times more than she’d ever bought in one go.
Megan found, via Discord, someone willing to sell her an ounce (28 grams). She hopped on her motorbike and met up with the dealer. It went relatively smoothly, although Megan said that he was “real hesitant, and was acting real skitzed out”. The following day, Megan went on Discord and reportedly discovered that “someone tried to buy 2 ounces off the same dealer about 2 hours after I got my ounce, and [apparently the same dealer] stabbed him in the head and ran off with his money.” Megan described their experience as a “close call”.
Sometimes the lengths you're willing to go for aren’t for the drugs themselves, but for the people you’re taking them with. Culpeo bought MDMA in Dunedin, to take at a festival in Waikouaiti with a group of friends, including a girl he “really liked” at the time. One of their friends went into a testing centre at the festival, and reported back that the drugs were “50% bath salts and 50% sugar”. When the girl he liked said she was still keen on taking the drugs, Culpeo “didn’t want to look like a square” and told her that he was also keen. “Immediately after we took it, our friend said they lied and it was actually perfectly good MD.” Culpeo told Critic he realised he was such a “simp” that he was willing to take contaminated bath salts. Culpeo didn’t end up with the girl in his story, nor did anything ever happen between them, but at least he didn’t do bath salts.
While picking up drugs can be a hassle, or downright dangerous, many students seem to have had their successes. Ryan recalls buying acid last year, and though he “ended up being $5 short” in cash of what he owed the dealer, it worked out after he “bought the dude a frozen coke to compensate”. Pamela found her weed a little closer to home. “For a good summer or two, my drug dealer was my grandmother,” she told Critic. Though her parents had no idea, whenever Pamela and her friends wanted to sesh, she would “go to grandma’s, grab some baking, hang out for an hour or two, and leave with about $75 of weed for free.” Pamela’s grandma was elusive about where she was getting it from, though, always giving a different answer. “Sometimes it would be from a friend who left it behind, sometimes from an activist friend who now distributes weed and gets their growers to drop some off to her, or she swapped her pavlova recipe for a gram. All equally plausible.”
Wes* used to get weed delivered by “two or three high school students who were obviously into Dungeons and Dragons, as they would come over with black trench coats with silver dragon rings, long ponytails and questionable facial hair.” Wes says these young dealers would show up with the weed in silver locked briefcases, the kind usually reserved for handing over large sums of cash in tense movie scenes. “They would open it with a key and inside the briefcase they had all their strains organised in colour coded tupperware. Their gimmick was that they would never touch the weed, they had a set of chrome platinum chopsticks they would use to pick up the bud and weigh it for you.” They would come anytime you needed, but getting onto the list of customers involved getting two references from current customers. Wes says that, ever since, he’s been searching for something that holds up to the “gold-standard level customer service” provided by these boys, but that he hasn't been successful.
Not everyone is lucky enough to be dealt weed by D&D nerds with chrome platinum chopsticks. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and many users feel the need to take things into their own hands when their dealers don’t follow through. Nancy describes an “almost foolproof” way she managed to get weed without spending money. She matches with guys on Tinder and arranges to meet for dinner. After dinner, Nancy goes back to the guy’s place with him. “At some point he’s like “you wanna, you know…? Fuck?” and I’m always like “Hell yeah. Should we have a sesh though? Special occasion and all”. Soon after they usually say something along the lines of ‘Sure, gotta piss first though. Weed’s in that drawer.’ And then I take it and go.”
*names changed