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6. Hustling
- The University of Tennessee Press
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6. Hustling The addias' need to score constantly, whether from medical or street sources, translated into a constant need for cash. To get that cash, they had to hustle, usually by committing crimes like shoplifting or burglary. Sensational headlines to the contrary, few addias were involved in major heists, since that sort ofcrime required time for planning, and time was a luxury they did not have. Addicts preferred hustles that were less lucrative but more dependable, and that could be praaiced on a daily basis. The relation between addiaion and hustling was at the heart ofthe critique of the antimaintenance regime. For liberal rationalists, indifferent or hostile toward the symbolic funaions of narcotic laws, addias were essentially viaims. They were victims in a double sense: not only did their social circumstances (e.g., being born into a broken family in the ghetto) predispose them to addiaion, but, once addiaed, they wereforced to commit all manner ofcrimes because the government had shortsightedly denied them access to cheap narcotics. The laws were unjust and counterproduaive and should therefore be changed. The conservative rejoinder to this argument was that addicts were criminals anyway, that they had repeatedly broken the law before becoming addicted, and that the real source ofmischieflay in some combination oftheir moral, psychological , and class charaaeristics (i.e., bad, abnormal, and lower). Moreover high prices, while they might aggravate addicts' behavior, nevertheless served to keep narcotics out ofthe hands ofordinary citizens. Rather than regarding expensive, adulterated heroin as a liability, the Bureau ofNarcotics routinely cited statistics ofhigh price and adulteration to show that its enforcement efforts were working. 1 In one sense, the narratives in this and thefollowing two chapters prove the liberal critics' point. There can be no question that the sheer volume ofcrime reported by our subjeas was related to their daily needfor narcotics, even though narrators like Al or John freely admitted that they were hustlers before they 1. For example, the remarks by Bureau spokesman Malachi Harney in Comments on Narcotic Drugs (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Narcotics, 1958),56. HUSTLING 145 became involved with drugs. This is not to say, however, that strict narcotic laws were necessarily counterproductive in some ultimate, utilitarian accounting. The unambiguous message they broadcast-narcotics are badforyou-doubtless deterred many people from using them.2 But no one knew how many had been so deterred, or how to compare the social savings they represented with the more tangible social costs ofaddicts' crime. This, in retrospect, was one ofAnslinger's principal problems: he was dealing in prevention, which is always abstract. His opponents were dealing in unpleasant urban realities-stolen purses and rifled mailboxes-which they couldplausibly link to the policy ofnarcoticprohibition. AL AND EMILY AI: I never did any work. I stole all the time. Between '20 and '30 I was in a higher bracket-I was a safe-cracker. Today they have electronic systems-too much for my brain. I have no education. I didn't crack safes in homes, though. Funny thing about homes: I have a tendency toward the family. I never wanted to hit them places. I never stole in a house in my life. I stole in lofts where they manufactured jewelry. Rhinestonesright after World War II, rhinestones were at a premium. They came from Czechoslovakia. In the twenties I was stealing with other fellows. In the thirties it was the same way, but I went into a higher bracket: I went for different kinds of jewelry, gold, silver. In lofts, all lofts. Neckties we stole. There used to be a firm called Sulka Neckties, they used to sell for ten dollars a necktie during the Depression days. We didn't have a hard time during the Depression; we always had a little. I was doing the same thing during the forties, stealing all the time. In the fifties I was down in the garment center; I had a poolroom and I was booking down there. I was doing very good booking-booking numbers for myself. You run into an element of people-do you know what I mean?-you know one another. I used to go to the Garden. We went to college basketball games three times a week. We used to go to the fights every Friday night. Now, you meet all different kinds ofpeople there, you 2. Although, paradoxically, it attracted others. "I know from my own experience that when I was at West Point," recalled Ulysses Grant, "the fact that tobacco, in every...