Higher Ed | Daily Report

Just when you thought you’d learned everything about drug dealing from "The Wire," a new academic book takes a deep look off the radar at a predominantly white, middle-class, college drug-dealing network.

I haven’t read “Dorm Room Dealers” – a $50 academic tome – but I did read the introduction posted online after seeing a review in the most recent issue of Drug War Chronicle.

The authors, professors A. Rafik Mohamed and Erik D. Fritsvold, point out that while the war on drugs has had disproportionate consequences for poor and minority populations, the college dealers they researched have operated without much scrutiny from university officials or law enforcement.

Many of the dealers they shadowed have since found post-college success as legitimate white-collar workers, the authors said.

In spite of the 'zero tolerance' zealotry driving the drug war, for these boys and girls next door who are comfortably shielded from criminal justice scrutiny by race- and class-based privileges woven into the fabric of U.S. society, the drug war has apparently made no discernable difference in how they construct their drug distribution networks or carry out their routine dealing activities.

The researchers spent six years somewhat embedded in a network of about 50 dealers that provided the majority of marijuana consumed at one expensive, private university in Southern California – within reasonable driving distance of the U.S.-Mexico border.

By the way, the authors are researchers at the University of San Diego and Clemson State University in Georgia.

In the opening story, the book describes a confrontation between two collegiate dealers feuding over money. When the moment builds to a crescendo, the dealer with the demands reaches into his pocket and grabs not a gun, but a business card belonging to the other guy’s father.

“Let’s just see what your dad thinks about your newfound interests,” the demanding dealer says.

The anecdote sounds more like something you’d see on “The O.C.” than a gritty crime drama. But the consequences are real. One of the researchers’ key informants moved five to 10 pounds of marijuana per week and brought in $80,000 to $160,000 per month.

College drug dealers don’t completely escape scrutiny, however. Federal agents and campus police stormed San Diego State University in 2008, ultimately arresting 128 people in one of the nation’s largest campus drug busts. But four months later, fewer than half of those arrested were charged.