The price of getting high at Yale

"Derek" pays $21 for a round-trip ticket to Grand Central Station. Two hours later he is in New York City, taking the subway to see his friend at Columbia. Upon arrival, he makes a call and agrees to meet a man at a phone booth in Harlem. The man takes him to a small deli and leaves him. Ten minutes later he returns, asks the clerk behind the counter for a brown paper bag, and puts the quarter pound in it. He hands the bag to Derek, who hands the man $250 and leaves for Grand Central to return to Yale with his purchase.

To most Yalies, this situation may seem absurd. I most wholeheartedly agree. Traveling to New York to buy four ounces of marijuana for $250 is just silly. Weed shouldn't cost that much; in the southwestern state I come from, it never does. This is the plight of the Yalie trying to get high.

Before I continue, I should probably clarify how marijuana is bought and sold. Most small-time college smokers buy it in fractions of an ounce. Eighths, quarters, and halves all refer to the part of an ounce purchased. Pot can also be purchased in dime- or nickel-bags, referring to $10 and $5 bags respectively. As with everything else, it is cheaper to buy in bulk, which is why Derek purchased a quarter pound.

For a QP, though, $250 just isn't that cheap. My friends back home can purchase good ounces at $40 a piece. A quarter never costs more than $25, and pounds sold for $250 are not uncommon. Why, then, did Derek go through all the trouble of traveling to New York just to get marijuana that cost him more than $60 an ounce?

The answer is simple. It's the best he can do. Prices of marijuana on and around Yale campus are inexplicably high. It's not uncommon to pay $35 an eighth for normal commercial-grade weed. The cheapest Derek has found at or around Yale is $40 quarters. At these prices, it makes sense to go to New York and buy in bulk.

My point in all this is how in need of a real connection Yale truly is. A small-scale dealer could make a fortune importing from California and selling at reasonable rates (reasonable for Yale, anyway). If Derek could obtain a pound from the West for $250 and sell it off at $30 a quarter, he'd make a profit in excess of $1,750. And he would still be selling at a price substantially lower than can be found now. This assumes, of course, that the marijuana is comparable. All I will say to that is, with minor exception, eastern weed just does not compare.

I'm sure there are already dealers at Yale, maybe even ones that sell at low prices, but Derek has looked very hard and not found them. Surely, there is a good percentage of Yalies who feel the same way. An accessible dealer with good prices just makes sense. Also, Derek wouldn't have to go to a deli in Harlem at four in the morning--a sketchy situation if ever there was one.

On a final note, it's necessary to comment on a popular misconception on campus. After reading about Derek putting up $250 for four mere ounces of marijuana, many of you probably said to yourself, "That's a lot of money to waste on getting high. I'll stick to drinking." This is a fallacious conclusion. A QP is quite a bit of marijuana. Five average people could be pretty happy after smoking a collective eighth of pot. Even at the absurd price of $35 an eighth, the average cost is still just $7 per person. At the price Derek purchased his QP for, this comes to around $1.50 a person--certainly quite a bit cheaper than getting liquored up. Going to a bar can easily run upwards of $20 a person. Even the cheap admission prices of frat parties are comparable, and the choice in beverages tends to be very limited.

Buying, selling, and using marijuana just makes sound economic sense, even in a place of such flagrantly over-inflated prices as Yale.