Scoring 101 A beginner's guide to buying drugs in Coeur d'Alene

The tiny brown-and-white chihuahua sat leashless in his owner’s lap at City Beach Thursday evening, in the gray patch of land beneath the trees where dirt meets sand. He kissed his owner’s sausage fingers and appreciated the extra attention as both dog and man relaxed in the shade, not 30 feet from a sign insisting on its rule that dogs remain leashed.

The man and chihuahua were both well past rules.

“I can get $15 for the bigger doses,” the dog’s owner — a short, tattooed, sturdy brick of a young man who calls himself “Cin” — said beneath sunglasses he refused to remove. “But with Oxy, if you do it right, it’s easier to get your hands on the smaller doses for $10. Hydros for a little less, but it’s the same thing: More money for less weight, if you sell enough.”

Cin — who refused to provide his last name but said he’d lived in Coeur d’Alene for eight years, moving with his family to the area before he attended Coeur d’Alene High School — is a loud-and-proud drug dealer.

As cities of every size, population and economic status across the country grapple with an epidemic, Coeur d’Alene is in the middle of its own. Whatever direction our city explores — surges in police presence, treatment, decriminalization or somewhere in between — one reality cannot be ignored.

Buyers have no shortage of sellers.

“I get all kinds,” Cin said. “Kids, old women, friends, strangers. Business people, whatever. They all want something to take the edge off, you know?”

During one Thursday evening from 5:30 to 10:45 p.m., I reached out to three active participants in the local drug trade between City Park and City Hall, hoping to ask questions about this world I never experienced or understood. Two spoke to me; one never showed. I learned three striking lessons I hope you never forget.

Lesson One: Most everything I’ve learned about drug deals on television is wrong.

The common cliché of two strangers meeting on a dark, secluded corner of the earth — maybe with a posse of friends on each side, feeling out each other’s threat level as they decide whether or not to close a deal — is naive and, as we’ve since learned, dumb.

“I ain’t going to sell to somebody I don’t know,” Cin said. “Not at first, anyway. That’s probably why your guy never showed. He got one look at you, acting all awkward and [expletive], and he probably bounced.”

The awkwardness was unavoidable. I hit the beach fresh from the office in dress shoes, black slacks and a white button-up with vacation-style palm trees embroidered to its cloth. Waiting stiffly near the public bathrooms by the sand. Sweating. Twisting my neck from left to right in concern. Looking like someone who’s never intentionally spoken to a drug dealer before.

The “guy” Cin referred to was an acquaintance of an acquaintance, a friend of an old co-worker I hadn’t seen or spoken to in four years. I knew that co-worker was a one-time recreational user. I didn’t have to reach out in an awkward phone call or knock on a door. Facebook did the heavy lifting.

“That’s how it is,” said a 17-year-old playing basketball at McEuen Park — not 200 feet from City Hall — who called himself Gary. (Gary is a pseudonym the boy picked out for himself after giving his real name. The Press has independently verified his identity.) “Someone sets up a private group in Snapchat or Instagram. You just do your business that way, set it up and then you meet.”

What about the discussion? The negotiation? The precautions to make sure no one’s wearing a wire?

“No, there’s nothing to say,” Gary said. “The price is the price. Nothing gets complicated. You make the exchange, and that’s it. Everybody knows what they’re doing.”

Except me.

“I think it’s because you’re old,” Gary decided. “Maybe, next time, wear brighter shirts or something. Don’t look like an adult.”

Lesson Two: Reporters cannot afford drug habits.

The economics of Coeur d’Alene’s role in the local drug trade is not hard to trace, according to everyone we spoke to for this story. While some traffic comes in from Boise, the I-15 corridor from the south or from Montana and the Badlands, the vast majority of drugs sold in the area is either born or trafficked through Spokane.

“Some of it gets made over there,” Gary said as he waited on the bench for a ride from his mom. “It all goes through there, pretty much: Seattle or California or whatever. But I get all mine from Spokane.”

Whether end-users buy in Lilac City and transport it over for their personal use or their dealers use Spokane as a hub to re-supply, Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White confirmed Spokane and the Tri-Cities direct drugs into Kootenai County. Because Spokane’s market is comparatively flooded, Gary said, the prices in Coeur d’Alene invariably go up.

“Shrooms can go for $30 for an eighth in Spokane,” he said. “Here, you’re paying $40.”

The psychedelic mushrooms are not the only drugs that carry a hefty price tag. Gary estimated cocaine to cost $280 for an eight-ball (3.5 grams, or an eighth of an ounce). Oxycontin and hydrocodone runs $40, depending on the dosage. The designer drug ecstacy costs $10 per pill, while its purer counterpart, Molly, costs $15 per point (one tenth of a gram). The psychedelic powder DMT will cost $70 per gram, with each dose dilleniated as roughly 30 milligrams. Cin’s prices, as well as the prices gathered from their clients milling nearby, coincide with Gary’s.

The marijuana market has changed, both Gary and Cin noted, since neighboring Washington state legalized it for adult use. Most cannabis buyers simply travel west, across state lines, to purchase and — often, but not always — use it legally. Gary said the drug is still sold in Coeur d’Alene, though often by the pound, for $1,800.

What about heroin or methamphetamine?

“I don’t go near that,” Gary said. “Way too risky.”

“I don’t touch that [expletive],” Cin said, requiring we go forth and find someone who would.

Finding rock bottom

The Kootenai County Public Safety Building on Government Way is a locked-down concrete maze. The innocent can only walk so far through the metal detectors and pass the security cameras before they can go no farther, blocked by a steel gate not meant for ordinary people. Then again, I’m beginning to doubt which ordinary people remain.

“I started on cocaine when I was 16 years old,” Jason Smith said behind an impenetrable glass window, his voice muffled by the few razor-thin slits that allow sound to pass between us. “I’m 42 now, so I’ve been on drugs all my life.”

The local who has called Kootenai County his home for the past 10 years estimates he has been arrested and sent to county lock-up 11 to 14 times, most recently June 24, for violating his parole on theft and drug charges. Smith said he pleaded guilty and was sentenced Tuesday on a Rider program, which modulates his sentence based on his willingness to change his life.

In the wake of his sentence, he wrote a stirring letter of apology, which the Coeur d’Alene Press printed Friday as a letter to the editor. He doesn’t know when he’ll be released — it could be January, it could be 11 years from now, it could be somewhere in between — but he’s not looking for another release onto the streets. He’s first learning the mental and emotional support tools to keep himself clean.

“With meth,” Smith explained, “the price really depends on where you get it. It’s not about the recipe so much as the ‘where.’ I was doing a gram or a gram-point-five every day. In Spokane, I’d pay 25 bucks for a gram. In Coeur d’Alene, I’d pay $60 or $70. I sold it for [those prices], too.”

Smith acknowledged he took the common path dealers follow: He wasn’t dealing drugs for profit.

“I wasn’t making any money,” he said. “I was just selling to keep my habit going. I was just trying to keep me and my girlfriend high. That’s it ... The hard part is, I know I’ve never physically attacked anybody. I know I’ve never physically hurt anybody. But I know I steamrolled people. I know I was hurting people: People around me, people who were buying from me, people who loved me.”

Smith’s five previous convictions never fully steered his life around. He knows this is his last chance.

“I remember a mental health judge asked me once, ‘Do you even know what rock-bottom looks like?’ I just kind of blew him off and gave him a look as they took me away. But after sleeping on the floor of the Cherry Hill bathroom, I finally found it.”

Lesson Three: Drug seekers no longer need to seek out drugs.

Cin was a stranger. He looked unfamiliar; we still don’t know his last name. It didn’t stop him from approaching me and asking if I was looking to buy.

“I could tell you wanted something,” he said. “People don’t stand by the beach bathrooms dressed up nice unless they’re looking for something.”

While online interaction is today’s communication method of choice among dealers, the old adage still applies: You do your best business on Main Street.

“It’s extremely easy to get it,” Gary said, estimating everyone in America is no more than two degrees of separation from knowing someone who would sell them drugs. “You can go anywhere, walk down any street, and you’ll find somebody who will do business, who knows you, who knows somebody who knows you. Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody.”

“You don’t have to go looking for drugs,” Smith agreed. “Just stand there. Someone will eventually come up to you. That’s how [prevalent] it is. Anywhere you go, it’s there. That’s what I want parents to know: You can’t keep your kids from being near it. It’s in schools. It’s in the mall. It’s in Wendy’s. I could walk into a McDonald’s, and in five minutes, I’d know which employees were high and which ones weren’t... Are they moving too slow? Are they moving too much? Are they talking too much? Are they talking too fast? Are they sweating too much? If you’re looking for the signs, they’re everywhere — if you know where to look.”

As Gary’s mom arrived at McEuen Park, he rose and gave me one last somber thought. “Your son is gonna get offered,” he said. “You can’t stop that. You just gotta help him figure stuff out so he doesn’t feel like he needs to do drugs to feel better.”

When told of Gary’s prediction, Smith shook his head. “I wish I was there right now,” he said. “I wish I could be at that basketball court and tell him, ‘Look where I’m at.’ This isn’t worth it. You think you’re just going to get high and have fun at some point. But like I said in that letter, ‘We all want to make it back home to you. It just takes some of us longer to learn what’s really important to us.’ At some point, it won’t be fun for that kid anymore. At some point, he’ll see this life he’s living, and he’ll just want to go home.”