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Dealing with hard times on the street

January 6 2002

Just as independent toy stores are being progressively squeezed out by the cheaper chain stores, so it is for the solo heroin trader.

Three years ago, Paul was breaking even selling caps on the street. Breaking even meant he was selling enough to support his own habit and that was good enough.

He was one of the Smith Street boys, before the police moved the scene on to Richmond where he found it harder to break even - because the market had been flooded with killer stuff that in turn had caused a price war.

"This was when you could get a taste for $10 in Footscray. Which was great for people who wanted a taste. But it was harder for someone like me to make enough money to buy what I needed. It was great gear but once you could handle it you wanted more of it - and I wasn't making enough money from dealing."

So he did the thieving thing, washed car windscreens, sold his skeletal body in toilet blocks, the usual things. He was 22 years old then.

Meanwhile, the super heroin was killing Paul's fellow Victorians, more than one a day on average. Hundreds were lost to it. It was in the papers every day. Citizens demanded action. The police went hard, suddenly there was a drought and street corners empty of skinny young men with little balloons in their pockets.

While he now turns a profit dealing from a bare-bones rented room above a shop in the inner suburbs, Paul still talks about "the word on the street". Actually, he deals and wheels. That is, delivers by bicycle.

With two partners, boys from the now muted street scene, Paul has set up a network of clients, a system of security checks on potential new clients and a bank account.

"We don't call each other friends and we don't, like, socialise because if you keep it all business, with your little procedures for money and that, you keep things cool."

But what about the drought? "Obviously it's around. The word on the street is the big dealers are holding back the gear to keep the prices up. Like they're doling it out. And it's cut. The word is they don't want pure shit out there now because it got outta hand."

With killing people? "Yeah, with killing people and all the hassle with the cops."

Ask about the cost of heroin now and Paul turns coyly corporate, in a street kind of way. "It used to shit me when the papers would print the cost of a cap ... I had people hassling me for those bargain basement prices.

"It doesn't do us any good talking about money. But I can tell you one thing: the people who were addicted a year ago are still addicted."


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