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Cairi, who ran heroin from Mexico to New England for years with her husband, describes herself as "Totally the opposite of what you would think of as a drug dealer -- a straight-A student from New Hampshire." Roy, who deals at his high school, doesn't even use drugs, aside from one toke from each batch of weed to make sure what he's selling is worth the price. (Hey, quality control exists in any good business.) Aaron, a meth dealer from Australia, didn't get into the business to build an empire: "It started with a geeky guy we played board games and MMOs with. One day I came home early and saw him conducting a sale. A fortnight later, I lost my job, and one thing led to another."

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And then that other thing led to meth.

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That stereotypical dealer wouldn't be a terribly effective one: If you act like the dealers in those commercials and try to bully people into doing drugs, they'll just rat you out. As a dealer, you're facing way more jail time than a casual user would, so there's absolutely no reason to get pushy.

Researchers in Washington, D.C., America's Terrifying Drug Basket, surveyed over 11,000 people charged with street-level dealing back in the 1990s. They found that three-quarters of these dealers had full-time employment. And they weren't flipping burgers, either; most of them were considered skilled workers, doing fairly well for themselves before they even started dealing. Drugs are a part-time job for most dealers. Yep: The same reason a bored housewife gets a job at New Seasons might be why your dealer is doing it, too. Hey, gotta do something to get you out of the house, right?