Tips of the Drug Trade

How to Make Money Selling Drugs, a new documentary by Matthew Cooke, is a sly critique of prohibition framed as a tutorial-cum-video-game for aspiring black-market entrepreneurs. The film highlights tantalizing success stories and offers tips on how to get started, how to take your business to the next level, and how to avoid pitfalls such as thieves, snitches, and cops. "If you want to make real money," the narrator advises, "you've got to get off the street."

As a private dealer, you could earn a mid-six-figure annual income. As a domestic smuggler, you could make "$4,000 to $5,000 for a few hours of driving." In the cocaine importing business, you could make $1 million in two months or even millions of dollars a day. If infamous Los Angeles–area trafficker "Freeway" Rick Ross did it, so can you! As one former marijuana and cocaine dealer puts it, "The money is so stupid that everybody's part of the problem." —Jacob Sullum