Naming your record label after the drug trafficking gang that funded it is a bad idea, especially when they’re responsible for 12 murders and moving a million dollars of weed per week for 7 years. Whoever thought people wouldn’t make the connection between John Shop Crew, the murderous drug dealers, and John Shop Records, the reggae label, is a fool. It’s interesting that John Forte, producer for the Fugees, worked with John Shop. He’s currently serving 14 years for trafficking thirty pounds of liquid cocaine. [NYDN]
All Posts Tagged: drugs
March 6, 2008
Selling Weed to Sell Records
January 24, 2008
“Just before the turn of the millennium, on the soon-to-be gentrified corner of Berry and North 3rd in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, there was a bar called Kokie’s Place. It was the stuff of legend. Or, to put it more bluntly, it was a dingy Puerto Rican coke bar.” “The coke there was pretty bad, true, but it was such a pleasant place to be. A real positive atmosphere and community feeling. I even thought about hanging out there without drugs once or twice. Of course I never did.” [Vice]
January 23, 2008
Price of Olde English, Sparks, Cocaine and Swisher Sweets to Rise
Alternate title: The Day Fun Died
Before you pour one out for your homies, read this. Yesterday, Governor Eliot Spitzer proposed a new budget aimed at reducing New York State’s 4.4 billion dollar deficit. Among cuts to health care and education aid, the budget would add or increase taxes on some of our corner store favorites, namely malt liquor, which would be taxed at $2.54 per gallon rather than 11 cents. That’s a 2,209% increase! The price of forties will rise by as much as 80 cents! Edward Forty Hands is going to cost more than 5 whole dollars!
The proposed tax also means higher prices for malt liquor energy drinks like Sparks. One Sparks enthusiast told us it was probably “healthier in the long run. I imagine some will turn to hard drugs more frequently. PCP perhaps.”
Asked whether he would buy less malt liquor, a Hells Kitchen man told the Times, “Nah. You got to do what you got to do. It’s like gas. You drive the same mileage for $2 a gallon or $3.50 a gallon.”
The new budget also includes increased taxes for “low-end cigars” like Swisher Sweets and taxes for illegal drugs, including $3.50 per gram of marijuana and $200 a gram for cocaine. City Room took a closer look at the ‘cocaine tax’ and found the fine print spelling out how drug dealers can go about paying taxes on their supply.
The tax is paid by the dealer, in advance of his or her receipt of the marihuana or controlled substance, through the purchase of tax stamps from the Department of Taxation and Finance (“Department”). Upon receipt of the product, the dealer must affix enough stamps to the packages of marihuana or the controlled substance in order to show the tax has been fully paid.
Odds of drug dealers paying taxes: low. very low.
Photo from Untitledname.com.
