From our "Comments" section re: South Haven, MI

I've met many a meth dealer in my day. They can look like all sorts of different folks. In fact, I used to be one, once upon a time, but then I went to jail and decided I actually liked my freedom more than I did having no job but loads of drugs and wads of cash lying around. Long story short, meth dealers can look like just about anyone - not *anyone* as in *anyone*, they probably can't look like Queen Elizabeth or Godzilla - but not all of them have flowing mullets or go about in sweatpants. Some of them do, sure. And quite possibly, this dude was indeed a trailer-park dwelling meth dealer or tweaker or speed freak, what have you. But given that meth use and abuse is ever-increasing everywhere in America pretty much (crack for the 21st century, new and improved, and homegrown - or at least Mexican grown - to boot) it's a solid bet that the palette of possible styles and appearances for meth dealers collectively is growing as well. Meth dealers used to just be biker gangs, they owned the traffic pretty much, even up to the early 90's or so. Then the Mexican Mafia muscled in and now they're responsible for most of it, cooking it up in "super labs" out in California and the southwest. The hundreds of localized cooks and labs that get busted in every state year to year actually account for a far smaller share of the finished product that reaches the market, most people are doing dope made by the Mexican cartels whether they realize it or not. They have two cuts - one that's 92% pure on average, high quality and high price - gourmet speed, and one that's closer to 50% purity and is dirt cheap (for the mass market). They both look like clear/whitish crystals and powder, the impurity isn't the result of a sloppy synthesis, it's intentional and so cosmetically they look the same. Of course, as the stuff passes from hand to hand - multiple kilos, to kilos, to ounces, to halfs quarters eight-balls teeners etc., any dickhead who wants to gouge the bag and pad it with MSM or other shitty kinds of cut can and will do so. And by the time it bounces down the chain of distribution, that may have happened enough so that the prices can even out and the quality is diluted (which still makes sense economically, because you can toss less of the high grade stuff in with a bag of cut and expect someone to be relatively satisfied, if you use the low grade you need to put in more actual meth weight etc) - it's at the wholesale level that the distinction in price and quality is a more openly recognized factor, and then shit just gets sketchier and sketchier from there on down until it arrives in your nose. So, in conclusion, the top-dog meth dealers look like Mexican mobsters and if you ever see them chilling in a BP Amoco get their autographs or phone numbers or whatnot, they can make you into a meth dealer too if you want, but I bet you don't want, word is bond. And yes, I'm high right now.
Learning is nice. For the record, most of the meth dealers I've known in the past have been sketchy Camaro dudes from Kalamazoo's satellite townships or 19-year-olds trying to hold down ill-advised rave-gangsta personas. In terms of meth's user base, my favorite individual by far has been the gay ex-Mormon-youth-pastor who kept a loaded AK-47 underneath the bed he shared with a rotating cast of high school boys. He would hang out in our living room, occasionally pulling out an Altoids box full of drugs, politely offering us a bump before he did one.