This is what I have read, but I don't have a source. Why do you believe this to be highly unlikely. I also read they have a high death rate at a young age. If we're talking the ghetto I believe it's possible. They may use for recreation, but it's not a hardcore addiction. Many of the dealers have kids with women who are on welfare, and the women aren't hardcore users.
Well, you said, "MO is a lot of welfare recipients sell drugs, but don't use."
And I said I found that scenario unlikely.
I've been around a lot of poor people- have been on assistance myself, have lived in low income housing projects.
I've also been around a lot of drug users and dealers and have been a habitual user myself in the past (although not a dealer, not in any sort of systematic way).
I've never known anybody who was deep enough into the scene to be considered a "dealer" who did not use drugs recreationally, at the very least.
I've seen
movies where dealers don't use drugs.
Perhaps at the very top of the drug-dealing chain, the millionaires who control the drug trade don't use drugs. They probably never even really have to see or be around drugs, if they don't want to. They can just make business deals over the phone.
But on a street level- the kind of dealers you'd find living in poverty- it's been my experience that they're all fiends and junkies, dealing to support their own habits. Sometimes what they deal is not the same as what they
do- for instance, one well-known coke dealer in my city, back in the '90s, was a heroin addict. He didn't use coke, except for the occasional speedball (heroin and coke mixed together).
Now, I've known
couriers who weren't drug users.
All they'd do was transport drugs to different states.
If they
had been obvious drug users, they wouldn't have been entrusted with this lucrative job.
It is my opinion, however, that most street-level dealers, who actually personally handle drugs and personally deal with buyers, are in fact also drug users.
Are most of them addicts?
It depends on the drug, but- especially in the case of stimulant drugs like cocaine and meth- probably not.
Once a dealer becomes an addict, he's on a downward trajectory, and probably won't be in business too much longer.