Busted!: Drug War Survival Skills - Softcover

M. Chris Fabricant; R. Crumb

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060754591 ISBN 13: 9780060754594

Publisher: Dey Street Books, 2005

Synopsis

Busted! is a funny, smart, subversive worst-case scenario guide for casual drug users and their tolerant friends.It's the Bible on how not to get busted and what to do if you are. Using celebrity busts, outrageous everyman busts, and the author's professional experience, Busted! is everything you need to know about the criminal justice system, Drug War style, before it's too late.

Like a Law & Order episode, the book takes the reader through a typical small-time drug possession case from committing the crime (the buy/recommending a dealer), to handling police encounters like a pro, to getting busted, to spending a night in jail, to fighting your drug bust, to pleading guilty, through trials and appeals, and, finally, punishment - with irreverent humor and expert advice all the way to the bitter end.

Busted! also includes drug possession law for the house party, the rave, your roommate's stash; search and seizure on the street, in your ride, in your apartment, and up your ass. Drug War Driving Lessons covers DUI's and drugged driving; also learn how to make your phone call from jail count, how to ace your bail hearing, and protect your Internet privacy. The Dope Law Index includes possession law for marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine and methamphetamine for all 50 states. BUSTED! helps the casual drug user to know his rights, walk the thin grey line between legal and illegal and ultimately stay out of jail.

About this title

About the Author:

M. Chris Fabricant graduated with honors from the George Washington University Law School. After two years as a pro se law clerk in Manhattan's federal district court, he began his career as a criminal defense attorney.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Getting Wasted In the Drug War

A drug bust is one of life's defining moments. More expensive than your wedding. More painful than your divorce. More permanent than your tats, and harder to live down than a fat mullet and a piano tie. There's your mug shot floating around like a turd on the internet as your first Google hit. Maybe there'll be a video of you on "Cops" shouting slurred obscenities and staggering through your DUI drills. And there will always be the haunting memories of your strip search and the cold sweat at the sight of latex gloves.

Don't believe that just because you don't get high and never DUI you won't get busted. The Drug War is all around you. Americans spend over $65 billion getting wasted on illegal drugs every year; $75 billion on booze, and $3 billion on goodtime pills. Throw in another billion or so for some bongs and you have got yourself a party, my man. You could be at the wrong little get-wasted-together, in the wrong ride, in the wrong 'hood, living with the wrong roommate, or piss off the wrong cop and find yourself peeing in a corner on Rikers Island for a long weekend before you've been charged with anything.

The good news is that you have wisely set yourself apart from the unsober masses by purchasing this book, putting a defense attorney in your corner to advise you before you throw (or go to) The Hardcore House Party, before you Pack for Your Drug Trip, before you Hook a Brother Up, before you're nabbed in The Dope Mobile, before you take that Drug Test?, and before you're Face to Face with the Fuzz.

Expert counsel before you really need it.

Some of you, alas, will get nabbed anyway. During this dark period, Busted! will be your personal Jesus, sheparding you from the bust to the bang of the judge's gavel. From enduring your night(s) in jail, to picking a drug bust attorney, to throwing yourself on the ground and groveling for mercy, and/or fighting your bust like a stone cold pro: Rush Limbaugh. A man whose pain and humiliation brought such joy to so many will serve as a guest guru, dropping the deep drug bust knowledge of the rich and famous that any burnout can grasp between bong hits.

SEX AND DRUGS: THE BUSTED! PHILOSOPHY

Sex and drugs have always gone hand-in-hand, and there have always been a lot of laws and (re)education aimed at getting the people to stop screwing willy-nilly and stop doing so many drugs. But, try and try, nothing seems to work. Everyone keeps fucking and everyone keeps doing dope. Sex education has been forced to acknowledge this painfully obvious reality and has grudgingly turned the focus toward condoms. The time has come for drug bust education, beginning with acknowledging the obvious: People are going to do drugs. Whatever the merits of the Drug War, there can be no debate about whether locking people up has been effective at quenching Americans' thirst for a good buzz. It hasn't. It never will. Mankind has been getting wasted since we crawled from the mud and realized that we are all in pain and going to die.

But Busted! isn't about the futility of the Drug War. It's about staying out of jail and out on bail. It's about the bare-knuckle reality of the criminal justice system, fighting a dirty war. Like all dirty wars, anything goes. Perjury, racism, public humiliation and medieval punishment all are fair game.

Knowledge is your only defense. Sex education still begins with abstinence - no question, always the best way not to contract some gnarly disease. Similarly, in the Drug war, the best way not to get busted is not to possess drugs. So don't possess drugs. Drugs are bad. We all know that shit ain't broccoli. The difference, in my view, between marijuana and the host of other available inebriants is the difference between casual sex with a condom and barebacking transvestites in truck stops. But that's your decision. A drug bust takes away all your decision-making authority, and wars are not about fighting fair. Bad things happen to people who get busted. Profoundly bad things. No matter what your dope of choice the criminal justice systems brings only pain and suffering.

Consider the Busted! and Now We Bring the Pain chapters as warnings from god.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dey Street Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0060754591
• ISBN 13: 9780060754594
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384