beat bag

n. a package or bindle of a non-drug substance that is sold as narcotics. Subjects: English, Crime & Prisons, Drugs, Slang

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Citations: 1984 Stewart Meyer The Lotus Crew p. 112 @ (Feb., 1996): A few weeks of passing dummies slid by more or less without incident. People occasionally complained, but as Flaco predicted, he lost few customers. Even with one beat bag in a bundle, Triad was a better buy that anything else. 1987 Howard W. French New York Times (June 20) “Day After Crack Raid It’s Still Cat And Mouse”: Deputy Inspector Frank Biehler, commanding officer of the 24th Precinct, said that many of the people still hanging around in doorways and on street corners were undercover police officers. Others, he said, were “simple truants, people in illegal gambling, and kids in the beat bag business,” who sell oregano to unsuspecting people out to buy marijuana. 1997 [Durtro] Usenet: alt.drugs.psychedelics (July 10) “don’t be an ASSHOLE like ME and SEND YOUR MONEY TO HOLLAND like i did”: I bet if you buy a beat bag on the street you narc out the dealer. 2007 Gregory Smith Providence Journal (Rhode Island) (Jan. 9) “Nightclub owner will not reopen Pulse”: In 2000 he pleaded no contest in Superior Court to a charge of creating and selling a counterfeit substance, which in street parlance is a “beat bag.” The idea of a beat bag is to sell someone an innocuous substance by claiming it is an illicit drug, thereby beating the buyer out of his money.

Posted 10 Jan 07 | Permalink | Tell a Friend