White Boy Rick’s transformation from a teenage FBI informant to selling legal pot

Former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant and former prisoner Richard Wershe Jr. – known as “White Boy Rick” – served 32 years of life imprisonment for cocaine possession. Within weeks of his release, Wershe teamed up with cannabis producer Pleasantrees to launch a brand called The 8th.

Anyone who has seen 2018 White Boy Rick starring Matthew McConaughey knows the story: When Wershe was 14, he became an FBI informant – forced to whistle to high-ranking drug lords. He was the youngest FBI informant in US history.

In the middle of the crack epidemic of the mid-1980s, Wershe got deeply caught up in the dark side of the organized crime world. Although the FBI pushed him into this world as an informant, Wershe was arrested at the age of 17 for having eight kilos of cocaine.

“I took money they gave me to buy drugs, then I took those drugs and sold them,” Wershe told VICE. “You taught me to be a drug dealer and I became a drug dealer.”

Wershe was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1988 despite being under 18 years old.

White Boy Rick’s New Life

Wershe – now 52 – spent his entire adult life in prison, including missing out on time with his dying father. In July he was finally released from a Florida detention center for good conduct. On July 19, at 10:30 a.m., Wershe was picked up by his fiancée.

Wershe filed a $ 100 million lawsuit against former FBI agents and prosecutors for alleged child abuse related to his time as an informant. As a 14-16 year old in his time as an informant, he could have a solid case.

He claims that he was only involved in cocaine sales because the FBI forced him to. He claims drug lords tried to murder him once.

Wershe is finally free and wasted no time teaming up with Michigan-based producer Pleasantrees Cannabis Company to launch a brand called The 8th. The 8th symbolically represents both an eighth of grass and the eighth amendment, which theoretically protects Americans from “cruel and unusual punishments”. Wershe was obviously not a recipient of these safeguards, but he hopes to draw attention to inhuman cases like his own. The 8th will hit the market this fall and will include cannabis accessories and other products.

Wershe pointed out that life sentences for crimes related to cannabis are just as insane. “I met people in federal prison who were sentenced to life for marijuana. I mean it was tons, but it was still a plant. Life for a cannabis crime was a little tough. ”

“I think we could release 50 percent of the people in our prison system, and that wouldn’t make society any more dangerous because over 50 percent are nonviolent offenders.”

Wershe doesn’t actually smoke weed, but he firmly believes that drug criminalization in America is corrupt and uninformed and that laws need to be changed so that people are not jailed for nonviolent crimes.

He also said that big drug companies are the real cartels. While ongoing lawsuits fix some of the problem, those responsible for synthetic opioid deaths are roaming free while a middle-class teenager selling cocaine has spent his adult life in prison. “There were 500,000 dead, $ 27 billion in fines. And not one person has been arrested, ”he added.