THE FACE OF ADDICTION

'The Dealing Becomes Addictive,' Says Run-Of-The-Mill Pusher Making $500,000

Bruce Mason is handsome, intelligent and disarmingly polite. He doesn't
slouch and he's quiet - an observer, not a loudmouth or a braggart.

Name your poison. Mason, 23, could get you coke, crack or weed. But you may
have to wait a while to score from him because Mason is in jail.

Every successful professional has to pay his dues, Mason says, downplaying
his current situation. The way he sees it, doing time is just part of his
job, a small price to pay for the money he made, about $500,000 a year.

It's a tough figure to swallow, considering the average income on the South
Shore was about $47,000 in 1998, the year Mason started dealing locally.

Mason swears he's not inflating his numbers, and they add up. State Police
estimate dealers like Mason make between $1,500 and $3,000 a day.

Although it seems like a lot of money, on the street Mason wasn't special.
He was just a run-of-the-mill, mid-level crack dealer, one of thousands in
Massachusetts and tens of thousands nationwide.

Mason came to the South Shore from Brooklyn because drugs fetch higher
prices here. But he only lasted about nine months. For the past two years,
his home has been the Plymouth County House of Correction.

"The dealing becomes addictive," Mason says. "You just spend the money. You
need something else or want something else and you keep doing it and before
you know it, you're in jail."

It is unknown how much South Shore residents spend annually on illegal
drugs, but casual estimates are enlightening.

Last year, State Police narcotics units working for the Plymouth and
Norfolk county district attorneys seized about 111/2 pounds of cocaine,
worth about $1 million on the street. Police estimate they intercept 5
percent of the illegal drugs on the market.

That means residents of Norfolk and Plymouth counties could easily be
spending $20 million a year on cocaine alone. The dollar amount would
increase significantly if cocaine seized by other law enforcement agencies
were included in the estimate.

If that seems like a big number, consider: Americans spent $36 billion on
cocaine and $63 billion on illegal drugs in 2000, according to the Office
of National Drug Control Policy.

Bruce Mason wanted some of that money.

Mason started dealing on the streets of Brooklyn when he was 9. He says it
was predestined.

"Older teens were selling drugs," he says. "My mother was working, but she
couldn't get me what I wanted. At 9, I was making $50 a week. The older
guys were like, 'The police aren't going to arrest you. You're only 9."'
Mason used the money to buy sneakers and video games. Within a year, Mason
says, he was pulling in $1,000 a week, something his mother never questioned.

"My mother never asked me where I got it," he says.

Mason is loose-limbed and his skin is the color of undiluted coffee. His
jail-issue cotton shirt and pants - which look more like surgeon's scrubs
than clothes - seem to hang on him.

He came of age straddling turf wars, fearing turncoats and in the company
of more cash than he could possibly spend. There were bullets - Mason got
shot in his leg when he was 13 - but the possibility of a violent death
wasn't enough to keep him off the streets. He was out dealing as soon as he
could walk, about two months later.

Three years ago, Mason moved to Brockton and began his brief career on the
South Shore.

Drugs sold out of Brockton don't stay there. They end up in bedroom
communities, bringing dealers to the suburbs and suburbanites to the city,
according to State Police Detective Lt. Bruce Gordon, who is the commanding
officer of the detective unit assigned to the Plymouth County district
attorney's office.

"The buyers page their Brockton dealer, put in a code and meet them at a
place they've met before," he said. "The dealers turn up in parking lots in
Abington, driveways in Hanover and bars in Pembroke and Whitman."

Mason says he sold to all sorts of people. He didn't care what town they
were from or how old they looked, only whether their money was good.

"You can sell crack - a small rock - for $20 here," Mason says. "It's only
$3 in New York City. You buy an ounce or a quarter key (a little more than
a half-pound), cook it, bag it up and distribute it on the street."

An ounce of cocaine costs about $700, depending on how much the person is
buying and his relationship with his supplier. When cooked, an ounce yields
about 168 pieces of market-ready crack - called rocks - which can bring in
a profit of $2,660 if the dealer charges $20 a rock and subtracts the $700
initial investment.

Mason says he brought cheap New York cocaine to the South Shore and turned
it into crack in a Brockton kitchen. He says he also brought crack from New
York to sell locally.

In the good old days, Mason says, he used to meet a courier halfway between
New York and Brockton at rest stops along Interstate 95 and the
Massachusetts Turnpike. It was a trip he made several times a week.

"We'd meet at a McDonalds," he says. "You go in, order a sandwich, take it
out of the bag, put the money in there and give it to him. He goes into the
bathroom and counts it, and slides the McDonald's bag with the drugs over."

Then Mason would hit the road.

"Drugs come (here) from 1, New York, 2, Providence, and 3, Boston," said
Gordon, the State Police detective. "Every gram of coke has to get here
from South America and it has to travel across the roads of the commonwealth.

On any given day, how many people are there with dope in their cars
bringing it somewhere else?" Gordon paused and leaned forward to make his
point, "Thousands."

Mason, like most people doing time, says his lawless days are over. He
doesn't plan to go back to jail, even though he expected to serve a
sentence at some point in his career.

He's not the first member of his family to be locked up. Mason says his
father was sent to prison when Mason was 2 and died of AIDS when Mason was
15. Mason is a father himself now.

"I'm done with that life," he says of jail and relays plans to start a
security firm with a friend he describes as a "good boy." He says he'll
fund the business with money he saved selling drugs, but when he talks
about this future, he seems bored.

Mason speaks for a while about a crime-free tomorrow, but then he slips
into a story about old times - partying with hip-hop artists in Miami and
burning his way through boxes of cash.

"Money," Mason says reverently as he stares across the jailhouse conference
room and into a sterile institutional hallway.

"Money," he says again.

Then he smiles, as if that one word could explain everything.

Editor's Note: This story was written while Bruce Mason was a resident of
the county jail in Plymouth. He has since been released, his sentence fully
served, and authorities say they have no way of knowing his whereabouts.