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# Straight dope on dope dealers
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/straight-dope-on-dope-dealers-editor/
- Published: 2007-06-25T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T01:18:15.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Downtown, #archive-import

*By Justin Valdivia Santa Monica*

Everyone knows that the area to the north of Pico Boulevard between 16th and 26th streets is a major crack selling area. It’s just as bad as Oakwood in Venice or even MacArthur Park downtown. It’s baffling to me that the shootings that happen around this area are referred to as “possibly gang related.” If you don’t believe me, take a drive through that area at night. It’s 7-Eleven for crack-heads with dealers on every corner. You can score dope at any time of the day. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it’s turf war between drug dealers that’s happening over there. So why is it so mysterious that we continually have fatal shootings in that neighborhood? It’s such a small area, I don’t understand why something can’t be done to clean up the drug trade in those few square blocks. It’s like a tiny cancer in the otherwise beautiful body of Santa Monica that needs to be lanced. Why has no one lanced it yet? I’ve lived on 10th Street for six years and every day when I jog past Santa Monica College I know it could be my last because I might get hit by a stray bullet from some New Jack idiot. If we don’t want to lose any more lives we might want to seriously consider rounding up the handful of dope dealers in that area and driving them out once and for all.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 25, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/062507.pdf?ref=smdp.com)