Kid Cannabis
How a high school dropout went from a pizza delivery driver to a
marijuana kingpin
Kid Cannabis Trailer
Main Characters
• Nate Norman (The Ring Leader)
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19 Years Old
High school drop out
Grew up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
Lived with his mom and younger brother in a
small house
• Christopher “Topher” Clark
• Nate’s best friend and right hand man
• The “muscle” of the operation
• 27 Years old and originally from Boston
• Brendan Butler
• Nate’s rival
• Ran the same style business as Nate
Main Characters
• Barry Lerner
• The Financer
• Charged but never convicted for 5 counts of murder
• Successfully smuggled cocaine and ecstasy into the US but his true passion is
weed
• Supplied Nate with the funding required for their first big operation
• John Grafford
• The Grower
• Supplied Nate and his crew with a total of at least 18 tons of marijuana,
including his prized strain that has taken 20 years to develop, “Dergamata”.
• Worth over 68 Million Dollars $$$
The Story Line
• Nate has become tired of being a pizza delivery driver earning
minimum wage in a city where those who did not have money were
constantly taunted by those who did
• Makes a delivery to a rich “playboy” who trades Nate a joint of “BC
Bud” along with a twenty for the pizza when Nate is told that that is
all he’s got unless he can break a $100 dollar bill
• Explains to Nate that this “BC Bud” is worth 600 a half and at one
point notions towards one of the women lying in his bed and says
“you see that girl there, she paid for her own divorce, a new set of
tits, AND paid her kids way through private school all by smuggling a
few pounds across the boarder from Canada”
The Storyline
• After realizing there is money to be made, Nate talks to a lawyer who
tells him that getting caught growing in Canada is not a highly
punishable offense but rather a “slap on the wrist”
• Nate persuades Tophur to make a one time run and smuggle just one
pound so they could earn enough to open the bike shop that they had
always dreamed of.
• “get caught with under five pounds with no priors and no weapons and you
serve a year long sentence tops, we’d probably even get out early on good
behavior” (Displaying his ability to be an emboldening leader by allowing to
Tophur to overcome his fear)
Storyline Continued
• After finding a sunken boat in a lake that they sell for $1800 as their startup
capital they head off to Canada to make their first attempt
• Wind up getting screwed over when they realize all they got was a pound
of “Mexican Goat-F***er Weed”
• “we sold that pound of weed in about five seconds and cleared two large
all from a pound of shitty weed.”
• Return to Canada again, where they meet John Grafford who becomes
their supplier after Nate acquires the necessary capital for not 100, but 300
pounds of John’s weed.
• Nate and Tofur round up a crew of their best friends and began making
larger and larger runs across the boarder of Canada through the Kootenai
National Forest in Northern Idaho
Nate’s Downfall
• World quickly spreads that Nate is offering runners $3,200 a run with each
runner carrying 60 pounds of weed
• Brendan Butler pays to have Nate robbed and killed but this doesn’t exactly
go as planned
• Eventually Brendan gets killed by the hitmen he hired to rob Nate after
running his mouth and this brings attention to the entire marijuana
smuggling industry happening in Idaho.
• Tophur begins making runs with people Nate doesn’t know and one of
them (a ginger boy by the name of Daniel Cox) decides to rob the crew by
stashing part of his load in the woods during each run but gets busted
when returning to get his own personal stash. This results in him leading
the police to the mile 8 marker where the runners usually meet with the
drivers at the end of each run and all of them get caught.
Nate’s Downfall
• Barry catches word of Brendan’s death and realize the police are
going to be searching for Nate so he comes to visit Nate in the middle
of the night, gives Nate an address for him to go stay at in Canada
before the police can arrest him in the US.
• After getting caught and facing life in prison, each and every one of
the crew members, including Tophur, instantly tell police it was Nate
• When Nate finds out that police are trying to get his mom in trouble
for what he did he returns to the US where he served 12 years in
federal prison without the possibility of parole. When offered a
reduced sentence for revealing his financing and distribution sources,
Nate refused.
Noteworthy Quotes
• “Turns out I’m going to have to whip some donkeys into race horses”
• Transforms his followers by putting them through physical training so they can
work together as a team and successfully cross the 16.3 mile trail
• (When attempting to get funding from Barry): “Brendan’s full of beer
and bull s**t, always talking when he should be listening..how do you
think I heard about you in the first place?”
• (When Tophur doesn’t get paid any more than the other runners after
their first run): “I found the financing, handle the administration, the
distribution, and if anything goes wrong I’m the one going down”
• Nate does a good job explaining things while not telling Tophur everything,
such as how much money Nate is actually getting from each run (some things
are better kept quiet)
More Quotes
• After Skuz is assaulted and Tophur and the others get shot at while making
a run, Tophur demands that the runners deserve at least three times the
money on their next run
• “You were sitting on the phone eating donuts while we were doing all the f***ing
work”
• “Okay, you guys can have triple the pay next time, I won’t be making any money but I
want you guys to be safe, you’re more than my workers, you’re my friends”
• When everyone see’s on the news that Brendan was killed, Nate somewhat
implies he was the one that did it although this was a lie
• “I’m in charge, I run things for a reason you don’t need to know the details, now go
sit down…….does anybody else want some more coke?”
• “Looking back now, it wasn’t ever about the money, it was about the
chase..take advantages of the opportunities life gives you, and always have
a good lawyer, because mine sucked.”
Nate’s Leadership Traits
• Charismatic: Nate is able to hype up and convince a group of kids his age to
make runs across the boarder risking prison time all the while they’re only
getting paid $3,200 per person
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48YWS7au5bY
• Task-Oriented: Nate gets people fired up and demonstrates the skills
relevant to the task since he and Tophur are the first ones who successfully
smuggle a pound across the boarder
• Explanatory: successfully structured the tasks/roles of his crew and kept it
simple and at just the right level of complexity (You’re either a runner or a
driver and you get paid x amount each time)
• Manipulator or Hero?