32 teens arrested in connection with TA drug ring

Nineteen of the suspects were detained for using only, and police said that the sums brought in by the dealers were in the hundreds of shekels.

By BEN HARTMAN
Man in handcuffs - illustrative (photo credit: INGIMAGE / ASAP)
Man in handcuffs - illustrative
(photo credit: INGIMAGE / ASAP)
Dozens of teenagers in Tel Aviv were called in for questioning and some arrested for using and selling marijuana and hashish, in what police described as a sophisticated drug-dealing network.
So far four of the 32 have been arrested, including a 19-year-old suspected to selling marijuana and hashish to the teenagers who then sold it to classmates.
Nineteen of the suspects were detained for using only, and police said that the sums brought in by the dealers were in the hundreds of shekels.
Cmdr. Nissim Daoudi, who headed the investigation, said that the students ended up turning their daily smoking habit “into a way of life, where they started selling drugs and brokering deals just to make money.”
The case began when juvenile crime investigators got a tip that a number of students at high schools in north Tel Aviv and elsewhere in the Gush Dan area were dealing drugs.
Police were taken aback by their discovery that one of the teenagers questioned by detectives smoked marijuana with his mother and her friends, something confirmed by the mother and highlighted by police in their press release about the arrests on Wednesday.
Police noted that they learned during their investigation that the students used code words – “green” for marijuana and “brown for hashish,” both corresponding directly to the color of the controlled substances in question.