And Don’t Forget To Tip That Cabbie!

Thanks to the police department’s random bag searches that apparently are not overlooking other illegal substances, drug deliverymen (otherwise known as “drug runners”) are resorting to expensive cab rides, the costs of which passed on to disgruntled consumers:

“My dealer won’t take the train anymore,” complains Wiley, a 30-year-old marketing executive and avid pot smoker. “He charged me an extra $12 for his cab fare today. It’s ridiculous.” Call it the anti-terror tax. “If the runner’s gotta give a little extra, you’re gonna give a little extra,” says Flower, a grandmother and coke dealer who runs her business from a bar beneath her Lower East Side apartment (and says her clients before the crackdown included a network-news executive). She pauses on her bar stool. “Otherwise, come down here and get it yourself.”

Take a cab from Midtown all the way to the Lower East Side? On a deadline, no less? Forget it!