Cartel

When Jack Dutton and Neil Fetherston become friends because of a physics project they have to do together, they start having regular marijuana-smoking sessions, and when G1 and G2 have grouped activities, Neil makes another friend, this time in G2. Conner Richmond joins their "gusting sessions", and shortly after him Danny Sloan, who was already a friend of Conner's, joins. The last member to join the clique is Wade Bibby, who has made friends with Neil and Jack during gymnastics and art class. At this point they don't call themselves the Cartel yet. Even before Neil and Jack became friends, Neil had already established a small-time marijuana-dealing scheme, selling to some regular clients around the school, making some money by buying in cheap from an 18-year old nephew and selling for a higher price as most of his clients couldn't get it themselves as they were below legal age.

Conner and Wade make it clear they are interesting in working for Neil and expanding the business, and together they work on making it more profitable. Danny and Jack are hesistant at first, but Danny is persuaded when he sees how much money the three are making. For Jack that wasn't as important; he already had a job at a local supermarket. But when all four of his friends are busy organizing the marijuana trade, he is drawn back in (although Sean Burgess warns him not to), also because the group, that is now calling itself the Cartel, is offering him a job as 'backer', protecting marijuana sellers. The Cartel employs sellers like Gabriel Bush and Simon White and Neil and Danny also sell marijuana themselves.

The Cartel's foremost rivals are the Sixth Graders, being the biggest dealers in marijuana in the school. The Sixth Graders have several 18-year olds that are allowed to purchase weed, and therefore have easier access to supply. Due to the strategic policy of the Cartel, however, the Sixth Graders are being slowly driven out of the market. Riled by this they get more and more agressive towards the Cartel and its sellers, finally resulting in the collision between Jack's temper problems and the Sixth Graders' agitation in the Oven Incident. Jack's new reputation of skilled fighter and impulsive thinker boosts the Cartel's income and makes it the top-selling marijuana enterprise in the school. More and more students in G1 and G2 and even students from other classes want to come work as marijuana dealers for the Cartel, causing a plague of illegal drug dealing in the school. Even though the Oven Incident scared off most competition initially, the increased popularity of the Cartel also caused more, small marijuana-selling ventures around the school to pop up, causing the Cartel to have more competition to deal with.

The Cartel transforms into Scumbac when it has 7 employees apart from the Cartel's members (Jack, Neil, Wade, Danny and Conner) and there arises a need for a name for the entirety of the enterprise. When Jack draws up an idea for a +logo+, Wade and Conner respond enthusiastically, spreading the idea of a bigger organization or club of some sort around the G1 and G2 groups. The Cartel and two of their most loyal employees, Gabriel Bush, a good friend of Wade's, and Simon White, a good friend of Conner's and Neil's. Wade thinks of the name, Scumbac, and so the first seven members, the Aboriginals, together form a senate that democratically (everyone has one vote) makes the decisions around the marijuana trade. Soon more members are enlisted; Gabriel Bush and Simon White, who had already been working for the Cartel, as well as Brian Winters, Henry Dunn and Cole Strong are very early to join, although they are not appointed as members of the senate. They have weekly meetings at Neil's house, and every week more people join.