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{{trope}}
{{quote|
''Thought he had 'caine but it was Gold Medal flour!''
|Geto Boys, "Mind's Playin' Tricks on Me" }}
Selling a '''"beat" bag''' is a form of the [[Short Con]] that involves representing a bogus product as a more valuable, but illegal product, such as oregano for marijuana, baking soda for heroin, or cubic zirconias for stolen diamonds.
This means that the buyer cannot report the scam to the police, because he doesn't dare admit he was trying to buy the illegal item in the first place. The main push on these is often that the deal has to go down fast, for cash, ''right now''.
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Beat Bag is a [[Sub-Trope]] of [[Pig in a Poke]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* In the British Comic ''[[Viz]]'', Paul Whicker (The Tall Vicar), responds to his verger's suggestion that the forthcoming youth group disco would give them the chance to 'shift some Es and whiz' with a grin and "Or aspirins and Vim if the ugly truth be known" (Vim being a brand of scouring powder with a (very) superficial resemblance to powdered amphetamine.
* A very silly version of this in ''[[The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers]]'', when Fat Freddy tried to buy illicit sugar in the middle of a shortage.
{{quote|
== [[Film]] ==
* Performed in the movie ''[[Go]]'', in which one of the characters sells harmless household products as drugs to inexperienced teens.
* At the beginning of ''[[A Few Good Men]]'', Tom Cruise's character is defending a client who bought and smoked "a dime bag of oregano."
{{quote|
'''Kaffee:''' My client's a moron, that's not against the law. }}
== [[Literature]] ==
* This apparently happens <s> a lot</s> all the time to Mr. Tulip in the [[Discworld]] novel ''[[
* In ''[[Holes]]'', X-Ray was arrested for selling drugs, but they turned out to be bags of chopped-up aspirin. Then he got arrested for selling aspirin without a pharmaceutical license.
=== Periodicals ===
== [[Live Action Television]] ==▼
* Invoked in a "Clichéd TV Lines" competition in ''New York Magazine'' in the early 1970s, reprinted in the collection ''Maybe He's Dead'': [[Fingertip Drug Analysis|"Milk sugar!"]]
* Played with in ''[[Spaced]]'', with the oregano-for-weed variant. They weren't out to con anyone originally - they just [[It Makes Sense in Context|happened to have a bag of oregano on them]] when they got mugged. Although everyone involved ''thought'' it was weed- Daisy had got confused and put the weed in the stew, so Tim was unknowingly carrying the oregano when he was mugged.
* In ''[[The Pretender]]'', a series where the [[No Social Skills]] protagonist does a [[Once an Episode]] thing of discovering something that people with normal childhoods take for granted, the episode "Silence" has him (A) discovering chocolate milk powder and (B) trying to bring down a drug pipeline transporting brown heroin. Near the end of the episode, he brings (A) and (B) together.
* On ''[[My Name Is Earl]]'', Earl and Randy wanted to take advantage of "special brownie night" at the Crab Shack. They switched the price tags on the brownies, so that those who wanted to buy the pot brownies ended up buying regular ones, and then Earl and Randy could sell the actual pot brownies later. Darnell intended to take the regular brownies to share with his mother, and is stopped by angry would-be stoners, who then proceeded to stone him. [[Narm|It was Biblical.]]
{{quote|
* In the ''[[Raising the Bar]]'' episode "Is There a Doctor in the House?", Kellerman's client, a middle-aged woman, was arrested because the police found a large quantity of white powder in her car. . . while she was on the way to the laundromat. After lab tests confirmed that the powder was laundry detergent, the police [[Bad Cop, Incompetent Cop|showed their customary regard for the law]] by charging the defendant with selling a
* Shows up in [[The Wire]] when Bubbles steals a gang's ground stash, only to find the gang was selling vialed baking soda. He feels extremely guilty, having seen the gang beat up some innocent addicts for his theft as he was escaping. [[It Got Worse|It gets worse]] at [[Wham! Episode|the end of season four]] when Bubbles prepares a {{spoiler|hot shot of cyanide for a fiend who constantly attacks him for money and drugs, expecting the fiend to take it, shoot up and drop dead. The effort fails when the fiend misses Bubbles during the day and Sherrod steals Bubble's stash that night, shooting up with the vial filled with cyanide}}.
* ''[[Downton Abbey]]'': Thomas invests in some black-market food that turns out to be inedible.
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== [[Music]] ==
* This comes up in the folk song [http://www.contemplator.com/england/qbrye.html Quare Bungle Rye.] Jack thinks he's getting smuggled whiskey, but the seller slips him a baby in a basket instead and runs off.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[Octopus Pie]]'' alludes to the oregano/weed switch in one story.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:The Con]]
[[Category:Short Con]]
[[Category:
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