Jada Pinkett Smith Became A Real Drug Dealer In Her Teens

While the “Girls’ Trip” actress Jada Pinkett Smith‘s memoir titled “Worthy” is being anticipated, the actress shared some of the contents of the book during her interview with PEOPLE.

The book contains details of her childhood, her late rapper friend Tupac Shakur, her marriage with the actor Will Smith, and even the slap heard around the world which is the Oscars slap.

During her time with the outlet, Jada shared a little bit of her tough childhood and how she grew up with drug-addicted parents despite being raised half of the time by her maternal grandmother Marion Banfield.

Jada grew up in Baltimore with her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris her mother and her father Robsol Pinkett Jr. (who died in 2010).

According to the 52-year-old, she learned how to provide for herself the tough way. “When you aren’t the priority of your parents, you don’t know how to be a priority to yourself, I had parents who were addicted to heroin.”

Jada Pinkett Smith — Jada Sold Drugs From Her Teens

During one of the episodes of Jada’s “Red Table Talk” in which her mom Adrienne was present, Jada revealed that she never found out about her mom’s addiction to drugs until she was in her teens. Then, she began telling the signs.

“I think I didn’t find out my mother was addicted to heroin until I was in my teens, I could tell when my mother was high. She couldn’t make it on time to pick me up from school,” said Jada on her show. “Or she’s nodding off, falling asleep in the middle of something. You just realize, Oh, that’s not being tired. That is, like, a drug problem.”

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Speaking with PEOPLE, the mom of two said she began earning an income from age 12 and the jobs she tried her hands on were “legit jobs.” She worked with The Gap as a telemarketer because, “Having money in my pocket was a must,” and also because, “I just wanted financial freedom.”

She later left the legit jobs and dived into a full-time street job, “I knew that anything that I needed was something I needed to provide for. I decided to sell drugs.” She continued, “Growing up, the drug dealers were the ones that had affluence.”

“That’s what we readily saw as success. And so for me, considering my circumstances at the time, my mother was not doing well. She was a high-functioning heroin addict. We didn’t have the things that we should have. The home we lived in was not taken care of.”

Another reason she chose to become a drug dealer was out of fear of the unknown. She lived in fear of not knowing what tomorrow would be like for her family, “What if something happens to my mother? What if she doesn’t come home one night? Either overdosed, arrested, whatever. And so, I decided to sell drugs. I decided to sell crack cocaine.”

Jada Pinkett Smith — Jada Wanted To Be The ‘Queen Pin’

When she began selling drugs for a living, Jada said she had a goal she set for herself and that is to be the highest and leader of the female drug dealers. Just as the men were referred to as the Kingpin, her goal was to become the ” Queen pin.”

“I thought I was going to be a queen pin, for sure,” she recalled. “You can get caught up in the scenery. I was rollin’ with some really high rollers at the time. That’s a whole ‘nother Jada, a whole ‘nother Jada that would chase somebody down the alley with a switchblade because they stole $700. Or the Jada that would sell crack cocaine and then get set up and two dudes come in with nine-millimeters and she gets a gun put to her head.”

Her place of residence didn’t help matters either for Baltimore was the most notorious during the ’80s and everybody there is affected by drugs either as a user or as a dealer.

Jada emphasized on “Everybody,” before going on to explain, “Drugs were going to touch you, period. You could use them, you could sell them, but there was no being in an environment like that and drugs not touching you.”

“And I’m not saying that it’s right, of course, now being in a whole different mindset. But when you’re living in a war zone and you just thinking about survival, I wasn’t trying to use drugs. I surely wasn’t going to be a drug dealer’s girlfriend. But I wanted money so that I could be independent. I wanted to take care of myself.”

Despite all she went through, Jada learned what she says became valuable lessons. “The number one thing that I feel like the Baltimore Streets taught me was fearlessness and being able to detect danger. And I brought that to Hollywood in 1990.”

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