 WEED - Adventures of a Dope Smuggler
Author: Jerry Kamstra
Jerry was from the Big Sur area, and decided to run some loads of grass back from Mexico in the '60s. He describes it all from start to finish. Finding connections in Mexico, transporting it into the U.S., and selling it in the Bay Area. He gets busted and makes up an imaginary connection. The cops set up a stakeout of his old station wagon with over 200 lbs. in the back, as they let him hitchhike out of L.A. Photos show him picking big buds in the remote Mexican interior, his plane, and field workers with machine guns. This tell it all book lets you know what Bud Life back then was all about.
It is a classic work of art by an old time grass smuggler. This book is out of print but copies are available on Amazon and elsewhere. Jerry discusses Beatniks, Hippies, the Mexico interior, getting busted near Yuma, AZ, and many other events of the times. Costs and the financing of a smuggling operation, going to Mexico to the cola fields, flying and driving back loads. He was paid $5,000 to take a national magazine photographer to the interior of Mexico for a photo shoot of the workers and grass crops on steep mountain sides.
Jerry even has a story about a 12 ton load of Panama Red which came into the Bay Area by freighter in 1968 and was all shipped out to the east coast. His Panama Red story is so similar that I wonder if it was the same crew who brought in 12 tons of Red in 1969.
He has a wholesale-retail price chart for kilos of grass starting in 1955. This is a cultural must read for the cannabis enthusiast or historian. Find out what it was like back in the early days. He explains that just about every smoker was a smuggler and the price of a kilo dropped due to flooding the market. He writes about why kilos ended up being sold as lbs., and still are for the most part today. If you can get this book you will enjoy his writing style and his prior Bud Lifestyle. Add this to your collection.
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