Smuggler: My Life as One of America's Most Wanted International Drug Traffickers

Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut college boy who entered outlaw culture on a university trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He never looked back. Stratton became a member of the hippie mafia, travelling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favour of marijuana and hashish. With cameos by Whitey Bulger and Norman Mailer, Smuggler tells Stratton's adventure while centring on his last years in the business as he travels from New York to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley to source and smuggle high-grade hash in the midst of civil war, from the Caribbean to the backwoods of Maine and from the Chelsea Hotel to the Plaza. As Stratton's fortunes rise and fall, he's pursued all the while by his nemesis, a philosophical DEA agent who respects him for his good business practices.

About the Author :
Richard Stratton wrote the novel Smack Goddess during his eight-year term in federal prison. He is now an acclaimed filmmaker and screenwriter whose feature film Slam and documentary Crude won prizes at Cannes and the Berlin Film Festival, respectively. A writer and consultant for HBO's Oz, he was the creator, writer and executive producer of Showtime's Street Time. He is the founder of Prison Life, the editor and publisher of High Times, and a contributor to Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, Details, Newsweek and Playboy. He lives with his wife and children in New York City.

Review :
A wild, entertaining ride . . . A compulsively interesting story with the requisite drama and suspense that will keep the pages turning. Smuggler is an adrenaline rush, a high-stakes ride from Maine to Lebanon to the Caribbean. . . This book will get under your skin, enter your blood stream, and mess with your head. There is no one who both knows the deadly world of international drug trafficking and who can tell the tale in such a stylishly compelling way, than Richard Stratton, a man who walked the walk and lived to tell about it. No wonder Norman Mailer liked hanging out with Richard Stratton. His drug-fueled early years read like the stuff of great fiction.