Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I guess they changed the title of this book at some point -- the copy I got from the library was called "Loaded, A Misadventure In the Marijuana Trade". At any rate, forget any tepid reviews by "professional" reviewers who somehow feel this story wasn't quite up to their literary standards. The book is just a flat out great read and had me laughing out loud many times. A hilarious but cautionary tale with a serious ending, the adventures of pot smuggler Allen Long are so far out there that you know they must be true. Any baby boomer who did time in the counter culture of the 60s and 70s, or who is familiar with the drug culture of that era will get a big kick out of this book, and I'd think many younger readers would enjoy it as well.
Allen Long was a man of immense ability, ambition and personal charm, as well as a natural leader... who also loved to smoke the best pot he could find. He probably would have been successful in any field but some people need to take the road less travelled. Long was the man responsible for Columbian marijuana coming to the US (millions of tons of it). I got the impression that he was as much a crusader for marijuana as he was in it for the money, at least in the beginning. The first part of the book is almost like a Cheech & Chong screenplay, with multi-million dollar deals and hair-raising scenarios being improvised by people who stay as stoned-out as possible at all times; but by the end the gangsters have moved in, the trade has turned to cocaine, and the intial hippie-capitalist spirit has vanished, to be replaced with cutthroat competition, greed and violence. Long never has the heart to become a gangster and is eventually squeezed out of the business by the more ruthless and hungry Latin Americans. It's a look at a particular part of era that hasn't often been told, and certainly never told in such a thoroughly entertaining manner. Thumbs up all the way.
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