If you smoked Colombian weed in the '70s and '80s, Tony Dokoupil would like to thank you: He says you paid for his swim lessons and kept him in the best private school in south Florida — at least for a little while.Dokoupil's father started selling marijuana during the Nixon era, and expanded his operation until he became a partner in what his son describes as the biggest East Coast dope ring of the Reagan years, smuggling marijuana into the U.S.
But Dokoupil didn't know this until many years later, because his parents didn't tell him. His mother continued to keep the secret after his father disappeared from their lives, when Dokoupil was 10. When he did find out, he wanted to know the whole story. He combed through court documents and newspaper files and interviewed Drug Enforcement Administration agents who investigated the case, as well as more than a dozen smugglers and dealers, including his own father. He shares what he found in a new book called The Last Pirate: A Father, His Son and the Golden Age of Marijuana.
LOL, explains much of these doomsayers.