December 18, 2019 • 43 mins
In June of 1971, President Richard Nixon declares drug abuse as America's public enemy number one. Drugs and the people who distribute them are the most dangerous enemies to the public. Rainbow Valentine talks with her dad about starting a pot smuggling career in this environment -- from smuggling lime green pot and rose cocaine to landing in the Redwood City Jail. Special thanks to songwriter Peter Rowan for his song "Panama Red" featured in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. Do you want to join me here?
Whence you be seated, please, Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to summarize for you the meeting that
I have just had with the bipartisan leaders, which began
at eight o'clock and was completed two hours later. I
began the meeting by making this statement, which I think
(00:29):
needs to be made to the nation. America's public enemy
number one in the United States is drug abuse. In
order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary
to wage a new, all out offensive. Depending on your
(00:51):
age or interest in history, that voice and speech may
sound familiar to you. This is a press conference with
President Richard Nixon, also known as Tricky Dickey. Nixon was
elected president in nineteen sixty eight, and in June of
seventy one, Nixon declares public enemy number one drug abuse.
Drugs and the people who distribute them are the most
(01:13):
dangerous enemies to the public. The war on drugs has begun. Now,
drugs are put into categories based on how dangerous they
are thought to be LSD and pot. The foundations of
the psychedelic Revolution of the nineteen sixties are considered the
most Dangerous Schedule one. So Nixon increases federal funding for
(01:39):
drug control agencies and proposes super strict measures like mandatory
prison sentencing for drug crimes. Nixon also creates the d EA,
the Drug Enforcement Administration in nineteen seventy three. And in
the middle of it all is my dad building up
his smuggling business in Marine County, California. This is disorganized crime.
(02:00):
I'm your host, Rainbow Valentine do Young, free and groovy,
making it up. We rolled along, rolling along far Country,
(02:26):
the Golden Ganging Dot, New York State, making it up
as we roll. It's the summer of nineteen seventy three
(02:47):
and we are living in Mill Valley. You're nestled in
the red wood. Just a hot producer tip. When you
blow your nose, put some space between the storytelling and
the nose blowing so I can cut it out. I
didn't even think about That's why, ah, Dad. One day
we'll figure out how to record perfectly. So in nineteen
(03:11):
seventy one, when Nixon declares the war on drug dealers
and drug abuse, my dad has been living with my
mom and her small daughter, Vertica for a while, taking
on the role of father and he needs to start
providing for his new family. Anyway, I needed to make money.
I wanted to make money, and so I started doing
smaller time deals ten pounds of this or twenty pounds
(03:33):
of that or whatever. And so if you're doing it's
quite a small time selling a satchel here, say it, right,
you know, a box full of ten pounds of this
or and you'd sell it? Announces maybe, no, never, I
didn't do that, but I would sell at least a
pound that. It's you're still sort of larger. You're never small, right.
He goes over to a dealer's house who is the
(03:54):
boyfriend of one of my mom's North Beach belly dancer
friends from the early sixties. Now, this guy sells pot,
acid coke. He's a reasonable sized dealer. My dad's at
his house and he and a bunch of other smuggler
type guys and music guys are playing cards when and
there's a knock on the door, and all of a sudden, well,
these cops come busting in. So they arrest me, along
(04:17):
with everybody else, and my dad has a gram of
coke in the pocket of his sergeant Pepperesque jacket, which
was a gift from the film producers of Alice's Restaurant,
Arlo Guthrie's nineteen sixty nine cult classic that my Dad
was an extra. Luckily, the coat is hanging on the rack,
(04:39):
so when it's seized by the cops, my dad is
literally not in possession of any drugs. Dad sacrifices his
precious coat in exchange for freedom, and to this day,
he still misses it and I always look for it
in the San Francisco thrift's stores. My dad and the
rest of the gang are hauled down to the jailhouse,
but the cops let him go with a warning that
(05:00):
he'll get a summons. Says he didn't have any drugs
directly on him. He was just hanging out with a
drug dealer, and luckily Dad and I former filmmaker and
candlemaker from New York, was in a relationship with one
of the most well connected people in San Francisco, my mom.
My mom was a quiet, beautiful powerhouse in the inner
(05:21):
circle of the San Francisco music scene. At this point,
she's a jeweler for San Francisco rock Stars. She knew
everyone in the San Francisco sixty scene. From the rock
stars to the smugglers, to the lawyers, because all she
knew was huge time lawyers. She didn't know he's small time. No, no,
she didn't, right, she knew all these guys, these guys
(05:42):
who represented yeah, smugglers busted for five thousand pounds of
pot or whatever it was, or this or that. Now,
even though he got off, this arrest taught my dad
an important lesson. If he was going to be a smuggler,
he had to start taking it much more seriously and
become a true professional, you know, and now and talking
(06:03):
about it, I could say, Okay, you've been You've given
up your child stuff. I was conscious enough to learn
to be aware and cautious about parts of things. Getting
busted is a smuggler's worst nightmare, and in the early
seventies it becomes a much more common experience because Nixon
has declared drugs public Enemy number one. Remember, just a
(06:28):
few years ago, LST was perfectly legal, but now busting
drugs and smugglers is an American priority. They are the enemy.
In order to defeat this enemy, which is causing such
great concern, and correctly so, to so many American families,
money will be provided to the extent that it is necessary,
(06:50):
under the extent that it will be useful. The criminalization
of pot has a very long and very deliberate history.
It started in the early nineteen thirties at the end
of alcohol prohibition, and it leads to today when pot
is categorized as a Schedule one drug. Schedule one drugs
are substances, chemicals, and drugs that are defined as drugs
(07:13):
with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential
for abuse. Incredibly, cocaine and methamphetamine also known as crystal meth,
are Scheduled two. One of the leading experts on the
(07:34):
history of pot criminalization is my dad's friend, Bill Panzer.
Bill Panzer has practiced law in California for over twenty
five years and has been my dad's go to pot
attorney since his longtime attorney, civil rights activist Bernie Siegel,
passed away. Cannabis has been used, you know, for five
thousand years, at least met medicinally, and in this country.
(07:55):
What happened was, you know, we had alcohol prohibition in
the nineteen twenties, and when that got repealed, there was
a guy named Harry Anslinger who had been working on
alcohol prohibition for the federal government helping to enforce alcohol prohibition,
and when that was repealed, he was appointed head of
(08:15):
the Bureau of Narcotics, which is the forerunner of today's
DA Viewer of Narcotics. As a small, little federal agency,
didn't have much of budget, didn't have much power, and
he basically wanted to have a job for himself, so
he decided that since alcohol prohibition been repealed, he was
(08:36):
going to go after cannabis when alcohol is re legalized.
This guy, Harry Anslinger, the former prohibition enforcer, was probably
concerned about his job security and he purportedly starts spreading
fictional stories about pot, allegedly with the help of William
Randolph Hurst, the newspaper baron and purveyor of yellow journalism,
which is journalism based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration. Now,
(09:00):
according to many historians, billionaire Hurst was on board to
help spread lies about pot all things pot related because
Hurst had invested heavily in the timber industry in order
to make his newspapers, and hemp fiber was proving to
be more durable and a cheaper way to make paper
than timber. Not cool for timber investments. So he and
(09:21):
his newspapers allegedly become instrumental in spreading graphic, histrionic, murder
rape stories about cannabis. These high school boys and girls
are having a hop at the local soda fountain. Innocently,
they dance, innocent of a new and deadly menace lurking
behind closed doors, marijuana, the burning weed when its roots
(09:45):
in hell. Now. The most famous piece of antiweed propaganda
is Reefer Madness, which is actually quite amusing. The nineteen
thirty six film is a megamelodrama about pot smoking high
schoolers whose theatrical descent into pot smoking addiction includes hit
and run, rape, murder, suicide, hallucinations in total madness Smoky
(10:07):
with the sole destroying refer they find a moment's pleasure,
but at a terrible price debt, violence, murder, suicide. With
help from the nation's newspaper billionaire Baron, all Harry ann
Slinger has to do is convince states to pass anti
(10:29):
cannabis laws, because at the time, the Fed still don't
have the power to do that. So in the nineteen thirties,
Harry embarks on a ruthless anti marijuana pr campaign, starting
in the Southwest. At that time, cannabis was usually known
as hamp or India hamp or cannabis, and he started
in the Southwest, where they were prejudiced against the Mexican
(10:51):
migrant farm workers who called it marijuana. He with the
help of William Randolph Hurst, who made up these stories
about like Mexican farm workers that would smoke the marijuana
and then rape the farmer's daughter and chop up the
farmer and his family would hatchet. They started making up
these stories and putting them in the local papers to
(11:12):
try and drum up, you know, anti Mexican, discriminatory kind
of attitudes and get behind making marijuana illegal. I have
some friends who insist on calling pot cannabis. They never
used the word marijuana, And when Bill told me about
Harry's very intentional smear campaign, I understood why marijuana is
(11:34):
a word specifically chosen to spread and incite racism. Now,
while they couldn't make cannabis illegal, Harry and Slinger and
his growing team of cannabis prohibition enthusiasts found ways to
make it impossible for people to legally possess it. Nineteen
(11:55):
thirty seven, they came up with this great idea that
although we can't make marijuana illegal. We can set up
attack and require people have tax stamps and then just
not print any tax stamps. That was the first attempt
to make it federally illegal, and that stood until I
(12:15):
believe it was nineteen sixty eight. In nineteen sixty eight,
Tim Leary got busted driving into the United States in
his Volkswagen with his family from Mexico. They had a
little bit of weed on them. Ah. This is the
same Timothy Leary, former Harvard professor drug activist Millbrook affiliated
LSD pioneer who we talked about in the last episode. Okay,
(12:40):
So Leary gets arrested and takes this case to the
Supreme Court, stating that the nineteen thirty seven Marijuana Tax
Act is unconstitutional. Leary challenged the Marijuana Tax Act and said,
it requires you to incriminate yourself, requires me to self
declare that I am growing or possessing cannabis, and that
(13:01):
would violate the Fifth Amendment. And the Supreme Court agreed
and knocked out the Tax Act of nineteen thirty seven,
and in response to that, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act.
President Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act CSA into law
in nineteen seventy calling for the regulation of certain drugs
and substances. Now, the CSA outlines five schedules to classify
(13:26):
drugs based on their medical application and potential for abuse.
Schedule one drugs are considered the most dangerous, as they
purportedly pose a very high risk for addiction with little
evidence of medical benefits. They also come with the longest
prison sentence. Schedule one was supposed to be a temporary
placeholder for cannabis, and even a Nixon appointed committee advised
(13:50):
that cannabis should not be a Schedule one. They didn't
know what to do with cannabis, so initially they put
it in Schedule one with the agreement that they were
going to appoint a committee to research cannabis and report
back to Congress as to where it really should be scheduled.
That committee appointed by Nixon was headed by Schaeffer. Now
(14:12):
that's Raymond Schaeffer, a Republican who had served in the
Senate and was the former governor of Pennsylvania. And the
Schaeffer Commission to testimony looked at the science on it
and everything, and they came out of the report that
it should not be in Schedule one that the most
dangerous thing about cannabis was getting arrested for it. This
(14:33):
was surprising because nobody expected that result, because this was
a conservative committee that was basically hand picked to come
back and say that it's the evil weed. The report
Schaeffer presented to Congress was called Marijuana a Signal of Misunderstanding,
and in it he calls for the decriminalization of marijuana possession.
It even favored totally ending marijuana prohibition. But then the
(14:56):
White House just ignores it, suppresses the report and pretends
like it never happened. Somewhere I think I heard they
only printed up four hundred copies of it, the minimal allowed,
and that was it. Why was Nixon so anti getting
this information out? Like, what was that stake for him?
I mean, Nixon hated hippies and black people and Jews,
and he was hippies and black people and Jews who
(15:18):
smoked marijuana. Real God fearing Americans drank alcohol. So Harry Anslinger,
the marijuana prohibitionists, got his way. Pot and pot smugglers
like my dad were officially public Enemy number one. I'm
Ramo Valentine, you're listening to disorganized crime we'll be right back.
(15:47):
This is the environment in which my dad started taking
his smuggling career much more seriously, when marijuana had been
totally vilified, even though a Republican Commission chairman reported that
the most dangerous thing about marijuana was getting arrested for it.
Over the next two years, Dad's building up his business.
(16:09):
How any freelancer will tell you, business is based on
who you know. And for the next few years, my
dad got to know more peeps and Marine in San
Francisco through his partner, my mom. He met people through
music bands like The Grateful Dead. He was part of
a weekly poker game with Elton Kelly, Stanley, Mouse, David Gets,
and Big Daddy Tom donaghue, the rock and roll record producer,
(16:29):
promoter and rock and roll disc jockey. Anyway, Big Daddy
Tom Donahue had a Mill Valley mansion with a non
stop party twenty four seven, and my parents would go
hang out, make friends. That's how freelance business works. Biga
New York City transplant amidst the pot industry of Marine County, California,
was a major asset. My dad is a people person
(16:50):
who stays in touch with all his trust to childhood
friends still in New York. They loved getting high, making money,
and turning people on good pot. A thriving smuggling business
for Marinto New York organically evolves. Parents and big sister
moved from San Francisco to San an Salmo and Marin County.
(17:16):
Most of the musicians and big dealers are living in
Marine And as my dad says, he melted into the
scene such a hippy thing to say. I love it.
I being very fortunate in the scene that I came
right into was at the top of the top. So yeah,
I mean I was just introduced to big time people
and so that was that was life in the direction
(17:40):
I guess I chose. Pot was and still is part
of the fabric of the culture of northern California. It's
as common and intrinsic as church is to the South,
film to La or corn to Iowa. So my dad
was getting busier making real money. He did a quick
deal involving pink coke. The manufacturers of the cocaine had
(18:02):
made an error and the entire batch was pink. It
wasn't white. It was so good pink because they had
fucked up how they processed it. Apparently I didn't know
this then, but they're they're, they're, they're presenting it as
rose cocaine, you know whatever. My dad sold a kilo
of rose cooke in one day and made four thousand dollars.
(18:23):
Four thousand dollars in nineteen seventy two is the equivalent
to over twenty four thousand dollars today. This is the
only time my dad says he sold coke. After this experience,
he vowed he'd never do it again because the coke
guys were sketchy. So the smuggler and I, he really
loved that I got rid of it. The next thing
he did was invite me down to He was from
(18:45):
La so he says, hey, come on down, we'll talk
about more stuff. What I do remember is going down
there and staying at his house and sleeping over it,
and in the middle of the fucking night, he comes
roaring through carrying a gun because he thought he heard
somebody fucking coming through the door, which he didn't. Nothing happened,
(19:06):
but that that was it for me, you know intern,
Holy shit, guns, fuck this. And all these guys involved
in this whole scene were older guys. They all scared
me anyway, because they were adults and these are not
my These are not people I want to be around.
You're dealing with guns, you know. Fuck this? Yeah, your
(19:28):
world was not good. Integrity, handshakes, friendship, music, well, so
to speak. Listen, there were plenty of pot dealers who
were major fucking Slee's bag assholes. Also, I mean there
was lots of money rolling around, and consequently, you know,
good people were good people and bad people were just
(19:49):
But I very clearly you know that was it for me.
Side note, Pot being a schedule one drug feels so ridiculous,
a complete odds with a collective opinion of my parents,
my parents, friends, and my friend's parents, also known as
the Psychedelic Pioneers aka the counterculture Insider, because all hippie
elders agree that cocaine and heroine destroyed the joyful, peace
(20:12):
loving world famous San Francisco counterculture scene. So you saw
the scene, the music scene destroy destroying by artistic heroes,
by cocaine and hard drugs. Yeah, hard drugs, cocaine and
hard drugs. Of all these people who were all these
you know, I look at the whole what I look
back on now and look at what happened in San Francisco,
(20:35):
and this whole thing exploded and then got destroyed. It
exploded with acid, exploded positively and amazingly with acid, and
it was completely poisoned by hard drugs, which was despicable.
We listened to the dead behind the backstage, and the
(20:55):
cocaine was disgusting, and you know, and it was all
the shit. I grew up with very strong anti cocaine
and anti heroine rule drug rules, no cokeer heroine. But
you can totally smoke pot or like lsd yes just
come to us mushrooms. Great division quest Back to pot.
It's nineteen seventy three and my parents are living in
(21:17):
Mill Valley near the library. They're a house up a
steep hill with over fifty steps to the front door.
A load called lime green Mexican comes in and Dad remembers,
the lime green is wonderful pot. Lots of pot that
flowed in was like it. Literally they called it bricks
because they were they were pressed. So it was such
(21:38):
poor pot to begin with, and it was pressed in
these presses that came in bricks, so you'd have a
two pound brick. So it ran the gamut of quality
and quality control was really important, and at that point
in life and time fifty years ago, the most popular
(21:59):
we all knew of and liked was a very light
green lime green Mexican sativa. It was light, it was
almost gold green, and was a very nice uphead with
no physical characteristics. So that was like the legendary lime green.
My dad remembers hauling fifty pound bales of lime green
(22:21):
Mexican up the fifty plus steps to the front door.
He did at least five hundred pounds of lime green,
so that's a lot of steps. I remember carrying these
giant garbage bags, fifty pound bales up to the house
and then it'd be rolling out. But because of where
we lived, nobody could see it anyway, and it was
on a quiet, secluded street even though it was close
(22:41):
right downtown. So these bales would move up, they'd move down.
It was very funny, you know, jeez. I go back
to that time, I'm twenty six years old or twenty seven,
twenty six, twenty seven, you know it, gentle times and
lovely pot and just living in that same year, in
(23:11):
nineteen seventy three, my dad lands his biggest trip so far,
remember trips or deals from start to finish. It's the
big Panama Read trip. This trip, my dad moves the
seven hundred pounds of Colombian pot. So my parents named
this load Panama Read, which was a kind of generic
term for various kinds of pot. Panama Read was later
made famous by a song written by Peter Rowan in
(23:33):
nineteen seventy three Animal on his later on at summer
(23:57):
camp in the nineteen eighties, Peter Rowan showed up and
he taught Panama Read to all the campers, and of
course I took it literally. I thought it was about
a cowboy. It's a pretty good song. It's pretty catchy.
Now here's how the first Panama Red trip worked. It's
nineteen seventy three. My mom is pregnant with me, my
big sister is between four and five, and my dad
(24:17):
gets a hold of seven hundred pounds of pot from
a Big Bay area smuggler. They're living and working out
of the rental Mill Valley house with the fifty plus
steps to the front door. My dad met the Brooklyn
Boys through Nicki Sunshine, the East Coast Acid King, and
the Brooklyn Boys would come over, pay my dad for
the product and take it to New York City in
(24:39):
big old cars with big trunks, Chevies or Plymouths. They
would buy it outright, drive it to New York City,
and then come back for more. The first Panama Red
trip of seven hundred pounds earns my parents fifteen thousand dollars,
which is the equivalent to more than eighty two thousand
dollars today. So my dad is working with people who
(24:59):
are surprisingly organized for disorganized crime and meticulous. Each box
is expertly packaged and exactly ten pounds. Just love this
pot because it was beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and it was
really upper stuff. It was just very pretty stuff, well
well manicured, well manicured into little buds, and they it
(25:22):
smelled beautiful, It smelled like chocolate. And it was so consistent,
which is a pretty unusual thing with hippies doing pot trips.
Consistency is not what they were known for in the
early days, necessarily, and so we ended I ended up
doing seven hundred pounds of it. I remember these numbers
(25:43):
because it was that was a lot of it seemed
like a really pretty good amount of pot. Explain how
this happened and where you picked it up? How did
you get it? I don' understand right. So there's fishing
all over the West coast, so fishing fishing boats and
then fishermen. Different of these guys are approached and a
(26:03):
main boat would come up and be thirty miles fifty
miles offshore, and then a smaller fishing boat would meet
it wherever and off float onto the smaller boat. You
could fit ten thousand pounds on not huge boats. It's
good size, but not huge boats. So when it came
(26:24):
off the boats onto the trucks, it would go to
a central warehouse generally, unless it was so big it
had to go to several different warehouses. And then from
there I would be dealing with people who had who
were at that step who had to warehouses and then
moved to meet or others like it. To celebrate the
(26:52):
completion of the first Panama Red Trip, my parents embark
on a vacation to Hawaii and leave five year old
verticat Grandma's house. Giddy on financial success, they splurge on
a helicopter ride from Mill Valley to the San Francisco Airport.
It's about a forty minute drive from Mill Valley to
the airport without traffic. Who takes a helicopter for that
(27:15):
short a journey. Well, that's exactly what the helicopter meet
and greeters thought. Anyone taking a helicopter has to have
a lot of money. And my twenty seven year old
dad doesn't look like an old moneyed Californian with his
giant jewfro an ARTSI handembridered cowboy shirt and leather fringe jacket. Oh,
he was clearly part of the bohemian hippie counterculture. Okay,
(27:38):
so my dad is psyched for Hawaii and he decides
to bring some party favors with him on this trip. Yeah,
I thought, okay, well I'll bring a little bit with me,
and I brought, oh, I don't know, a couple of
grams of pot and a couple of capsules of mescaline
and maybe a tiny amount of hash. And I actually
(28:01):
I wrapped it all up and I hid it in
a nut cracker doll. Who brings the nutcracker doll to Hawaii?
I mean absurd? Right, Well, there are a lot of
macadamia nuts in Hawaii. A holiday nutcracker is never on
anyone's tropical vacation packing list. So my parents get off
the helicopter, walk into the terminal and encounter some bad luck.
(28:23):
We land at the airport and walk into the terminal
and there's there's this place there where they they're absolutely
going through your luggage like you just got back from
from the Golden Triangle or something like that. I mean,
they're they're inspecting it, like you're going through customs from
(28:45):
who knows where. They're going through my luggage and they
find this thing and they open it and they and
they open it and what's this? I don't know, you
know what you're supposed to say? It's drugs? They say, okay,
young man, welcome with us. So Taffy is is what watching?
While I'm getting busted. I hold my dad off in
(29:08):
handcuffs as my mom watches from the other side of security.
My mom pops to action and calls her rockstar pot
lawyer and the bail bondsman. Okay, So, after successfully smuggling
almost a ton of pot across the country, my dad
gets busted on his home turf for a couple of
grams of pot and a few hits of mescaline, which
is a nature forward psychedelic drive from Poti. I just
(29:30):
finished selling seven hundred pounds and I get busted for
two grams. That is dodging a bullet. My friend I
ended up having to I pled guilty to some misdemeanor
pot But they started out by wanting a felony for
the psychedelics, for the one capsule of mescaline or something
(29:54):
like that, and eventually a deal was cut to where
I would get four weekends in the Redwood City jail.
My dad gets sentenced to four weekends in jail, which
I didn't know was the thing, but yes, it is
jail on the weekends. It's like a month long weekend workshop,
(30:14):
but you go to jail instead of the ceramics studio.
I'm making shop or writing a retreats. When I served
the sentence, I would Taffy would drive me down and
I check into the jail. I would take I can't
remember if I would get so stoned or some sleeping
pills or something. The place was like a zoo. They
put me in this tank with all these mother rapers
(30:37):
and father rapers, and you know, and here I am
there and I didn't even talk to these people. And
I guess there were bunks in the place, but the
place was so crawling with people. They left the lights
on all the time, and I didn't have a bunk.
I ended up sleeping on the dining table. And the
(30:58):
fucking guards they were really assholes. They would I was
supposed to get out at six o'clock on Sunday evening,
and they would fuck around and they just sort of
played games, and I got out whenever. It was maybe
an hour later, half an hour later, and Taffy would
be waiting down in the middle of Redwood City at
(31:19):
the jail. Whatever you go, gets Chinese food in the
city on the way home. Probably this is a very happy,
go lucky story the way my dad tells it. And
in the next twenty years, my dad's smuggling career grows,
along with increasingly serious prison sentences for pot. Pot sentencing
laws and my dad are like contrary fraternal twins, both
(31:42):
growing in the pot industry in totally opposite ways. The
more successful my dad grows as a pot smuggler, the
more serious the pot laws grow. You're listening to Disorganized Crime.
I'm Rainbow Valentine. We'll be right back. Despite these arrests
(32:11):
and the ever looming war on drugs, my dad made
the choice to remain a smuggler. It came with enormous risks,
but it was lucrative, flexible, and fun. Now, the main
reason my dad gives for working as a pot smuggler
is freedom, and the prevailing philosophy in our household of
(32:31):
freelancers is that money is freedom. My dad and his
smuggling associates were driven by an even bigger force in
their line of work. Money is enticing. But the children
of the nineteen sixties counterculture felt betrayed by the US government,
a feeling kindled by the ongoing Vietnam War and fed
by what they saw as the government's hypocrisy and antagonism.
(32:54):
So my mom told me this hilarious story getting an
insider's perspective into the FBI in the sixties. One time
I picked up an FBI agent in Chinatown in a bar.
If you could believe this, this is a story I
am here. Yeah, it's like one of the times I
was living alone, and so I picked him up and
took him home. Right, he had a trench coat. What
(33:17):
was under the trench coat though, that was the real question.
Close he had close up. But this was like nineteen
sixty six and during that time, and he told, you know,
we had a trist and then he told me that
he worked for this this government, and that you know,
there were rooms and rooms of people listening with like
(33:40):
microphones to everything going on, and there was a surveillance
going on. So that sinched it for me, because this
guy was a real guy. It wasn't like the village
voice telling you that shit was happening. It was this
real guy telling me that like shit was happening. That
was the only time I picked up a guy in
a bar, though. I want to tell you, my parents
(34:02):
also saw many of their peers sent of Vietnam or
they both felt was pointless, classist and maliciously dishonest. Dennis
McNally or in nineteen sixties counterculture historian from last episode,
So this really potent thing about anger and the bitterness
of the nineteen sixties youth and the counterculture. What happened
in the nineteen sixties was that there are four or
(34:25):
five things that, whether you're conscious of it or not,
as an American, you're taught to believe in. One of them,
for instance, is that America is uniquely great and wonderful
and can do no wrong and if it's American, it's good.
So yeah, that more comes in on all this because
(34:48):
remember in the nineteen sixties, when I was getting ready
to go to college and going to college and facing
the draft. I was the son of a military veteran,
as most people of my age, because most Americans who
were service age in the nineteen forties served in World
(35:08):
War Two and defeated a really horrible foe, and we're
very proud of that as well they should do. And
the fact is that the assumption was that if America
was going to go to war, that it was necessary.
And that's what got Lyndon Johnson in deep, deep trouble
my fellow Americans. Not long ago, I received a letter
(35:32):
from a woman in the Midwest. She wrote, very muster, President,
in my humble way, I am writing to you about
the crisis in Vietnam. I have a son who is
now in Vietnam. My husband served in World War Two.
Our country was at war. But now this time it's
(35:57):
just something that I don't understand. This is President Lyndon B.
Johnson's news conference from nineteen sixty five, where he's defending
the Vietnam War. Why most young Americans born into a
land exultant with hope and with golden promise toil and
suffer and sometimes die in such a remote and distant place.
(36:24):
The answer, like the war itself, is not an easy one.
We have learned at a terrible and a brutal cost
that retreat does not bring safety, and weakness does not
bring peace. Lennon Johnson decided that he couldn't lose a war,
(36:48):
and that the idea that America could lose. So he
kept putting more and more resources in the Vietnam, and
it became more and more obvious that he was rung
and that a we weren't going to win the war,
we had a business being in the war, and so
forth and so on. So if you're a teenager in
(37:09):
the nineteen sixties and you suddenly discover that, gee, the
government's been lying to us, and then you are forced
you're you're forced to start challenging all kinds of assumptions.
One of them is that all drugs are bad, right,
That was one of the messages from America. And you know,
(37:30):
people tried pot and I went jeeus makes me eat
a lot of ice cream. But other than that, you
know where I don't quite see the damage share And
that that that left us with um an enormous gap
in belief in challenging the you know, the the traditional
(37:51):
American beliefs. My parents grew up in Harry An Slinger's America.
Remember he was the guy who spread the antimerajuana propaganda
after prohibition, but their personal drug experiences were the opposite
of what the government asserted was the truth about marijuana.
I could say, oh, drugs changed my life. They did,
(38:12):
but absolutely positively. It opened my eyes to seeing that
there was more to the real world, to the real world,
not to some pollucinatory other world. More to the real
world than just the experience of being where you are
right at that moment. It brought out as end quality
(38:35):
of going inside and not outside and letting your boundaries disappear.
I think it opened up life into art. Thought it
was soothing in a sea of chaos because it was
very just. Life is chaos, life is very fearful. During
(38:57):
a nineteen ninety four interview, President Nixon's domestic policy chief
John Erlickman suggested the War on drugs campaign had ulterior motives.
Keep in mind, Erlickman did have a complicated relationship with Nixon.
Nixon was immediately pardoned for Watergate, and Erlickman ended up
in prison for a year and a half. However, in
(39:19):
the interview published in Harper's magazine, Erlickman explained that the
Nixon campaign had two enemies. Erlichman is quoted as saying,
the anti war left and black people. We knew we
couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war
or black. But by getting the public to associate the
hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing
(39:43):
both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest
their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and
vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did
we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course
we did. Now. My dad and most of his smuggling
(40:03):
colleagues felt and still feel their work was honorable. They
felt deceived by the government. To them, the government was
the bad guy. So if they're subverting the bad guy,
what harm are they actually doing. I think the government's
success and rightful righteousness in World War Two led to hubris,
(40:27):
and hubris leads to a desire for more power, and
power corrupts, so corruption leads to a pushback at some point,
because energy isn't stagnant. It ebbs and flows, pulses, moves
like a fractal laser hippie light show. There is cause
and effect in a never ending game of ping pong.
So let's find out how the energy moved in my
(40:49):
dad's industry. So now it's the early seventies. My dad
has a life partner, a little kid, his partner's pregnant,
and he's in his late twenties. He's been doing small
to medium deals with anywhere from fifty to a couple
thousand pounds a pot, storing merchandise in the house, and
working with whoever comes along, people who might be sloppy, careless, stoned,
(41:13):
or all three. He's been a kid and treating the
business like a breezy lemonade stand childishly. But in nineteen
seventy four, on the dark and stormy night, when my
parents lost all their money but gained a child me,
my dad knew he had to change careers or change
his business model. I lost my complete completely lost my
(41:36):
self esteem. Taffy and I split up. I thought I
was so worthless and I failed and I failed my family,
you know. Coming up in episode four, my dad loses
everything and is forced to rebuild. I'm Rainbow Valentine and
you're listening to Disorganized Crime. Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter is
(41:58):
written and recorded by Me Rainbow Valentine. Our producers are
Gabby Watts and Taylor Church. Exactly To producers are Brandon Barr,
Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley and Me at School of Humans,
and Connell Burn and Charles Bryant at iHeartRadio. Our music
is by Gabby Lala and Claire Campbell, with original theme
by Mark Karen and Me. Special thanks to Peter Rowan
(42:20):
for the use of his song Panama Red. You can
follow us online at Disorganized Crime podcast dot com. Right
novel the story Do It As with Me Tam by
Stephen Princess of the Red Dreams, Keep It Real, Handshake,
(42:45):
Seals the Deal, Wrap the Stack, the seal of the Meal,
and Going Up. These are gold in a Doobie, Young,
Rich and Groovey Making it Up. We rold along in
(43:05):
Love Fower Country Roll, Rolling Love fer Country Roll, Rolling
Love Far Country Roll
School of Humans. Do you want to join me here?
Whence you be seated, please, Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to summarize for you the meeting that
I have just had with the bipartisan leaders, which began
at eight o'clock and was completed two hours later. I
began the meeting by making this statement, which I think
(00:29):
needs to be made to the nation. America's public enemy
number one in the United States is drug abuse. In
order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary
to wage a new, all out offensive. Depending on your
(00:51):
age or interest in history, that voice and speech may
sound familiar to you. This is a press conference with
President Richard Nixon, also known as Tricky Dickey. Nixon was
elected president in nineteen sixty eight, and in June of
seventy one, Nixon declares public enemy number one drug abuse.
Drugs and the people who distribute them are the most
(01:13):
dangerous enemies to the public. The war on drugs has begun. Now,
drugs are put into categories based on how dangerous they
are thought to be LSD and pot. The foundations of
the psychedelic Revolution of the nineteen sixties are considered the
most Dangerous Schedule one. So Nixon increases federal funding for
(01:39):
drug control agencies and proposes super strict measures like mandatory
prison sentencing for drug crimes. Nixon also creates the d EA,
the Drug Enforcement Administration in nineteen seventy three. And in
the middle of it all is my dad building up
his smuggling business in Marine County, California. This is disorganized crime.
(02:00):
I'm your host, Rainbow Valentine do Young, free and groovy,
making it up. We rolled along, rolling along far Country,
(02:26):
the Golden Ganging Dot, New York State, making it up
as we roll. It's the summer of nineteen seventy three
(02:47):
and we are living in Mill Valley. You're nestled in
the red wood. Just a hot producer tip. When you
blow your nose, put some space between the storytelling and
the nose blowing so I can cut it out. I
didn't even think about That's why, ah, Dad. One day
we'll figure out how to record perfectly. So in nineteen
(03:11):
seventy one, when Nixon declares the war on drug dealers
and drug abuse, my dad has been living with my
mom and her small daughter, Vertica for a while, taking
on the role of father and he needs to start
providing for his new family. Anyway, I needed to make money.
I wanted to make money, and so I started doing
smaller time deals ten pounds of this or twenty pounds
(03:33):
of that or whatever. And so if you're doing it's
quite a small time selling a satchel here, say it, right,
you know, a box full of ten pounds of this
or and you'd sell it? Announces maybe, no, never, I
didn't do that, but I would sell at least a
pound that. It's you're still sort of larger. You're never small, right.
He goes over to a dealer's house who is the
(03:54):
boyfriend of one of my mom's North Beach belly dancer
friends from the early sixties. Now, this guy sells pot,
acid coke. He's a reasonable sized dealer. My dad's at
his house and he and a bunch of other smuggler
type guys and music guys are playing cards when and
there's a knock on the door, and all of a sudden, well,
these cops come busting in. So they arrest me, along
(04:17):
with everybody else, and my dad has a gram of
coke in the pocket of his sergeant Pepperesque jacket, which
was a gift from the film producers of Alice's Restaurant,
Arlo Guthrie's nineteen sixty nine cult classic that my Dad
was an extra. Luckily, the coat is hanging on the rack,
(04:39):
so when it's seized by the cops, my dad is
literally not in possession of any drugs. Dad sacrifices his
precious coat in exchange for freedom, and to this day,
he still misses it and I always look for it
in the San Francisco thrift's stores. My dad and the
rest of the gang are hauled down to the jailhouse,
but the cops let him go with a warning that
(05:00):
he'll get a summons. Says he didn't have any drugs
directly on him. He was just hanging out with a
drug dealer, and luckily Dad and I former filmmaker and
candlemaker from New York, was in a relationship with one
of the most well connected people in San Francisco, my mom.
My mom was a quiet, beautiful powerhouse in the inner
(05:21):
circle of the San Francisco music scene. At this point,
she's a jeweler for San Francisco rock Stars. She knew
everyone in the San Francisco sixty scene. From the rock
stars to the smugglers, to the lawyers, because all she
knew was huge time lawyers. She didn't know he's small time. No, no,
she didn't, right, she knew all these guys, these guys
(05:42):
who represented yeah, smugglers busted for five thousand pounds of
pot or whatever it was, or this or that. Now,
even though he got off, this arrest taught my dad
an important lesson. If he was going to be a smuggler,
he had to start taking it much more seriously and
become a true professional, you know, and now and talking
(06:03):
about it, I could say, Okay, you've been You've given
up your child stuff. I was conscious enough to learn
to be aware and cautious about parts of things. Getting
busted is a smuggler's worst nightmare, and in the early
seventies it becomes a much more common experience because Nixon
has declared drugs public Enemy number one. Remember, just a
(06:28):
few years ago, LST was perfectly legal, but now busting
drugs and smugglers is an American priority. They are the enemy.
In order to defeat this enemy, which is causing such
great concern, and correctly so, to so many American families,
money will be provided to the extent that it is necessary,
(06:50):
under the extent that it will be useful. The criminalization
of pot has a very long and very deliberate history.
It started in the early nineteen thirties at the end
of alcohol prohibition, and it leads to today when pot
is categorized as a Schedule one drug. Schedule one drugs
are substances, chemicals, and drugs that are defined as drugs
(07:13):
with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential
for abuse. Incredibly, cocaine and methamphetamine also known as crystal meth,
are Scheduled two. One of the leading experts on the
(07:34):
history of pot criminalization is my dad's friend, Bill Panzer.
Bill Panzer has practiced law in California for over twenty
five years and has been my dad's go to pot
attorney since his longtime attorney, civil rights activist Bernie Siegel,
passed away. Cannabis has been used, you know, for five
thousand years, at least met medicinally, and in this country.
(07:55):
What happened was, you know, we had alcohol prohibition in
the nineteen twenties, and when that got repealed, there was
a guy named Harry Anslinger who had been working on
alcohol prohibition for the federal government helping to enforce alcohol prohibition,
and when that was repealed, he was appointed head of
(08:15):
the Bureau of Narcotics, which is the forerunner of today's
DA Viewer of Narcotics. As a small, little federal agency,
didn't have much of budget, didn't have much power, and
he basically wanted to have a job for himself, so
he decided that since alcohol prohibition been repealed, he was
(08:36):
going to go after cannabis when alcohol is re legalized.
This guy, Harry Anslinger, the former prohibition enforcer, was probably
concerned about his job security and he purportedly starts spreading
fictional stories about pot, allegedly with the help of William
Randolph Hurst, the newspaper baron and purveyor of yellow journalism,
which is journalism based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration. Now,
(09:00):
according to many historians, billionaire Hurst was on board to
help spread lies about pot all things pot related because
Hurst had invested heavily in the timber industry in order
to make his newspapers, and hemp fiber was proving to
be more durable and a cheaper way to make paper
than timber. Not cool for timber investments. So he and
(09:21):
his newspapers allegedly become instrumental in spreading graphic, histrionic, murder
rape stories about cannabis. These high school boys and girls
are having a hop at the local soda fountain. Innocently,
they dance, innocent of a new and deadly menace lurking
behind closed doors, marijuana, the burning weed when its roots
(09:45):
in hell. Now. The most famous piece of antiweed propaganda
is Reefer Madness, which is actually quite amusing. The nineteen
thirty six film is a megamelodrama about pot smoking high
schoolers whose theatrical descent into pot smoking addiction includes hit
and run, rape, murder, suicide, hallucinations in total madness Smoky
(10:07):
with the sole destroying refer they find a moment's pleasure,
but at a terrible price debt, violence, murder, suicide. With
help from the nation's newspaper billionaire Baron, all Harry ann
Slinger has to do is convince states to pass anti
(10:29):
cannabis laws, because at the time, the Fed still don't
have the power to do that. So in the nineteen thirties,
Harry embarks on a ruthless anti marijuana pr campaign, starting
in the Southwest. At that time, cannabis was usually known
as hamp or India hamp or cannabis, and he started
in the Southwest, where they were prejudiced against the Mexican
(10:51):
migrant farm workers who called it marijuana. He with the
help of William Randolph Hurst, who made up these stories
about like Mexican farm workers that would smoke the marijuana
and then rape the farmer's daughter and chop up the
farmer and his family would hatchet. They started making up
these stories and putting them in the local papers to
(11:12):
try and drum up, you know, anti Mexican, discriminatory kind
of attitudes and get behind making marijuana illegal. I have
some friends who insist on calling pot cannabis. They never
used the word marijuana, And when Bill told me about
Harry's very intentional smear campaign, I understood why marijuana is
(11:34):
a word specifically chosen to spread and incite racism. Now,
while they couldn't make cannabis illegal, Harry and Slinger and
his growing team of cannabis prohibition enthusiasts found ways to
make it impossible for people to legally possess it. Nineteen
(11:55):
thirty seven, they came up with this great idea that
although we can't make marijuana illegal. We can set up
attack and require people have tax stamps and then just
not print any tax stamps. That was the first attempt
to make it federally illegal, and that stood until I
(12:15):
believe it was nineteen sixty eight. In nineteen sixty eight,
Tim Leary got busted driving into the United States in
his Volkswagen with his family from Mexico. They had a
little bit of weed on them. Ah. This is the
same Timothy Leary, former Harvard professor drug activist Millbrook affiliated
LSD pioneer who we talked about in the last episode. Okay,
(12:40):
So Leary gets arrested and takes this case to the
Supreme Court, stating that the nineteen thirty seven Marijuana Tax
Act is unconstitutional. Leary challenged the Marijuana Tax Act and said,
it requires you to incriminate yourself, requires me to self
declare that I am growing or possessing cannabis, and that
(13:01):
would violate the Fifth Amendment. And the Supreme Court agreed
and knocked out the Tax Act of nineteen thirty seven,
and in response to that, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act.
President Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act CSA into law
in nineteen seventy calling for the regulation of certain drugs
and substances. Now, the CSA outlines five schedules to classify
(13:26):
drugs based on their medical application and potential for abuse.
Schedule one drugs are considered the most dangerous, as they
purportedly pose a very high risk for addiction with little
evidence of medical benefits. They also come with the longest
prison sentence. Schedule one was supposed to be a temporary
placeholder for cannabis, and even a Nixon appointed committee advised
(13:50):
that cannabis should not be a Schedule one. They didn't
know what to do with cannabis, so initially they put
it in Schedule one with the agreement that they were
going to appoint a committee to research cannabis and report
back to Congress as to where it really should be scheduled.
That committee appointed by Nixon was headed by Schaeffer. Now
(14:12):
that's Raymond Schaeffer, a Republican who had served in the
Senate and was the former governor of Pennsylvania. And the
Schaeffer Commission to testimony looked at the science on it
and everything, and they came out of the report that
it should not be in Schedule one that the most
dangerous thing about cannabis was getting arrested for it. This
(14:33):
was surprising because nobody expected that result, because this was
a conservative committee that was basically hand picked to come
back and say that it's the evil weed. The report
Schaeffer presented to Congress was called Marijuana a Signal of Misunderstanding,
and in it he calls for the decriminalization of marijuana possession.
It even favored totally ending marijuana prohibition. But then the
(14:56):
White House just ignores it, suppresses the report and pretends
like it never happened. Somewhere I think I heard they
only printed up four hundred copies of it, the minimal allowed,
and that was it. Why was Nixon so anti getting
this information out? Like, what was that stake for him?
I mean, Nixon hated hippies and black people and Jews,
and he was hippies and black people and Jews who
(15:18):
smoked marijuana. Real God fearing Americans drank alcohol. So Harry Anslinger,
the marijuana prohibitionists, got his way. Pot and pot smugglers
like my dad were officially public Enemy number one. I'm
Ramo Valentine, you're listening to disorganized crime we'll be right back.
(15:47):
This is the environment in which my dad started taking
his smuggling career much more seriously, when marijuana had been
totally vilified, even though a Republican Commission chairman reported that
the most dangerous thing about marijuana was getting arrested for it.
Over the next two years, Dad's building up his business.
(16:09):
How any freelancer will tell you, business is based on
who you know. And for the next few years, my
dad got to know more peeps and Marine in San
Francisco through his partner, my mom. He met people through
music bands like The Grateful Dead. He was part of
a weekly poker game with Elton Kelly, Stanley, Mouse, David Gets,
and Big Daddy Tom donaghue, the rock and roll record producer,
(16:29):
promoter and rock and roll disc jockey. Anyway, Big Daddy
Tom Donahue had a Mill Valley mansion with a non
stop party twenty four seven, and my parents would go
hang out, make friends. That's how freelance business works. Biga
New York City transplant amidst the pot industry of Marine County, California,
was a major asset. My dad is a people person
(16:50):
who stays in touch with all his trust to childhood
friends still in New York. They loved getting high, making money,
and turning people on good pot. A thriving smuggling business
for Marinto New York organically evolves. Parents and big sister
moved from San Francisco to San an Salmo and Marin County.
(17:16):
Most of the musicians and big dealers are living in
Marine And as my dad says, he melted into the
scene such a hippy thing to say. I love it.
I being very fortunate in the scene that I came
right into was at the top of the top. So yeah,
I mean I was just introduced to big time people
and so that was that was life in the direction
(17:40):
I guess I chose. Pot was and still is part
of the fabric of the culture of northern California. It's
as common and intrinsic as church is to the South,
film to La or corn to Iowa. So my dad
was getting busier making real money. He did a quick
deal involving pink coke. The manufacturers of the cocaine had
(18:02):
made an error and the entire batch was pink. It
wasn't white. It was so good pink because they had
fucked up how they processed it. Apparently I didn't know
this then, but they're they're, they're, they're presenting it as
rose cocaine, you know whatever. My dad sold a kilo
of rose cooke in one day and made four thousand dollars.
(18:23):
Four thousand dollars in nineteen seventy two is the equivalent
to over twenty four thousand dollars today. This is the
only time my dad says he sold coke. After this experience,
he vowed he'd never do it again because the coke
guys were sketchy. So the smuggler and I, he really
loved that I got rid of it. The next thing
he did was invite me down to He was from
(18:45):
La so he says, hey, come on down, we'll talk
about more stuff. What I do remember is going down
there and staying at his house and sleeping over it,
and in the middle of the fucking night, he comes
roaring through carrying a gun because he thought he heard
somebody fucking coming through the door, which he didn't. Nothing happened,
(19:06):
but that that was it for me, you know intern,
Holy shit, guns, fuck this. And all these guys involved
in this whole scene were older guys. They all scared
me anyway, because they were adults and these are not
my These are not people I want to be around.
You're dealing with guns, you know. Fuck this? Yeah, your
(19:28):
world was not good. Integrity, handshakes, friendship, music, well, so
to speak. Listen, there were plenty of pot dealers who
were major fucking Slee's bag assholes. Also, I mean there
was lots of money rolling around, and consequently, you know,
good people were good people and bad people were just
(19:49):
But I very clearly you know that was it for me.
Side note, Pot being a schedule one drug feels so ridiculous,
a complete odds with a collective opinion of my parents,
my parents, friends, and my friend's parents, also known as
the Psychedelic Pioneers aka the counterculture Insider, because all hippie
elders agree that cocaine and heroine destroyed the joyful, peace
(20:12):
loving world famous San Francisco counterculture scene. So you saw
the scene, the music scene destroy destroying by artistic heroes,
by cocaine and hard drugs. Yeah, hard drugs, cocaine and
hard drugs. Of all these people who were all these
you know, I look at the whole what I look
back on now and look at what happened in San Francisco,
(20:35):
and this whole thing exploded and then got destroyed. It
exploded with acid, exploded positively and amazingly with acid, and
it was completely poisoned by hard drugs, which was despicable.
We listened to the dead behind the backstage, and the
(20:55):
cocaine was disgusting, and you know, and it was all
the shit. I grew up with very strong anti cocaine
and anti heroine rule drug rules, no cokeer heroine. But
you can totally smoke pot or like lsd yes just
come to us mushrooms. Great division quest Back to pot.
It's nineteen seventy three and my parents are living in
(21:17):
Mill Valley near the library. They're a house up a
steep hill with over fifty steps to the front door.
A load called lime green Mexican comes in and Dad remembers,
the lime green is wonderful pot. Lots of pot that
flowed in was like it. Literally they called it bricks
because they were they were pressed. So it was such
(21:38):
poor pot to begin with, and it was pressed in
these presses that came in bricks, so you'd have a
two pound brick. So it ran the gamut of quality
and quality control was really important, and at that point
in life and time fifty years ago, the most popular
(21:59):
we all knew of and liked was a very light
green lime green Mexican sativa. It was light, it was
almost gold green, and was a very nice uphead with
no physical characteristics. So that was like the legendary lime green.
My dad remembers hauling fifty pound bales of lime green
(22:21):
Mexican up the fifty plus steps to the front door.
He did at least five hundred pounds of lime green,
so that's a lot of steps. I remember carrying these
giant garbage bags, fifty pound bales up to the house
and then it'd be rolling out. But because of where
we lived, nobody could see it anyway, and it was
on a quiet, secluded street even though it was close
(22:41):
right downtown. So these bales would move up, they'd move down.
It was very funny, you know, jeez. I go back
to that time, I'm twenty six years old or twenty seven,
twenty six, twenty seven, you know it, gentle times and
lovely pot and just living in that same year, in
(23:11):
nineteen seventy three, my dad lands his biggest trip so far,
remember trips or deals from start to finish. It's the
big Panama Read trip. This trip, my dad moves the
seven hundred pounds of Colombian pot. So my parents named
this load Panama Read, which was a kind of generic
term for various kinds of pot. Panama Read was later
made famous by a song written by Peter Rowan in
(23:33):
nineteen seventy three Animal on his later on at summer
(23:57):
camp in the nineteen eighties, Peter Rowan showed up and
he taught Panama Read to all the campers, and of
course I took it literally. I thought it was about
a cowboy. It's a pretty good song. It's pretty catchy.
Now here's how the first Panama Red trip worked. It's
nineteen seventy three. My mom is pregnant with me, my
big sister is between four and five, and my dad
(24:17):
gets a hold of seven hundred pounds of pot from
a Big Bay area smuggler. They're living and working out
of the rental Mill Valley house with the fifty plus
steps to the front door. My dad met the Brooklyn
Boys through Nicki Sunshine, the East Coast Acid King, and
the Brooklyn Boys would come over, pay my dad for
the product and take it to New York City in
(24:39):
big old cars with big trunks, Chevies or Plymouths. They
would buy it outright, drive it to New York City,
and then come back for more. The first Panama Red
trip of seven hundred pounds earns my parents fifteen thousand dollars,
which is the equivalent to more than eighty two thousand
dollars today. So my dad is working with people who
(24:59):
are surprisingly organized for disorganized crime and meticulous. Each box
is expertly packaged and exactly ten pounds. Just love this
pot because it was beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and it was
really upper stuff. It was just very pretty stuff, well
well manicured, well manicured into little buds, and they it
(25:22):
smelled beautiful, It smelled like chocolate. And it was so consistent,
which is a pretty unusual thing with hippies doing pot trips.
Consistency is not what they were known for in the
early days, necessarily, and so we ended I ended up
doing seven hundred pounds of it. I remember these numbers
(25:43):
because it was that was a lot of it seemed
like a really pretty good amount of pot. Explain how
this happened and where you picked it up? How did
you get it? I don' understand right. So there's fishing
all over the West coast, so fishing fishing boats and
then fishermen. Different of these guys are approached and a
(26:03):
main boat would come up and be thirty miles fifty
miles offshore, and then a smaller fishing boat would meet
it wherever and off float onto the smaller boat. You
could fit ten thousand pounds on not huge boats. It's
good size, but not huge boats. So when it came
(26:24):
off the boats onto the trucks, it would go to
a central warehouse generally, unless it was so big it
had to go to several different warehouses. And then from
there I would be dealing with people who had who
were at that step who had to warehouses and then
moved to meet or others like it. To celebrate the
(26:52):
completion of the first Panama Red Trip, my parents embark
on a vacation to Hawaii and leave five year old
verticat Grandma's house. Giddy on financial success, they splurge on
a helicopter ride from Mill Valley to the San Francisco Airport.
It's about a forty minute drive from Mill Valley to
the airport without traffic. Who takes a helicopter for that
(27:15):
short a journey. Well, that's exactly what the helicopter meet
and greeters thought. Anyone taking a helicopter has to have
a lot of money. And my twenty seven year old
dad doesn't look like an old moneyed Californian with his
giant jewfro an ARTSI handembridered cowboy shirt and leather fringe jacket. Oh,
he was clearly part of the bohemian hippie counterculture. Okay,
(27:38):
so my dad is psyched for Hawaii and he decides
to bring some party favors with him on this trip. Yeah,
I thought, okay, well I'll bring a little bit with me,
and I brought, oh, I don't know, a couple of
grams of pot and a couple of capsules of mescaline
and maybe a tiny amount of hash. And I actually
(28:01):
I wrapped it all up and I hid it in
a nut cracker doll. Who brings the nutcracker doll to Hawaii?
I mean absurd? Right, Well, there are a lot of
macadamia nuts in Hawaii. A holiday nutcracker is never on
anyone's tropical vacation packing list. So my parents get off
the helicopter, walk into the terminal and encounter some bad luck.
(28:23):
We land at the airport and walk into the terminal
and there's there's this place there where they they're absolutely
going through your luggage like you just got back from
from the Golden Triangle or something like that. I mean,
they're they're inspecting it, like you're going through customs from
(28:45):
who knows where. They're going through my luggage and they
find this thing and they open it and they and
they open it and what's this? I don't know, you
know what you're supposed to say? It's drugs? They say, okay,
young man, welcome with us. So Taffy is is what watching?
While I'm getting busted. I hold my dad off in
(29:08):
handcuffs as my mom watches from the other side of security.
My mom pops to action and calls her rockstar pot
lawyer and the bail bondsman. Okay, So, after successfully smuggling
almost a ton of pot across the country, my dad
gets busted on his home turf for a couple of
grams of pot and a few hits of mescaline, which
is a nature forward psychedelic drive from Poti. I just
(29:30):
finished selling seven hundred pounds and I get busted for
two grams. That is dodging a bullet. My friend I
ended up having to I pled guilty to some misdemeanor
pot But they started out by wanting a felony for
the psychedelics, for the one capsule of mescaline or something
(29:54):
like that, and eventually a deal was cut to where
I would get four weekends in the Redwood City jail.
My dad gets sentenced to four weekends in jail, which
I didn't know was the thing, but yes, it is
jail on the weekends. It's like a month long weekend workshop,
(30:14):
but you go to jail instead of the ceramics studio.
I'm making shop or writing a retreats. When I served
the sentence, I would Taffy would drive me down and
I check into the jail. I would take I can't
remember if I would get so stoned or some sleeping
pills or something. The place was like a zoo. They
put me in this tank with all these mother rapers
(30:37):
and father rapers, and you know, and here I am
there and I didn't even talk to these people. And
I guess there were bunks in the place, but the
place was so crawling with people. They left the lights
on all the time, and I didn't have a bunk.
I ended up sleeping on the dining table. And the
(30:58):
fucking guards they were really assholes. They would I was
supposed to get out at six o'clock on Sunday evening,
and they would fuck around and they just sort of
played games, and I got out whenever. It was maybe
an hour later, half an hour later, and Taffy would
be waiting down in the middle of Redwood City at
(31:19):
the jail. Whatever you go, gets Chinese food in the
city on the way home. Probably this is a very happy,
go lucky story the way my dad tells it. And
in the next twenty years, my dad's smuggling career grows,
along with increasingly serious prison sentences for pot. Pot sentencing
laws and my dad are like contrary fraternal twins, both
(31:42):
growing in the pot industry in totally opposite ways. The
more successful my dad grows as a pot smuggler, the
more serious the pot laws grow. You're listening to Disorganized Crime.
I'm Rainbow Valentine. We'll be right back. Despite these arrests
(32:11):
and the ever looming war on drugs, my dad made
the choice to remain a smuggler. It came with enormous risks,
but it was lucrative, flexible, and fun. Now, the main
reason my dad gives for working as a pot smuggler
is freedom, and the prevailing philosophy in our household of
(32:31):
freelancers is that money is freedom. My dad and his
smuggling associates were driven by an even bigger force in
their line of work. Money is enticing. But the children
of the nineteen sixties counterculture felt betrayed by the US government,
a feeling kindled by the ongoing Vietnam War and fed
by what they saw as the government's hypocrisy and antagonism.
(32:54):
So my mom told me this hilarious story getting an
insider's perspective into the FBI in the sixties. One time
I picked up an FBI agent in Chinatown in a bar.
If you could believe this, this is a story I
am here. Yeah, it's like one of the times I
was living alone, and so I picked him up and
took him home. Right, he had a trench coat. What
(33:17):
was under the trench coat though, that was the real question.
Close he had close up. But this was like nineteen
sixty six and during that time, and he told, you know,
we had a trist and then he told me that
he worked for this this government, and that you know,
there were rooms and rooms of people listening with like
(33:40):
microphones to everything going on, and there was a surveillance
going on. So that sinched it for me, because this
guy was a real guy. It wasn't like the village
voice telling you that shit was happening. It was this
real guy telling me that like shit was happening. That
was the only time I picked up a guy in
a bar, though. I want to tell you, my parents
(34:02):
also saw many of their peers sent of Vietnam or
they both felt was pointless, classist and maliciously dishonest. Dennis
McNally or in nineteen sixties counterculture historian from last episode,
So this really potent thing about anger and the bitterness
of the nineteen sixties youth and the counterculture. What happened
in the nineteen sixties was that there are four or
(34:25):
five things that, whether you're conscious of it or not,
as an American, you're taught to believe in. One of them,
for instance, is that America is uniquely great and wonderful
and can do no wrong and if it's American, it's good.
So yeah, that more comes in on all this because
(34:48):
remember in the nineteen sixties, when I was getting ready
to go to college and going to college and facing
the draft. I was the son of a military veteran,
as most people of my age, because most Americans who
were service age in the nineteen forties served in World
(35:08):
War Two and defeated a really horrible foe, and we're
very proud of that as well they should do. And
the fact is that the assumption was that if America
was going to go to war, that it was necessary.
And that's what got Lyndon Johnson in deep, deep trouble
my fellow Americans. Not long ago, I received a letter
(35:32):
from a woman in the Midwest. She wrote, very muster, President,
in my humble way, I am writing to you about
the crisis in Vietnam. I have a son who is
now in Vietnam. My husband served in World War Two.
Our country was at war. But now this time it's
(35:57):
just something that I don't understand. This is President Lyndon B.
Johnson's news conference from nineteen sixty five, where he's defending
the Vietnam War. Why most young Americans born into a
land exultant with hope and with golden promise toil and
suffer and sometimes die in such a remote and distant place.
(36:24):
The answer, like the war itself, is not an easy one.
We have learned at a terrible and a brutal cost
that retreat does not bring safety, and weakness does not
bring peace. Lennon Johnson decided that he couldn't lose a war,
(36:48):
and that the idea that America could lose. So he
kept putting more and more resources in the Vietnam, and
it became more and more obvious that he was rung
and that a we weren't going to win the war,
we had a business being in the war, and so
forth and so on. So if you're a teenager in
(37:09):
the nineteen sixties and you suddenly discover that, gee, the
government's been lying to us, and then you are forced
you're you're forced to start challenging all kinds of assumptions.
One of them is that all drugs are bad, right,
That was one of the messages from America. And you know,
(37:30):
people tried pot and I went jeeus makes me eat
a lot of ice cream. But other than that, you
know where I don't quite see the damage share And
that that that left us with um an enormous gap
in belief in challenging the you know, the the traditional
(37:51):
American beliefs. My parents grew up in Harry An Slinger's America.
Remember he was the guy who spread the antimerajuana propaganda
after prohibition, but their personal drug experiences were the opposite
of what the government asserted was the truth about marijuana.
I could say, oh, drugs changed my life. They did,
(38:12):
but absolutely positively. It opened my eyes to seeing that
there was more to the real world, to the real world,
not to some pollucinatory other world. More to the real
world than just the experience of being where you are
right at that moment. It brought out as end quality
(38:35):
of going inside and not outside and letting your boundaries disappear.
I think it opened up life into art. Thought it
was soothing in a sea of chaos because it was
very just. Life is chaos, life is very fearful. During
(38:57):
a nineteen ninety four interview, President Nixon's domestic policy chief
John Erlickman suggested the War on drugs campaign had ulterior motives.
Keep in mind, Erlickman did have a complicated relationship with Nixon.
Nixon was immediately pardoned for Watergate, and Erlickman ended up
in prison for a year and a half. However, in
(39:19):
the interview published in Harper's magazine, Erlickman explained that the
Nixon campaign had two enemies. Erlichman is quoted as saying,
the anti war left and black people. We knew we
couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war
or black. But by getting the public to associate the
hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing
(39:43):
both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest
their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and
vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did
we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course
we did. Now. My dad and most of his smuggling
(40:03):
colleagues felt and still feel their work was honorable. They
felt deceived by the government. To them, the government was
the bad guy. So if they're subverting the bad guy,
what harm are they actually doing. I think the government's
success and rightful righteousness in World War Two led to hubris,
(40:27):
and hubris leads to a desire for more power, and
power corrupts, so corruption leads to a pushback at some point,
because energy isn't stagnant. It ebbs and flows, pulses, moves
like a fractal laser hippie light show. There is cause
and effect in a never ending game of ping pong.
So let's find out how the energy moved in my
(40:49):
dad's industry. So now it's the early seventies. My dad
has a life partner, a little kid, his partner's pregnant,
and he's in his late twenties. He's been doing small
to medium deals with anywhere from fifty to a couple
thousand pounds a pot, storing merchandise in the house, and
working with whoever comes along, people who might be sloppy, careless, stoned,
(41:13):
or all three. He's been a kid and treating the
business like a breezy lemonade stand childishly. But in nineteen
seventy four, on the dark and stormy night, when my
parents lost all their money but gained a child me,
my dad knew he had to change careers or change
his business model. I lost my complete completely lost my
(41:36):
self esteem. Taffy and I split up. I thought I
was so worthless and I failed and I failed my family,
you know. Coming up in episode four, my dad loses
everything and is forced to rebuild. I'm Rainbow Valentine and
you're listening to Disorganized Crime. Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter is
(41:58):
written and recorded by Me Rainbow Valentine. Our producers are
Gabby Watts and Taylor Church. Exactly To producers are Brandon Barr,
Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley and Me at School of Humans,
and Connell Burn and Charles Bryant at iHeartRadio. Our music
is by Gabby Lala and Claire Campbell, with original theme
by Mark Karen and Me. Special thanks to Peter Rowan
(42:20):
for the use of his song Panama Red. You can
follow us online at Disorganized Crime podcast dot com. Right
novel the story Do It As with Me Tam by
Stephen Princess of the Red Dreams, Keep It Real, Handshake,
(42:45):
Seals the Deal, Wrap the Stack, the seal of the Meal,
and Going Up. These are gold in a Doobie, Young,
Rich and Groovey Making it Up. We rold along in
(43:05):
Love Fower Country Roll, Rolling Love fer Country Roll, Rolling
Love Far Country Roll
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