Smuggler: A true story of marijuana, the hippie mafia and one of America's most wanted international drug traffickers

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Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of drug kingpins. He was a clean-cut college student who fell in love with the adrenaline high of cross-border drug trafficking after bringing two kilos of marijuana across the US border from a trip to Mexico. He never looked back. Stratton became a member of the hippie mafia, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favour of marijuana and hashish, which he brought into the US by the ton. As an anti-establishment outlaw he was friends with Norman Mailer. As a major drug importer he worked with Whitey Bulger and some of the most notorious American crime figures.

Smuggler gives the no-holds-barred account of Stratton's life as one of America's biggest traffickers. From Lebanon to the Caribbean, from improvised airstrips in the backwoods of New England to the badlands of the US-Mexican border, and from five-star Manhattan hotels to the brutal reality of federal prison and a 25-year sentence, we follow his story as his fortunes rise and fall.

A true crime memoir that reads like fiction, Smuggler is an incredible and revealing trip into the world of international drug trafficking.

Author Bio

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.