Lagunitas, Calif., 1971: There are dealers who are in it only for the money. I met two of that kind who agreed to tape an interview.

The 670 pounds of grass they had brought up with them from Mexico was stashed downstairs in the cellar of the distributor's house in Forest Knolls. The grass was terrible -- dry, bulked out with tobacco, pressed into bricks as hard as stone. Here is what they had to say about what they were doing:

How did you get started on this trip?

1st Smuggler: I began smoking dope in 1965 in Vietnam. I don't know how many guys were smoking it at that time, but we used to send it home in the hold baggage boxes and it was never checked -- 70 and 80 pounds at a time from Thailand, the finest weed you can find anywhere in the world. In 1967, I came home and discovered that all my friends smoked dope. That really blew me away. I got out of the service and I went back to college, back to work in the same place I was working before. Three months was all I could handle. It was not the same. Things had changed.

A friend of mine said, "Let's go to San Francisco and buy a brick."

So I went to San Francisco and bought a brick. I started dealing lids. It lasted for about eight months and I got busted. I did a year in jail. I pulled about thirty days hard time and the rest of it was all learning to adapt to the environment and making the most out of it, developing your own little scams. I wasn't out of jail more than two weeks when I was in Mexicali copping bricks.

I brought my very first bricks across the border during Operation Intercept. We stuffed them in the engine compartment and some old Mexican man about fifty years old, with his wife and his kids, drove them through Customs. We split 50-50. We did those trips until I made enough money to move to San Francisco.

I got a straight job. I got tired of that and started dealing dope, little things, penny ante. That went on for a couple of months until I met my partner here and we had a good rapport. We started dealing a few things; then all of a sudden, we fell into this. We really fell into it; but I can't talk about how.

2nd Smuggler: Well, I was a tool and dye maker and I went into the Army. I got stationed in the Southwest. I started smuggling there -- 600 pounds a month just to the soldiers. When I got out, I moved to California. I built a real good chemical market, and then we got together and got this partnership started.

Were you manufacturing?

2nd Smuggler: We were discussing it seriously, but they're just too heavy on chemical manufacturers. They put a lot more money into the investigation.

1st Smuggler: Let's face it, man, acid is the basis of the total revolution. It liberates you. They're afraid of it and they'll put more energy into a chemical dealer. They will do the same to a big hash dealer, but the reasons are different. They like to bust hash people, because there are tremendous amounts of money involved in hash operations. They bust one, they cross out a large amount of dollars out of the pool that's available to finance other trips.

Distributor: You want to hear a story of a bust? 2600 pounds of Jamaican weed was brought in and it was to be transported across the country in a Winnebago camper. Somehow the Winnebago didn't make it. They missed connections where they were supposed to meet in this Southern town. They rented a U-Haul truck and stuffed everything in the U-Haul. They decided to stop at the restaurant parking lot where they were supposed to meet the guy with the Winnebago and hope that he came back. It was really late, two in the morning. The restaurant was closed, but the owner lived right behind it. He thought they were some kind of burglars and called the police. The police stopped both the truck and the car and asked to take a look. And they said no. The cop says, "Why don't you just follow us down. It's going to take us about 12 hours to get a warrant, but you can sit and wait with us." And that was that.

Driving across the South was weird, really weird. People see anything except maybe short hair or a crew cut, you know, with loafers and they freak, like Easy Rider.

1st Smuggler: We don't have long hair. We can't afford to.

Distributor: When you're all done with what you're doing, you can let it grow all the way down to your ass hole.

Some of the narcs down in San Diego have hair all the way down to their fucking yo-yos. They look like the biggest freaks you ever saw. You can't tell down there.

1st Smuggler: For sure. A lot of them are heads. A lot of them get busted, see, and they decide, "Well, I don't want to do any time. I'll just turn my buddies in."

Distributor: They make 6-7-800 a month you know. They don't have to do anything really. They go out and buy a $300 car with dented fenders, and they get all their expenses and shit paid for. They take some of the confiscated weed and sell it. It's a joke.

1st Smuggler: It really is. A lot of the dope that's confiscated is turned around and sold. How do you know who to trust?

Distributor: I know a guy who got busted scoring a hundred kilos at the airport. Six ounces make it to the preliminary hearings where they had to show the evidence. The case was dismissed.

What are the economics of the business?

2nd Smuggler: In the interior it goes right now for right around $30,000 a ton. You buy it in the interior a ton at a time generally. I suppose there are a lot of people that buy less than that but you usually get one ton, two tons, three tons.

1st Smuggler: Sometimes the Mexican who is into the trip will buy it from the farmer in the fields and he may pay $10-15,000 for a ton. He will bring it to a certain point farther up and he in turn will sell it for $30,000. The man who buys it from him will bring it up to the border area and then the price will double again. And when it comes up here, in many cases it doubles. In many cases it does not. But the money is in bringing it up from the interior and across our region.

Some people say that Marin is the biggest single distribution area on the West Coast?

1st Smuggler: It could be. I don't know, to be honest with you. I know that there's a lot of it turned here but we are not totally aware of what other people do here.

Do you have a guess as to about how many tons are probably being brought out of Mexico per month?

1st Smuggler: No. I don't know.

2nd Smuggler: I'd say that during the last three months (June, July and August) there's been very little. I'd say we probably brought most of the total amount that's brought out.

And how much have you brought out?

Distributor: In the last two months, two tons. When this is completed we will have grossed very near a half a million dollars.

1st Smuggler: Hell, we already have.

How long did it take you to do that?

1st Smuggler: Two and a half months.

How come you don't quit right now?

2nd Smuggler: Because we spend a lot of money.

1st Smuggler: What we gross and what our net profit is, is a totally different thing. Our profit is running about 10 percent, maybe 20 percent after all expenses.

2nd Smuggler: And expenses are just amazingly high.

What kind of expenses?

2nd Smuggler: Well, just bail bonds, for one thing. When your people get cracked you gotta cover up your tracks and you also have to take care of your people.

1st Smuggler: And transportation, vehicles. You have to put out a lot of money for vehicles to insure that they are at all times running perfectly.

2nd Smuggler: I don't like them to have over 15-17,000 miles on them.

How many vehicles are on the trip?

2nd Smuggler: Four or five.

Have you ever lost any?

2nd Smuggler: No vehicles. We lost one trip, but it was through the negligence of the people who were selling it.

What happens to them?

2nd Smuggler: We do our trip a lot different than most people. Everybody that I've ever known that's lost a large amount of weed that was fronted to them, the people that fronted it came down on them pretty hard. They make them sell all their cars and property and shit like that.

1st Smuggler: But, you know, to us, you lose it, you lose it. It's part of the trip. You have to be willing to accept that just like you have to be willing to accept the fact that you can get busted. And we know that we're only good for so long. That's it. Your odds are that if you do it for more than a year on the scale that we're doing it you're going to get busted. I know very few people who have not been busted. A good friend of mine has made and lost a million dollars cash. Made and lost it. And he's getting ready to make his second.

You know all these books about goal-orientation? I feel that it's like any other business. You just have to make up your mind that you're going to do it and no matter what happens you're going to follow through with this and be a success.

Both of us have been through some tremendous mental pressures. It's not an easy thing to do. It puts your head through heavy changes.

It's just incredible. But we work together and we're both able to compensate for each other's deficiencies. So it works out.

How do you feel about cocaine? Some people say that dealing cocaine is bad karma.

1st Smuggler: Yeah, it probably is.

2nd Smuggler: Dealing cocaine is bad -- kind of like dealing marijuana ten years ago was bad. You deal with a different caliber of people today.

1st Smuggler: The guy that buys a lid of grass nowadays to smoke or the guy that buys four pounds or whatever is just as liable to buy cocaine because it's become an accepted, social drug. Right now Marin County is flooded with it.

We have access to all the cocaine you'd ever want. We don't really like to do it. Occasionally we will. But there's a weird thing about it. You gotta be careful with it because you get into dealing it heavy and it gets away with you and it gets into your head. But we could deal and get all the coke we want. In many ways it's easier. You've got a package of weed that's this big that's worth a few hundred bucks; and you got a package of cocaine one-third the size that's worth $20,000 right? It's a matter of logistics.

2nd Smuggler: We could deal heroin if we wanted to, but it is against our principles. A lot of people don't understand that, especially officials, narcs, etc. We consider ourselves to be honest businessmen doing an essential service. Even though we're making a lot of money, we feel that the sale of marijuana and drugs supports the underground economy. And in this way we are doing our part in supporting many people in the underground.

How do you feel about legalization?

1st Smuggler: I hope they wait six months.

Why have prices gone up so drastically this year? Weed that was selling for $145 a pound in Marin in November 1970 is now upwards of $300 a pound.

1st Smuggler: There are two reasons that we know of. The first is supply and demand. The Mexicans have become aware of the size of the market and the value of their product, so the prices have increased at the source, in the fields. Secondly, although it is still relatively easy to bring weed across the border, the American government has put so much pressure on the Mexicans and provided them with so much money that it is more difficult to move it through the interior. It hasn't basically cut down the flow; it's just increased the price. I personally believe that you could still bring marijuana to San Francisco and sell it for the same price that it was sold in 1966-67 and before I get out of this business I'm going to prove it.

What's keeping you from doing it now?

2nd Smuggler: Investment money.

1st Smuggler: In other words, when I do it, I'm going to make sure that I can afford to lose. I would like to see pot that is being sold now for $200 a pound sold for $75 and $80 a pound. It can be done. But why should I do it now? If I sold it for $75 a pound, the person I sold it to would turn around and sell it for $200 a pound.

The reason that we feel that we have to make as much as we do is that we're the ones who have to go and get it. We're the ones that take the risks.

2nd Smuggler: We could get a ton of weed from Jamaica, better weed than most people here have ever seen, colitas, tops, flowers, and if we broke out even after smuggling expenses we'd probably sell it for $15 a pound.

1st Smuggler: Maybe not that low. Maybe $40 or $50 a pound.

2nd Smuggler: Well, it wouldn't cost much to bring it over except for the boat.

1st Smuggler: Yet that weed is going for $150 a pound in quantity.

2nd Smuggler: That's to large buyers. It's $300 a pound for people buying it for personal stash.

1st Smuggler: This weed on the table is coming in to this house for $125 a pound. The guy that's going to buy a single brick or a single pound will end up paying probably $160 for it. And I'll be honest with you: it's not worth more than $125 a pound -- in relationship to the past months, to the past years. It increasingly is getting to cost more money. But the cost is not here, it's down there, it's in Mexico.

Is there a lot of paranoia down there?

1st Smuggler: No. I won't tell you the name of the town, but the man that we buy our merchandise from has the police chief on his payroll. The Federales are a different story. The Federales are not on anybody's payroll any more. They used to be. But now the Federales are on the Nixon payroll. In the local towns it's still the same as it was five and ten years ago. They've never been able to break that relationship. These people don't think this is wrong; it's their way of life. It's that simple. There's absolutely no paranoia whatever.

I was told that you stopped smoking grass.

1st Smuggler: This is my own little idiosyncrasy.

How did that happen?

1st Smuggler: I just got so hung up on the trip, driving myself so hard trying to reach the point that I have reached, that when I smoke it, it makes me feel uncomfortable. I'm one of those people that get very heavy anxiety attacks. I'll probably never smoke it again until I quit.

Is that because it makes you aware of what you're doing?

1st Smuggler: Yeah.

What are you going to do after you quit?

1st Smuggler: I don't know; I'm still trying to figure that one out. I really have not totally given it a lot of thought. There are a lot of things I'd like to do, travel, raise a family, own a legitimate business.

You said earlier that you got into the trip out of boredom. Do you think you could get by without having the hypo of that anxiety? That gives you a lot of energy, makes everything more interesting.

1st Smuggler: Well, not only that but because I saw it was a good business opportunity and I was willing to take the risk, that's all. But, yeah, I dig it. I dig the fact that we're beating the Man. That makes me happy, you know what I mean? I make no bones about it.

2nd Smuggler: That's the question that always pops up in my mind. I talk to my wife and she wants me to retire and we set goals. Can we retire? It's not that we feel guilty about what we're doing. In fact I'd feel guiltier about sitting behind a desk in a loan office or selling cars.

1st Smuggler: But I'll tell you this: in order to do this trip, you got to have an old lady that's behind you 100 percent. Our old ladies have put up with a lot of bullshit. We're away from them a lot and when we're home all our energies are into this trip. The old lady has to sit home. But they stuck by us.

2nd Smuggler: Also, they're under a lot of pressure because of the pressure that we're under. Sometimes it's not too pleasant.

1st Smuggler: My frustrations and my anxieties are basically the same as any forty-year-old cat who has a 20 year mortgage on his house, working eight hours a day. It's the same, it's the same. It's funny because one of the reasons I got into this trip was that I didn't want to put up with that bullshit. But yet I have come to the realization that it's the same anyway. The responsibilities are just tremendous.

He and I handle tremendous sums of money. That's a heavy trip. You sir down at a table and count out 60 and 70 thousand dollars. It still blows me away. It's all cash.

Do you have any way of getting your money out of the country?

1st Smuggler: Sure. We also have escape routes available, and people who will support us under certain circumstances. If it were necessary for us to disappear, we could do it. Neither of us has a complete set of false identification at this point, but we've already made arrangements for these things to be taken care of. It's easy to do. I can get a full set in New York for $500.

There are a lot of people who are in our position and, then, all of a sudden, they get out of it and they go into a completely legitimate business. That's what I'll end up doing. I was raised in a rural area. I'd like to own a farm. I like the privacy and relaxation. I'd love to be able to raise marijuana legally. I think it'd be outta sight. In Kentucky, or Tennessee, the Appalachians, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Smokies. Those old hill people have been smoking dope for years, and they never thought anything about it.

2nd Smuggler: I like the tropical areas. Florida raises some fine grass in the Everglades.