Frontier Partisans

The Adventurers, Rangers and Scouts Who Fought the Battles of Empire

Legalization Blues

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cannabis-leaf-outlineI got a call from a concerned newspaper reader last week who wanted to let me know that a farmer on land near her house was growing hemp and marijuana. She was surprised to learn that that is perfectly legal. Somehow she had missed over a year of reporting on the legalization of weed in Oregon and the efforts of Deschutes County to establish rules for its cultivation and distribution.

Now the best marijuana plants in the state will compete for blue ribbons at the Oregon State Fair. Weed has gone respectable.

Now, I am OK with that. I don’t indulge (coffee and cigars are the extent of my “substance” use these days) but I know plenty of folks who treat pot like others treat their sundowner drink. And some who like to wakey-bakey with the wacky tobaccey and feel okey-dokey all day. And there are those for whom it has a real medicinal benefit; I’ve seen it and I believe it.

So, legalization is the right policy, and respectability is the inevitable byproduct.

There is one significant downside, though. Prohibition, whether of alcohol or marijuana, spawned a whole sub genre of outlaw ballads built around moonshining, bootlegging and pot smuggling. You lose the outlaw cachet, you lose the songs. Compare “I take the seed from Columbia and Mexico/ And I plant ’em up a holler down Copperhead Road” to “I grow it in a greenhouse on Cloverdale Road.” Or, “I’m a green house gardener” as opposed to “I’m a treetop flyer.”

Sad, right?

So, herewith, is a small tribute to the bootlegger ballad, the smuggler’s blues.

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Wreck on the Highway

The Louvin Brothers’ take on the sad fate of a bootlegger who didn’t make the curve.

When whiskey and blood run together,
did you hear anyone pray?

 

Smugglers Blues

If you were a certain age in the mid-1980s, you couldn’t escape “Miami Vice.” It pioneered the use of source music not just for mood but to drive the theme. The late Glenn Frey wrote this song, Michael Mann commissioned an episode of the same title and Frey got himself a guest starring gig as a pilot.

It’s the ultimate enticement, it’s the smuggler’s blues

Copperhead Road

Steve Earle brought the backcountry traditions of moonshining, whiskey-running and marijuana growing together in the three verses of this dark, driving tale. The Anvil Blasters do this song in most sets. It’s a crowd-pleaser.

I done me two tours of duty in Vietnam

And I came home with a brand new plan

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Treetop Flyer

Steve Earle wasn’t the first to depict Vietnam veterans applying their skills in the illicit trade. Stephen Stills tells the tale of a hotshot pilot who learned to fly low and fast in Southeast Asia and is now (c. early 1970s) roaring over the mesquite with a load of any cargo you could care to run. We know what that is.

I am a smuggler

And I might get shot

A Pirate Looks At 40

Jimmy Buffett’s wistful take on a life and a way of life that were fading away. My favorite of his catalogue. In the 1970s, there was a certain rakish charm to pot smuggling. Hippies and gentleman adventurers in fast boats hauled loads into South Florida and scavengers fished for “square groupers” dumped off boats. One bale could make your summer.

Then the cocaine trade started, and the cartels took over the marijuana trade, too, and things turned very dark and violent.  Buffett’s pirate can only look back on the good old days.

I done a bit of smugglin’

I ran my share of grass

Made enough money to buy Miami

But I pissed it away so fast

 

 

 

Comments

  2. Matthew says

    One of the odd changes is that legalization of marijuana is that weed is now being smuggled INTO Mexico.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/dea-cartels-are-now-smuggling-us-weed-into-mexico-to-sell-2014-12

    I think more Cartels are turning to human trafficking which is a far more vile crime than even smuggling hard drugs.

    When Colorado legalized weed, I left the box on the ballot blank. It just wasn’t something I believed in strongly either way. I come from a long line of abstaining Baptists. When I got older the reason, I realized so many of us abstain is that the ones that don’t REALLY don’t abstain. As such, I abstain from drugs and alcohol, but don’t feel the need to force my views on others.

    Reply

    • JimC says

      My reason for abstaining, too. I have big appetites and an underdeveloped off switch. Best to avoid.
      As for the cartels, they are into a lot more than drugs — kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, oil theft and smuggling, etc. They are very nimble organizations that anticipate and adapt quickly to changes in the market. With their core business of drugs, it really is a demand-side problem. Legalization of marijuana won’t dent their bottom line — they’ve long since shifted focus to delightful things like highly potent heroin and meth, which Americans apparently continue to consume in alarming quantities.

      Reply

      • Matthew says

        My family’s Scots-Irish mostly (though my last name is German) and I know you have at least some Scots-Irish ancestry so I wonder if there’s a genetic or culture tendency to addictive personality disorder among that group.

        I remember reading that drug cartels aren’t actually cartels in the definition of the economic term. They don’t actually monopolize the whole drug creation process. This makes it difficult to shut down the whole organization. The only real solution to the drug problem is for people not to be dumb enough to do drugs. Which basically means there is no real solution.

        Reply

        • JimC says

          Blame it all on my roots….
          Re: cartels. Exactly right. The creation of the “Mexican trampoline” for Columbian cocaine was really an act of genius. Evil genius, but nevertheless…

          Reply

  7. Thomas Eley says

    I had a colleague who was involved in smuggling weapons to the Miskito Indians during the Contra-Sandanista War in the 1980’s. Quite a story. I better jot it down as I’m about the only one left that knows about it.

    Reply

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