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  • Smuggler's Blues

  • A True Story of the Hippie Mafia
  • By: Richard Stratton
  • Narrated by: Richard Stratton
  • Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (83 ratings)

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Smuggler's Blues cover art

Smuggler's Blues

By: Richard Stratton
Narrated by: Richard Stratton
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Publisher's Summary

Goodfellas meets Savages meets Catch Me If You Can in this true tale of high-stakes smuggling from pot's outlaw years.

Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut Wellesley boy who entered outlaw culture on a trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run, smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He became a member of the Hippie Mafia, traveling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favor of marijuana and hashish.

With cameos by Whitey Bulger and Norman Mailer, Smuggler's Blues tells Stratton's adventure while centering on his last years as he travels from New York to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley to source and smuggle high-grade hash in the midst of civil war, from the Caribbean to the backwoods of Maine, and from the Chelsea Hotel to the Plaza as his fortunes rise and fall. All the while he is being pursued by his nemesis, a philosophical DEA agent who respects him for his good business practices.

A true-crime story that sounds like fiction, Smuggler's Blues is a psychedelic road trip through international drug smuggling, the hippie underground, and the war on weed. As Big Marijuana emerges, it brings to vivid life an important chapter in pot's cultural history.

©2016 Richard Stratton (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

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    5 out of 5 stars

great listen.

if you like these sort of true crime stories this one is definitely worthy of your library

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Don't waste your time or money.

Had to turn it off, couldn't finish it. Listen to Smuggler by Roger Reaves instead, 100 times better.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
  • Dan
  • 03-11-2023

a very painful listening experience

it could have been a good or interesting listen, but it wasn't just a long drawn out pity party read in a booring monotonous lifeless voice that would put a speed freak to sleep.
this book is a perfect example of why a good editor is a necessity it could have been good but it most certainly wasn't
doing your tax return would make for a better reading experience

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

I wished I listened to Blow again instead.

I wished I listened to Blow again instead. Dude's too arrogant.
Need more words to make up review.

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