| Thai Stick. |
“Although my long hair is gone now and my views are more conservative than they once were, there is a part of my past I will not sweep under the rug and disavow. I am old enough and honest enough to remember the Thai sticks that flooded my beachside town each summer–a surfer’s equivalent of the Beaujolais nouveau.
During the 1970s, Thai stick marijuana–so-called because the buds were tightly wrapped around hemp or bamboo sticks before being packed into watertight bundles for the long trans-Pacific trip–was one of the most valuable commodities in the world. At $2,000 per pound, a single load of Thai could and did make many a smuggler a small fortune. To us pot-smoking teenaged surfers, these scammers–the people who fetched these loads from afar–were heroic Robin Hood characters who trafficked only in pot and surfed more world-class waves than anyone else.”
Do yourself a favor, read the rest of Peter Maguire’s amazing tale over at the OC Weekly.