The Last Pirate: A Father His Son and the Golden Age of Marijuana

About this book

In the tradition of Blow and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City The Last Pirate is a vivid haunting and often hilarious memoir recounting the life of Big Tony a family man who joined the biggest pot ring of the Reagan era and exploded his life in the process. Three decades later his son came back to put together the pieces. As he relates his fathers rise from hey-man hippie dealer to multi-ton smuggler extraordinaire Tony Dokoupil tells the larger history of marijuana and untangles the controversies still stirring furious debate today. He blends superb reportage with searing personal memories presenting a probing chronicle of pot-smoking drug-taking America from the perspective of the generation that grew up in the aftermath of the Great Stoned Age. Back then everyone knew a drug dealer. The Last Pirate is the story of what happened to one of them to his family and in a pharmacological sense to us all. The Last Pirate is a cultural portrait of marijuanas endless allure set against the Technicolor backdrop of South Florida in the era of Miami Vice. Its a public saga complete with a real pirates booty: more than a million dollars lost buried or stolenbut its also a deeply personal pursuit the product of a sons determination to replant the family tree in richer soil.