Smokescreen: A True Adventure [Paperback]

Robert Sabbag (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 12, 2002

Do you think you have the balls it would take to risk your life for a million dollars?" Allen Long certainly did. Balls like a bull elephant's -- with charisma and cunning in the same large measure. But he needed to know that those around him could handle pressure. After all, they'd be violating Colombian and U.S. airspace in a dilapidated DC-3 and landing on jungle mud-tracks in bandit country. They'd have to avoid detection by America's most tooled-up law enforcement agencies and remain wired and vigilant at all times. They'd be pioneering dope smugglers -- doing it with aplomb and panache like no one else. Their leader, the irrepressible Long, was interested in only the best, Colombian Santa Marta Gold, the Beluga caviar of marijuana. He and his merry band of smugglers were responsible for upping the quality and quantity of weed smoked in North America for several halcyon years in the early '70s. And they did so in the most outrageous and remarkable fashion. From the writer of the drug-smuggling classic Snowblind comes a true story more hair-raising, high-octane, and heart-pounding than any fictional adventure thriller, as he relates the high times and fast living of America's greatest marijuana smuggler. Take a seat. And hang on for the ride of your life. "Sabbag is an incisive reporter and a stylish class-A writer.... Smokescreen will undoubtedly keep your pulse racing and adrenaline pumping." -- The Times (London) "Smokescreen is funny as well as scary. It will be enjoyed by readers who have never even shared a reefer." -- The Sunday Telegraph "Sabbag has a wonderful ear for dialogue and Long has some wonderfully outlandish yarns to spin ... extremely entertaining." -- The Observer "This guy Sabbag is a whip-song writer." -- Hunter S. Thompson "Mr. Sabbag is a first-rate writer." -- The New Yorker "An extremely rare cut of dry wit, poetry, rock-hard fact and relentless insight." -- Rolling Stone

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is a story from the long-ago days of Colombian marijuana smuggling--long ago, because most of the pot now smoked in the United States is grown domestically, and the top narcotics import from Colombia is cocaine. Author Robert Sabbag tells the tale of Allen Long, who got involved in this unsavory business in the 1970s because he wanted to provide high-quality cannabis for his buddies and also for the sheer adventure of it. Some readers will find Long a disconcerting protagonist--he's a drug smuggler, after all--though it may appeal to advocates of drug legalization and readers of High Times. Sabbag essentially romanticizes Long's activities, such as when he writes about the "rather consoling absence of gunplay" that marked the business of marijuana smuggling in its primitive past. The storytelling is adequate, but parts of Loaded are plainly padded. Here's a bit of sample dialogue: "This is really great pot." "You like that?" "I don't think I've ever smoked anything better." A better and more hardheaded book on Colombian drug smuggling is Mark Bowden's Killing Pablo. --John Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

When Sabbag's Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade came out in 1998, cultural icons like Hunter S. Thompson, Robert Stone, Norman Mailer and Nora Ephron hailed it as a classic study of America's drug obsession; their endorsements helped it achieve both cult status and commercial success. Sabbag's latest, despite its strong narrative drive and flashy, occasionally psychedelic writing style, probably won't elicit the same response. For one thing, Sabbag's hero this time is no Zachary Swann, Snowblind's larger-than-life coke dealer: Allen Long is a would-be filmmaker, a child of middle-class respectability from Richmond, Va., who "was born the year Harry S. Truman was elected to the American presidency, and was first arrested for marijuana possession the year Bob Dylan released Blonde on Blonde." For another, marijuana trafficking lacks the inherent drama of the cocaine trade. But most of all, there's the problem of historic distance, which Sabbag's writing fails to overcome. "The book presents a story from out of a time and place fogged in not only by the passage of years, but by an atmospheric shift in the political and cultural spirit of a generation," Sabbag writes in his acknowledgments. Add to that unfortunate lines such as "Like that of almost any man whose Christian name is a definite article, [dealer] El Coyote's image was simply that nobody really bought it," and readers are left with what feels like a message in a bottle from a place they left behind long ago. (Jan.)Forecast: With press junkets planned for the author and Long and a first serial excerpt going to Rolling Stone, this chronicle of crime and ingenuity should generate early hype. It's hard to imagine another round of blessings from the hip elite, though, for this rather disappointing follow-up to Sabbag's earlier success.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Canongate U.S. (December 12, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841953792
• ISBN-13: 978-1841953793
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,142,112 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loaded, September 23, 2004

By 

rocksteady "Al" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Smokescreen: A True Adventure (Paperback)

I guess they changed the title of this book at some point -- the copy I got from the library was called "Loaded, A Misadventure In the Marijuana Trade". At any rate, forget any tepid reviews by "professional" reviewers who somehow feel this story wasn't quite up to their literary standards. The book is just a flat out great read and had me laughing out loud many times. A hilarious but cautionary tale with a serious ending, the adventures of pot smuggler Allen Long are so far out there that you know they must be true. Any baby boomer who did time in the counter culture of the 60s and 70s, or who is familiar with the drug culture of that era will get a big kick out of this book, and I'd think many younger readers would enjoy it as well.

Allen Long was a man of immense ability, ambition and personal charm, as well as a natural leader... who also loved to smoke the best pot he could find. He probably would have been successful in any field but some people need to take the road less travelled. Long was the man responsible for Columbian marijuana coming to the US (millions of tons of it). I got the impression that he was as much a crusader for marijuana as he was in it for the money, at least in the beginning. The first part of the book is almost like a Cheech & Chong screenplay, with multi-million dollar deals and hair-raising scenarios being improvised by people who stay as stoned-out as possible at all times; but by the end the gangsters have moved in, the trade has turned to cocaine, and the intial hippie-capitalist spirit has vanished, to be replaced with cutthroat competition, greed and violence. Long never has the heart to become a gangster and is eventually squeezed out of the business by the more ruthless and hungry Latin Americans. It's a look at a particular part of era that hasn't often been told, and certainly never told in such a thoroughly entertaining manner. Thumbs up all the way.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TOP NOTCH READING, April 2, 2002

By 

James Robinson (Woodbridge, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Loaded: A Misadventure on the Marijuana Trail (Hardcover)

I know Allen Long and think that he must be one of the most adventurous men I've ever met. This book is his tale of his younger years, running the gambit on the Mary Jane trail; taking the risks and living the life that goes with it. What makes this book so awesome, is that Allen actually did live this book! This isn't a story to be told to wow anyone; Allen is a wealthy man today and doesn't need to impress anyone. This is just a good book about something that we all would have probably loved to try back in our younger years if we just had the balls...Allen has those balls you wished you had. A must read if you want to re-live some fantasy's and live vicariously through Allen Long!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Loaded; what an adventure!!, February 27, 2002

By 

D. Cummings "Leather Neck" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Loaded: A Misadventure on the Marijuana Trail (Hardcover)

This book reads like a novel, only better. Very fast paced and always holds your interest, if you find the "70's pot smuggling scene" interesting. These characters seem like pirates, like a fantasy. Very easy to read. I liked it.