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Smuggler’s Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer

by Jay Carter Brown

The United Nations recently reported that Canada leads the industrialized world in pot smoking per capita. Montrealer Jay Carter Brown could likely claim more than a little responsibility for that distinction. In Smuggler’s Blues, Brown recounts, in exacting detail, his days in the international drug trade, smuggling multi-ton shipments of weed and hash into Canada from Jamaica, Bermuda, and even Beirut during Lebanon’s civil war.

Brown’s life has all the ingredients for a riveting read: risky scams, home invasions, murder, police busts, betrayal, extortion, and excess (at one point, Brown and his cohorts were smoking so much weed they employed someone as their personal “spliff roller”). But what should be a fascinating glimpse into the underworld of Canada’s drug runners and assorted criminals often gets bogged down by dull recounting, too much detail, and too many secondhand anecdotes. Relying on tired cliché, general machismo, and veiled braggadocio, this memoir often reads like a pulp spy novel, though its protagonist utterly lacks the requisite roguish charm. Brown often strikes unpleasant notes with his views on women, race, and sexual orientation through offhand comments such as this one: “the only taboo on the island [Jamaica] is homosexuality, which does not stop the practice but merely drives it back into the closet where, I must confess, I prefer it.”

Aside from questions of Brown’s character, there are few insights here. Brown realizes that he could have made more money continuing with his career in sales than he had through smuggling, but, as he admits, he was in it more for the thrills than the cash reward. In his epilogue, Brown lists the fates of his many associates, most of whom are either dead, jailed, or in hiding. Canny enough to know when to walk away, he appears to be the only one of his network to have escaped – in his case, to lead the “straight” life in Vancouver, where, presumably, he resides to this day.

 

Reviewer: Gavin Babstock

Publisher: ECW Press

DETAILS

Price: $22.95

Page Count: 240 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 978-1-55022-783-3

Released: Oct.

Issue Date: 2007-10

Categories: Memoir & Biography

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