"NBC News"senior writer Dokoupil offers a gripping examination of his longtime marijuana-dealing father, as well as a researched look at the evolution of American narcotics laws. In the early 1970s, Dokoupil's father, also named Tony, dropped out of graduate school to deal marijuana. Dokoupil recounts how the smuggling and distribution business ran and contextualizes it within the Great Stoned Age. Partly the history of a generation, yet very much a family story, the tale darkens dramatically with the father's precipitous, if inevitable, decline and fall.
A few days later, I pointed to a chocolate bar in the rack next to the checkout at the supermarket. "I really want that," I said sagely, "and that must be how Daddy feels when he wants drugs." But of course this was not how Daddy felt.
To get an idea of what Daddy felt, I would have needed to smuggle that grocery-store chocolate into my first-grade classroom, stash it in my desk, sell it on the sly, and use the proceeds to consume a big bag of Doritos every day on the calendar. Eventually I would need to promise myself that I will stop such behavior, and then do it all again with two boxes of chocolate bars, two bags of Doritos.
