Smugglers' Times:

ISLAMORADA, Florida; with Don – “Marijuana is a people business,” explained Don, a long-retired pioneer of the marijuana smuggling industry. Working under the name Gomer, he started out in the 1970s, flying tiny, single-engine planes back and forth from Miami, Florida to Ciénaga, Columbia near Cartagena becoming infamous in the business, carrying up to a million dollars-worth of pot per load, in today’s money.

           

Later he and his friends used boats and vehicles, and expanded connections throughout the states, Mexico and the Philippines, even working with Federal Agents. All the while living and playing in South Florida. Bringing in marijuana through the Keys which run from the mainland for more than 150 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico, leeward of the barrier reef.

 

Closer to Havana than it is to Miami, the famous tourist island-town of Key West is just ninety miles across the Gulfstream from the Cuban capital. An equal distance up the Keys is Plantation Key. In between are thousands of islands and coves and basins and inlets and channels and places to hide. That’s why the area has been a haven for smugglers since the times of the Spanish Main up until sometime late last night and continuing for as long as some people outlaw items others choose to make a profit from supplying.

 

The waters have been sailed by the famous and infamous, from Bogie to Blackbeard. Pirates and privateers during the seventeenth century. Blockade runners in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Rumrunners during alcohol prohibition. Migrant and refugee traffickers. Marijuana purveyors. Cocaine cowboys. And other contraband smugglers of today have all made the area rich in the history of people bringing in stuff the government has said they were not allowed to import.

 

In what people remember as a permissive era of the 1970s, the government also cracked down on rebellious protestors, dissidents and malcontents, when the establishment fought back with the beginning of the “war on drugs,” specifically marijuana. Some of the opposition to the authority’s crackdown efforts are told in this tale.

 

“I’ll tell you about the life of a smuggler,” said Don. “When marijuana is legal, we will be like the rumrunners during prohibition and people might be interested in how it was in the old days, so enjoy some real stories of real people willing to risk their lives and liberty to bring back the goodies; for adventure and the high life in Smugglers’ Times.”