Word: hash
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Guthrie's lyrics celebrate a popular underground myth: that the U.S. is a tough drug scene compared with countries abroad, where the laws are loose and the hash is cheap. Though it is true that a "key" (kilo) of hashish may cost as little as $10 or $20 in Lebanon or Morocco, the price for many young American smugglers turns out to be almost unbearably high. All along the "trade routes" by which narcotics make their way back to Europe and the U.S., young Americans are filling up a veritable Baedeker of prisons...
...month. In Morocco, five Americans have been arrested on drug charges in the past five weeks. Last week in Lebanon, Morocco's main rival as a Mecca for drug-seeking tourists, police arrested eight youthful Americans who were trying to sneak some 70 kilos of hash out of the country. The catch brought Lebanon's current population of Americans imprisoned on drug charges to 15, pushing the country ahead of Italy (12) and Greece (13), and closer to the league leaders, which are Spain (about 50 jailed Americans) and West Germany...
Busted Playmate. There are profits aplenty. A $10 or $20 "key" of Lebanese hash can fetch $1,500 or more in the U.S., and the figures tempt a wide variety of improbable smugglers. Book-of-the-Month Club Author W.S. Kuniczak (The Thousand Hour Day) was arrested last December for smuggling 160 Ibs. of hash into Greece; he is presently serving a 4½-year sentence on the island of Corfu. Playboy's December Playmate Gloria Root, 21, currently graces Athens' stark Averoff prison, where she is serving a ten-month sentence for crossing into Greece from Turkey...
...Beirut International Airport, customs men have trained dogs to sniff out drugs hidden in luggage. In Tashkent, a woman Soviet agent with a superb olfactory sense sniffed hash carried by three young Americans, who were flying via Aeroflot from Afghanistan to Finland. Two are still serving time in the infamous Potma labor camp southeast of Moscow...
Series of Horrors. Often the youthful smugglers are suckers from the start. In Lebanon, tourist guides around Baalbek's famous Roman ruins sidle up to adventurous-looking American kids and sell them not only cheap hash but identical cheap cardboard tourist suitcases to carry it in. Airport customs officials are so familiar with the suitcases that they almost yawn as they arrest the tourists who show up with them...