With medical marijuana a national movement and pot dispensaries jostling out t-shirt shops on the Venice Beach boardwalk, with Mayor Bloomberg admitting how much he once enjoyed weed and 4/20 practically a national holiday, we think less and less about marijuana as an actual drug.
But it is — and these high times can occlude the fact that many of those who grow weed remain engaged in what is, according to the federal government, an illegal enterprise. And that was certainly true of a bunch of San Diego-area high school students all the way back in the 1969, who — with the help of their Spanish teacher, no less — turned pot smuggling into what was effectively a giant, multi-million dollar corporation. Their improbable rise and inevitable fall is the subject of Coronado High, a lengthy feature from journalist Joshuah Bearman.
Read the entire Atlantic Wire story here.
