Colombian Gold & The Mothership Loophole

The 1970s – not the ’60s – is when cannabis really took off in the US. ‘Marijuana’ skyrocketed in popularity between 1969 and 1979, by which time American college students who’d never got stoned were a dwindling minority and around 70% on campus were friends with ‘Mary Jane’.

When looking for explanations for this sudden change, the usual ‘received wisdom’ focuses on the demand side. During the 1970s, cannabis crossed into the mainstream from the counterculture and marginalised ethnic groups, moving through the collective medium of music, literature, and movies to become an increasingly normal feature of American culture.

For the supply side to the story, this is often claimed to be about soldiers returning from the Vietnam War and the new age of international tourist travel. Networks and supply routes were created between Asia and America: mafia connections between East and West, the Hippie Trail, cheap commercial flights, ‘Thai stick’, ‘Nepalese Temple Balls’, Afghan hashish, and so on….

Which is true up to a point, no doubt, but not the whole picture.

On the supply side, a far bigger factor for America was a fuck-up by the Nixon administration. In 1970, when Nixon declared his War on Drugs, Congress passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act to reorganize federal drug laws. But lawmakers left a huge loophole. The newly drafted legislation did not include a statute criminalizing simple possession of drugs on the high seas – i.e., outside US territorial waters.

Traffickers quickly noticed. Among the first and most enterprising was a guy called Harold Derber, an Englishman from Manchester who’d worked in Britain’s Merchant Navy (‘merchant marine’) during the Second World War. Operating out of Colombia from 1970, Derber brought in massive multi-tonne loads of Colombian cannabis, parking his ships just outside the 12-mile territorial limit and using fast ‘runner’ boats to fly loads to shore.

At the height of his smuggling career, Derber ran a ghost fleet of ‘drug ships’ and enjoyed the status of America’s main importer of marijuana, hitting an average of two to three tonnes per day. Thanks to the ‘Mothership Loophole’, a gap in maritime law that stayed open till 1980, Derber rose to the pinnacle of the trade and America enjoyed an unending, low-priced supply of Colombian, Mexican, and Jamaican ganja.

The smoke-wreathed peak the States scaled in the ’70s has never been reached again, at least among young Americans: by 1979, since unmatched by other generations, the Boomers were sky-high.

Deeply entwined with the shadow world of the Cuban Revolution, KGB, and offshore money laundering, much about Derber’s life remains a mystery. Ambitious without limit, tragic with it, he met his end on the sun-kissed streets of Miami’s Millionaire’s Row, shot in the head by unknown assassins with a bullet initialled ‘H.D.’.

You can listen to the full story as told by his cousin, the author David Tuch, here: From World War II Radio Operator to the OG Drug Kingpin

His new book is available here: The Wireless Operator