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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 with 38 Ibs. of hash. Nearly all of the amateur smugglers are under 30, but surprisingly few are drifters or dropouts. One of three young Americans who have been cooling their heels in Beirut's Asfourieh Prison Hospital since they were arrested on smuggling charges last August is Harvard Sophomore Steven Miller, 21, a grandson of a former dean of the Harvard Divinity School.
Although they are generally long on education (and long on hair), the young tourists are strictly bush-league smugglers. Says Agent Cusack: "They use methods that would make a professional pusher blush—putting the stuff in the mail or hiding it under the back seat of a car." In Algeciras, Spanish customs officers last year arrested 64 Americans as they stepped off the ferry from Morocco. If Moroccan dope peddlers have not already fingered the Americans in advance, Spanish agents have little trouble picking out probable smugglers. The giveaways: hippy dress ("a long or loose anything"), and talkative over-friendliness.
At 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.
Arrest is only the first of a series of horrors. Beyond helping young smugglers to get a reputable lawyer, U.S. consuls can only ensure that Americans get the same treatment as the local nationals do—which is often a far cry from U.S. standards. Bail is unknown in many countries, and there are long waits in crowded prisons before cases come to trial. Beirut's notorious Sands prison, where seven Americans are currently awaiting trial, is filled with rats, homosexuals and filth.