(In Order of Appearance)
GERALD THOMAS: A scientist, LSD enthusiast and small-time hashish smuggler, THOMAS was both friend and foe of the Microdot Gang.
DAVID SOLOMON: The New Yorker SOLOMON was part of the Beat generation; a jazz critic and editor who compiled the first authoritative and accessible anthology about LSD before settling in the UK and forming the Microdot Gang.
BILLY HITCHCOCK: A member of the mighty Mellon family, HITCHCOCK was a Wall Street trader who helped acid entrepreneurs launder their money.
PAUL ARNABOLDI: A boat-sailing, college-educated hippy and part-time smuggler based in Majorca, ARNABOLDI was involved in several of the Microdot Gang’s business ventures.
AUGUSTUS OWSLEY STANLEY THE THIRD: OWSLEY was a wayward polymath and the original acid alchemist; his LSD launched San Francisco’s Summer of Love.
NICK SAND: A self-taught chemist who followed in OWSLEY’S footsteps. Based in California, SAND created the legendary Orange Sunshine.
JOHN GRIGGS: GRIGGS was the leader of an LA motorbike gang before taking LSD and forming The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a hippy mafia that collaborated with the Microdot Gang.
RONALD STARK: Anarchist, con-man, alleged secret agent, the Brooklyn-born STARK was a major international LSD producer and distributor who worked with The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and the Microdot Gang.
TORD SVENSON: A trained chemist and psychedelic pioneer, SVENSON made huge quantities of acid for STARK in various European labs.
STEVE ABRAMS: A parapsychologist and legalise cannabis campaigner, ABRAMS moved in the same circles as members of the Microdot Gang.
RICHARD KEMP: A hugely talented chemist and political radical, KEMP was an LSD idealist who was determined to make the Microdot Gang’s acid the purest ever.
CHRISTINE BOTT: A qualified doctor who worked as a GP and in hospitals, BOTT had been with KEMP since they met at university and shared his revolutionary beliefs.
HENRY BARCLAY TODD: A drop-out with a taste for fine living, TODD organised and ran the Microdot Gang’s distribution network.
GEORGE ANDREWS: ANDREWS was an American acid poet who ended up in London, edited an anthology about Indian hashish culture and collaborated with SOLOMON on several books.
ALSTON ‘SMILES’ HUGHES: One of the Microdot Gang’s main dealers, SMILES ran his operation from a small village in Wales.
DICK LEE: Head of the Thames Valley Drug Squad, LEE spearheaded the massive police investigation into the Microdot Gang’s activities.
MARTYN PRITCHARD: PRITCHARD was an undercover hippy cop who posed as a dealer and penetrated the Microdot Gang’s distribution network.
ANDREW MUNRO: A gifted if eccentric chemist, MUNRO knew the Microdot Gang’s key personnel and would turn his hand to LSD after observing KEMP at work.
BRIAN CUTHBERTSON: A Reading University drop-out, CUTHBERTSON oversaw the tableting of the Microdot Gang’s LSD.
RUSSELL STEPHEN SPENCELEY: A bon viveur, SPENCELEY acted as a go-between in the Microdot Gang’s supply chain connecting London to Wales.
Gerald Thomas had every reason to be nervous as he strolled through the terminal at Montreal airport on 3 June 1973. He was carrying 15 pounds of hashish in his luggage. He was a self-employed dope entrepreneur, a travelling salesman with a reputation for taking risks, or being sloppy, depending on your point of view. No major drug dealer or international player of any consequence would be caught dead in an airport transporting anything more suspicious than a change of clothes, toothbrush and shaving kit.
For the big-time smuggler, air travel was a necessary evil and airports a potential hazard. You were vulnerable entering and leaving countries, assuming you were always of interest to the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), the FBI, Interpol and every other law-enforcement agency engaged in the global war on drugs, and they were waiting for you every time you got off a plane. You never knew when your passport was going to be flagged or when you’d be invited into a little room for a thorough examination. If you had to move product by air you did it by cargo, not in your hand luggage; if you could do it by boat, even better.
But Gerald Thomas was not a major trafficker. And he wasn’t nervous. Sure, there was a certain amount of inevitable anxiety, but more satisfying was the feeling of sticking it to the Man, each time striking a blow against the system as he passed by undetected with his beloved marijuana. Risking a long prison sentence so he could get paid and the people get high. He was the rebel bandit, hero of the oppressed, defying tyranny wherever he went. He was Zorro. On one occasion he shipped a consignment of weed across the Atlantic concealed in a dead elephant.
When he first arrived at Montreal airport, Thomas stashed the dope in a locker and took a short flight to Boston to check out its customs and security arrangements in preparation for returning there with the marijuana. Satisfied with what he saw he hopped back to Montreal and retrieved the stuff, confident that he’d complete the transfer successfully. That morning his luck ran out. As it happens they weren’t waiting for him; it was just some canny customs official with a hunch. Though Thomas’ appearance was smart and conventional – not John Lennon glasses, faded flares and a flower in his hair – something wasn’t right. Why the quick trip to Boston and back? If that was his destination, why transit through Montreal? The answer was in his suitcase.
Thomas was not a hardened criminal. He’d not grown up on any mean streets or graduated from juvenile detention centres or committed any crime other than the import and export of controlled substances, which he did more out of faith than necessity. For over a decade he’d been fully committed to an alternative lifestyle that involved the consumption of large quantities of cannabis and LSD. Given his hostility to work – the soul destroyer – to wage labour and the 9–5 hell, to paying taxes to support the hated system or being part of that system in any shape or form, it was a logical step to become a dealer. You got an income while remaining unemployed. You guaranteed your own supply. Your colleagues were usually friends or fellow believers, every customer a potential recruit to the cause. It was an open market and demand was consistently growing. It was the perfect ‘job’. Even though penalties were harsh and the law brutal in its application, this added to the attraction; not only did it bring drama, it meant you remained an outlaw and a revolutionary. For Thomas, and many like him, part of this image was wish-fulfilment, glamorising the inconvenient reality that they really were out to get you. But part of it was also a lingering conviction that they were on the right side of history.
Unfortunately for Thomas – when faced with the full might of the forces of law and order – he was nothing more than an amateur enthusiast who’d hit on the happy circumstance of making money out of his hobby. He’d been caught with a substantial amount of hashish. There were no mitigating circumstances. He was facing anything between seven and twenty-five years locked up with real criminals in a real prison, with murderers, rapists, child molesters and organised gangs. He was a college-educated hippy with three science degrees approaching middle age. What did he know about hard time?
One possible way out was to go underground. Become a fugitive. There were established routes and contacts. False IDs and passports could be provided. However, Thomas didn’t think that way. Released on bail, he stayed put and asked his friends in the UK to send him some money and clothes; he was unprepared for a Canadian winter. Nothing happened. Then he tried to get them to clear valuable drug-making equipment out of his London-based warehouse. Instead of preserving it, like he asked, they destroyed it. Infuriated, Thomas demanded compensation, but was bluntly refused. Disappointed and feeling betrayed, Thomas contemplated another option. Turn informer. He had a wealth of knowledge, in particular the inside track on the Microdot Gang, a massive LSD network based in the UK that produced millions of tabs a year – each acid trip potentially powerful enough to change a person overnight and make them question the very nature of reality. Thomas knew the key figures well and the intimate details of their operation. Surely this would be of interest to the authorities?
April 1974, with the tape machine rolling and two Scotland Yard officers present, Thomas began at the beginning. Late summer 1969: David Solomon, Ronald Stark and Richard Kemp met for the first time at Solomon’s cottage nestled in bucolic Grantchester Meadows to discuss how their LSD was going to change the world …