Square Grouper Film Focuses on "Black Tuna Diaries"

A new film focuses by the director of Cocaine Cowboys focuses on the true story of how the Nixon Administration’s War on Drugs helped shape the formation of the ‘Godfathers of Ganja’ in Billy Corben’s new film, Square Grouper.

In Grouper we see how a drug war, coupled with the possibility of pot legalization looming in the distance and a drop out of the job market in Florida, sparked a rise in the price of pot and an emergence of a new industry: a culture of pot smuggling.

Using the oceans currents to send barrels of buds, boats would drop the supplies right off the side of the boats and while ‘upstream’ another out-of-work fisherman would pick it up and take it right back into the harbor that houses their slip.

From Jamaica to the Everglades, the ganja trade took root and by the time Miami Police caught wind of the DEA dubbed “Black Tuna Gang” they had retrieved more than half a million pounds of pot in what eventually became a smooth enterprise that includes five yachts and one plane.

Robert Platshorn, who served the longest prison term for a non-violent marijuana offense in US history, chronicles their experiences in his book, Black Tuna Diaries, which Corben picks up on and adds a layer of perspective that fuels the atmosphere for what the climate of the times was like.

Out of everyone that was caught, Robert Platshorn had the longest prison sentence, where he penned the story for Diaries.

Robert talked to Scrapple TV about some of his experiences.