Kelly Slater has bought the film and television rights to "Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers, and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade".
The 11-time world surfing champion is expanding his business fields. Slater is ready to adapt Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter's book to the screens. The final result will be a documentary film and a TV series.
"This is a history they certainly don't teach you in school but an important and significant cultural phenomenon that occurred mostly undocumented. It took the professional historian and former smuggler 15 years to complete, and it is based on thousands of hours of interviews," explains Kelly Slater.
"They document everything you didn't know about pot smuggling from the late 60s through early 80s, diving into every aspect of the game from personal to political. Even Timothy Leary and Richard Nixon make cameos."
Slater explains that the ""ith the current atmosphere around marijuana legalization and the connected topics, it seems timely to bring this thing to life." His goal is to question "inconsistencies around drug laws and philosophical questions."
"Thai Stick" reveals the story behind Thailand's capital, Bangkok, which has been home to smugglers and surf adventurers since the late eighteenth century.
Until the mid-1970s, the vast majority of marijuana consumed in the United States was imported, and there was little to no domestic production. Maguire and Ritter conducted hundreds of interviews with smugglers and law enforcement agents about one of the world's most lucrative commodities.
"As an innocent kid growing up in Florida, I knew nothing about this stuff but heard lots of stories about the surfing/smuggling connections related to people I knew. I was always intrigued hearing about the guys I considered to be real life pirates. A lot of what I know now comes from the pages in this book and corroborates things I heard as a kid," concludes Slater.
