From the Publisher
Praise for Dopeworld:
"[A] terrific debut…Vorobyov makes a persuasive case for the legalization of drugs...It could well become a classic.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)
“An entertaining excursion into the narcotics trade by a one-time practitioner…A revealing treatise that provides ample ammunition for the legalize-it crowd.” —Kirkus Reviews
"Fast-paced, in-your-face, sprawling...Equal parts criminal memoir, history lesson, and travelog, [Dopeworld] will appeal to readers seeking an immersive and intimate look at the drug trade." –Library Journal
"Dopeworld hooked me from page one on out—as engrossing and informative as it is fun to read. A winner!" - Bruce Porter, bestselling author of Blow: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All and Snatched: From Drug Queen to Informer to Hostage
"A free-rolling and frank depiction of the global narcotics scene. Fascinating." —The Spectator (UK)
"An obsessive, immersive account of all aspects of the drug culture—its ways, its rules, its rituals, its rhythms, its language." —Irish Examiner (UK)
Kirkus Reviews
2020-06-26
An entertaining excursion into the narcotics trade by a one-time practitioner.
Born in the former Soviet Union, Vorobyov landed as a child in “a small boring town in the British countryside that doubles as a film set whenever the BBC want to do a costume drama.” Bored out of his skull, he dabbled in various penny-ante criminal enterprises such as selling pirated DVDs “until everyone discovered the Internet,” which led him to his next gig: selling cocaine and other drugs to his fellow college students, who proved a willing, lucrative market. “Drugs are an easy, low-risk source of tax-free profit,” he writes. “You can scream how it’s wrong all you want, but name another business where you can quadruple your investment over a weekend.” The drug trade in Britain came under the control of various ethnic groups, most notably—and violently—Albanian gangsters. As for the author, he got caught and did a little time but remains defiant in his defense of the enterprise: “I hate it when people say drug dealers don’t work for a living,” he writes. “Your baggies don’t just weigh themselves and fly over to your people’s houses.” Still, weighing the odds and considering how people behind bars turn into their own worst enemies and have a terrible habit of killing themselves, Vorobyov decided to try a different tack: “While I was in jail, I’d figured that I might as well become one of those prison intellectual types: the subversive scholar.” That scholarship meant reading, traveling the globe (“call me Narco Polo”), and chronicling such diverse matters as a drug’s effects on the brain’s dopamine levels, the trade’s contribution to the international economy, and a “war on drugs” that is really a genocide of ethnic minorities in slow motion. His conclusion: One day, that war will end, whereupon he’ll open a cannabis shop named for the judge who sentenced him.
A revealing treatise that provides ample ammunition for the legalize-it crowd.
