The illicit drug World is the largest and most profitable of all criminal enterprises, making substantial but secretive contributions to the economies of Third World countries, turning individuals in the West from paupers to millionaires in a matter of years, and spurring greater international police co-operation than any other activity. No other criminal problem draws an annual individual message from the President of the United States or a biennial United Nations report. The amount of money generated by illicit drugs makes their trafficking, manufacture and sale one of the great industries of the world in the late twentieth century.

It was with these facts in mind that this book first began as an idea in 1978, spawned during one of the world's largest LSD trials then taking place in Britain. The original intention was an exploration of drugs, guiding the reader through the secret passages of supply and mapping their extent. But in the course of the trial, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was mentioned. Created in 1966 in California, it was credited with having generated $200 million through an estimated membership of 750 people, and was held responsible for widely distributing LSD and marijuana in the United States. The police described it as a 'hippie mafia' and the counter-culture talked softly of a secretive, mystical band whose motives were idealistic. Despite its size and the tantalizing mystery surrounding it, no book had looked at the Brotherhood in any detail. Our project turned from a general study into a concentrated examination of one particular group.

The hippies of the 1960s are normally remembered for their pacific dispositions, their preaching of 'Peace and Love'; and yet, if the stories were to be believed, some banded into a 'mafia'. A social phenomenon which spurned materialism, the hippies had none the less made millions. Yet that Alternative Society, or what is left of it, claimed they were idealists whose history was to be guarded as carefully as any state secret. The Brotherhood supplied LSD and marijuana as a sacred mission, believing in the righteousness of their profession. No one could grasp what they did without understanding the rise of LSD, the growth of the psychedelic movement and the heady, optimistic, revolutionary, energized days of the 1960s.

In trying to achieve that comprehension, our book began to shift ground again. The Brotherhood existed, achieving many of the things claimed on its behalf. It did indeed generate millions of dollars, and it was a loose-limbed mafia of sorts. It was also fired with idealism. The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was one part of a much greater movement fascinated by the potential of LSD to improve the quality of Man's life.

In the beginning, LSD was little more than a promising psychiatric tool which might at the same time also become a potent new weapon in the hands of generals and spymasters. The research, both civilian and military, was widespread. And it brought with it a third possibility-that through the heightened perceptions and insights it produced, LSD could radically alter the direction of the human race towards a better pathway for the future.

The dream brought together many diverse individuals from a renowned philosopher to a Harvard professor and a best-selling novelist-and led to the creation of the psychedelic movement. Drugs in the 1960s no longer meant the inebriation of the socially deprived or inept, but a means to 'enlightenment'. LSD brought in its train greater use of marijuana, classified as a narcotic but in fact a natural member of the same class of drugs-the hallucinogens.

LSD was proscribed, as marijuana had long been, but the dream could not be shaken so easily. There were those who were prepared to make LSD and those, like the Brother hood, who were prepared to distribute it: there was the millionaire scion of one of America's richest families who became a financial adviser and banker to LSD-makers; the underground chemist, dubbed the 'unofficial mayor of San Francisco'; and the core of the Brotherhood, living on a secluded ranch at the centre of an ever-increasing group of dealers and smugglers.

Their experiences, sometimes seen through the eyes of an individual and at other times through those of a crowd, make up the story of a movement which crossed frontiers and oceans in pursuit of the promised millenium. They are figures seen against the backdrop of a decade in which Youth seemed about to conquer the world with rock and roll for its battle hymns and slogans for a manifesto.

Yet somehow the old ways refused to surrender, fighting back with all the strength they could muster. The story became one of how the supporters of a dream were driven underground, where ideals wither before the demands of survival. Any alternative society which tries to establish itself alongside the status quo faces the problems of hostility, the potential for corruption and the ambiguities of its uneasy existence. The psychedelic movement never possessed discipline and order with which to combat its difficulties. The drugs at its core were sacred tools but also commercial commodities.

The story moved to a bleaker landscape, heavy with the scent of corruption, profit and betrayal. The book became a story of fallen idealism, a modern morality play, peopled not only with psychedelic ideologues but with terrorists, criminal entrepreneurs and those who walk on the wilder shores of life.

Perhaps the book has returned to its original intention. Before-the 1960s, the illicit drug industry was a relatively small but persistent enterprise. Today, it is enormous. This book may go some way to explaining that phenomenon.

S. T., D. M.

October 1983