Mr Nice ....Dead!

Howard Marks was the criminal who police said was at the centre of the world's biggest

cannabis deals in the 1970s and '80s

He gained notoriety for his smuggling exploits and spent years on the run before he was caught in

Spain in 1988 and extradited to the US.

A year after being released early from an American prison for good behaviour,

Marks put pen to paper to write his memoirs.

Mr Nice became a bestseller and was turned into a film, while Marks also spent years

campaigning to reform drugs laws.

Graduate dealer
Marks, who has died aged 70 a year after being diagnosed with cancer,

was born in Kenfig Hill, Bridgend county, in 1945.


He was an unlikely drugs smuggler, having received a physics degree from Oxford University.

Although he smoked cannabis as a student, it was after graduating that he began dealing the drug.

His involvement escalated as he began smuggling cannabis around the world,

relying on multiple identities and a well-connected network of friends to evade justice.

It was also claimed Marks worked for MI6, which was said to have been impressed by

his criminal contacts, who included members of the IRA.

He was eventually arrested in Spain by American drug enforcement officers and extradited

to Florida the following year to face trial.

In 1990, he was found guilty of smuggling cannabis and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

But his good behaviour saw him released in 1995, and he subsequently chronicled his

smuggling exploits in his book.

Mr Nice was translated into several languages, while a film based on the book was released in 2010

with the actor Rhys Ifans playing Marks.

Marks also began campaigning for the legalisation of cannabis, and stood for election to

Parliament in 1997 on a single-issue ticket of reforming drugs laws.

He also cultivated a reputation as a raconteur and a cultural icon.

Marks regularly toured a one-man show in which he recounted stories about drug smuggling

and his time in prison.

As well as the film version of Mr Nice, he had cameo roles in the 1999 movie Human Traffic and

appeared on TV shows including Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

He also collaborated on songs with the Super Furry Animals and made appearances at the Glastonbury festival.

In January 2015, he revealed he had been diagnosed with inoperable bowel cancer,

prompting some of his celebrity friends to organise a fundraising evening in London,

which included performances by Rhys Ifans, Cerys Matthews and the Super Furry Animals.

A follow-up to his autobiography, Mr Smiley: My Last Pill and Testament, was published in autumn 2015.

He told me in an interview in October 2015 he had no regrets and was happy -

he was "living with cancer not dying from cancer".

(http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-34465454)

r.i.p a true cannabis foot soldier ,great bloke .I have been lucky to meet him in Amsterdam,

He will be sat in jha's garden with the legend jack herer looking down,on us prob saying how we could improve thing's

During the mid 1980s Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and owned 25 companies throughout the world.

Whether bars, recording studios, or offshore banks, all were money laundering vehicles serving the core activity:

dope dealing. Marks began to deal small amounts of hashish while doing a postgraduate philosophy course at Oxford,

but soon he was moving much larger quantities.

At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to 50 tons from Pakistan and Thailand

to America and Canada and had contact with organizations

as diverse as MI6, the CIA, the IRA, and the Mafia. This is his extraordinary story.

To honor this unfortunate event I post my book

Below, right click save as, to your pc then rename to .mobi

when we talked to him he was saying that smoking bud was a last resort for him good quality hash all ways come first,pretty much the same mind set has people in morocco,they think people smoking the flowers are poor people.I have to agree with both of them hash,will always out do flowers if its good quality hash.Not very often i smoke bud,it just does not do it for me,


Thoughts go out to his family and close friends true legend,he made many a person smile with the hash he brought in years ago.

Just had a look at his seeds ,I ain't really done many of his projects ,but think I will be ordering that afgan haze ,,now that looks very nice .Critical haze too that's my kind of nugs nice big stacking of crowns.

Shasme really that its took a post like this for me to have more than a glance at his strains some I will be defo ordering soon.

I smoked his ganja that he flooded the UK with in the 80's, mostly Rocky, soft black Moroccan, or Lebanese slate and it was all amazing.

tyke1973 said:

Just had a look at his seeds ,I ain't really done many of his projects ,but think I will be ordering that afgan haze ,,now that looks very nice .Critical haze too that's my kind of nugs nice big stacking of crowns.Shasme really that its took a post like this for me to have more than a glance at his strains some I will be defo ordering soon.

Click to expand...

A seed company can name itself 'Mr Nice' but it don't mean that it comes from Howard Marks? /imo

Balch i fod yn Gymraeg, Howard Marks.

RIP

Sad. I'm just reading his book, last pill and testament.

Read all his other ones. Rip Howard Marks.

I shall spark a bowl some fine hashish in honour of Mr. Nice. I like the flower for the flower...but i love smoking its hash more...

RIP

Some piece of crap judge sent Marks to a prison that is reserved for the worse of the worse. On the other hand you have Bernie Madoff who took everything some people had and he's doing prison in what looks like a junior college. I guess most of our politicians relate all too well to the Madoffs of the world. I don't have any hash to smoke in his memory but a 3 gram bottle of nothing but trichomes will do.