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Letter: Howard Marks was a totem of 90s pop culture

Oliver Duff

inews

Saturday 16 Apr 2016

Farewell, then, Howard Marks, Britain’s “most charming drug smuggler” and, later, author and myth-maker. I first met him while at university – in fact I met one of my friends in the back of Marks’ car, a tiny hatchback, before quite a relaxing evening.

It is not so obvious, really, why he became a knock-down national treasure. The British aren’t noted for their affection for drug traffickers, and at one point Marks, aka Narco Polo, controlled a decent wedge of the global trade in marijuana and hashish. He was a serious player rather than a scoundrel, mastering smuggling routes and money laundering, evading the law, owning 43 aliases, dabbling with MI6 – a long way from the book festival circuit.

In person, he was droll, affectionate, quick, generous; it was easy to see how he charmed jurors to an acquittal, despite being caught red-handed smuggling 15 tons of marijuana by boat into a Scottish loch.

He was brilliantly funny, for sure, and deftly rewrote his misdeeds as escapades, a stoner’s Boy’s Own.

In his later, even more mellow years, he warned of the connection between smoking skunk and psychosis, and was delighted to see his demand that cannabis be legalised for recreational consumption finally realised – in four American states.

Those who mourn this pillar of 90s pop culture mark the passing of a chapter in their own lives; a brief time, not very long ago, where they could light up a fat one without fear of censure; short years of escape which slipped through their fingers unbidden.

https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/entertainment/i-editors-letter-howard-marks-totem-90s-pop-culture/

 

 

 

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