MR NICE Howard Marks



The poster read, Mr Nice An evening with Howard Marks … the man, the legend & the nicest international criminal you could hope to meet’.  The venue was the trendy Home loungebar and restaurant in Arnold, Nottingham.  It was an unusual choice of venue to host a night with someone who was at one time one of the most wanted dope dealers in Europe and America.  I imagined the perfect setting to hear a reading from Howard Marks would have been a softly lit room, with incense burning, and an audience of weed smoking non-conformists hanging on to his every word.  Instead it was a very noisy bar with no atmosphere and a very average looking audience.  No hippies, no mohicans, no dreadlocks, no out of work stereotype ‘weed smokers’ but rather trendily dressed locals who asked him the type of questions you’d expect from Ok or Hello readers such as ‘Have you slept with anyone famous?’.  It’s not really the type of question you would expect to be posed to a one time most wanted ‘criminal’.  Howard Marks himself commented that he difficulty recognising his core audience.    

 

Howard Marks

One thing was for sure, the 200 strong audience weren’t weed smoking hippies or drug addicts, but average ‘good citizens’  Some who just don’t buy into the concept that we need governments deciding that a naturally grown plant is ‘bad’ and that someone should be arrested for smoking something that makes them feel good.  To clarify, I am not a weed smoker, but I am pro-choice and believe everyone has a right to choose their own path in life and make their own decisions.  I don’t believe that weed is any more harmful than alcohol or smoking cigarettes.  As a taxpayer, I would like to see my tax money going on catching real criminals, paedophiles, rapists, burglars, not going after someone who after a long day at work wants to smoke a spliff in the same way I enjoy a cider or a glass of wine.  I also believe that by making something illegal it sustains a life of gangs, drug barons, unnecessary killing, drug wars, and natural plant life being grown uncontrolled with pesticides and goodness knows what other poisons added to it for bulk.  It means that a natural form of plant life that can create hallucinations is turned into a poison.  I am not saying that weed hasn’t lead to drug addiction for some people, but then alcohol, which is enjoyed modestly by some, makes alcoholics and violent criminals out of others.
    

Howard Marks

I am also sure that most of the audience were there out of curiosity, a bit like me.  I love reading autobiographies and had read the book Mr Nice, enjoyed the movie and had seen Howard Marks on TV in a documentary.  Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction and I love reading about other people’s lives, you just can’t make this stuff up!  He is a fascinating man who has lived such a bizarre and crazy life.  If anything, I see him as a canny businessman and not as a criminal.  Howard Marks has been smoking weed for 47 years and is still coherent, intelligent, funny, witty, charming, polite and has old school manners.  After his talk, he signed our books and was so very sweet.  He could not have chosen a more suitable alias – he is Mr Nice.

Howard Marks