19) The Legend Howard Marks aka Mr Nice

August 12, 2024 14 min read

Birth name : Dennis Howard Marks
Birthday : 13 august 1945
Place of birth : Kenfig Hill, Glamorgan, Wales
Date of death : 10 avril 2016 (à l'âge de 70 ans)
Place of death : Leeds, West Yorkshire, England [source nécessaire]
Others Names : Mr Nice, Narco Polo, Dennis Howard Marks (D. H. Marks), Hooward Marks, Albi, Mr Tetley, Not, Mr McCarhy et 41526-004
Occupation : Writer, Import-Export, Cannabis Passionate
Wives : Ilze Kadegis (mariage de 1967 à ??), Judy Lane (marriage from 1980 to 2005)
Children : 4, with Amber
Conviction(s): Racketeering (drug trafficking)
Prison sentence: Imprisoned for 7 years

Youth and education

Dennis Howard Marks (13 August 1945 – 10 April 2016) was a Welsh drug smuggler and author who gained international notoriety as a cannabis smuggler through high-profile court cases. At his peak, he claimed to have smuggled drug shipments as large as 30 tonnes, and he was associated with groups as diverse as the CIA, IRA, MI6 and the Mafia. He was eventually indicted by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), sentenced to 25 years in prison; he was released in April 1995 after serving seven years. Although he had as many as 43 aliases, he became known as "Mr Nice" after purchasing a passport from Donald Nice, a convicted murderer. After his release from prison, he published a best-selling autobiography, "Mr. Nice" (1996), and publicly campaigned for changes in drug laws.

Marks was born at Kenfig Hill, near Bridgend, Wales, the son of Dennis Marks, a captain in the merchant navy, and Edna, a teacher. Raised in the Baptist faith, he later turned to Buddhism, although he did not become a devout practitioner. He attended Garw Grammar School in Pontycymer and was a fluent Welsh speaker.

He gained a place at Balliol College, Oxford, after impressing Russell Meiggs at his interview, and studied physics there from 1964 to 1967. At university he was introduced to cannabis by Denys Irving. After the death of his friend Joshua Macmillan (son of Maurice Macmillan), Marks vowed never to get involved with hard drugs. Among his other friends at Oxford were the epidemiologist Julian Peto and the journalist Lynn Barber. Despite months of using drugs instead of attending classes and a serious infection contracted weeks before exams, he passed his final exams through a combination of cheating and last-minute revision.

In 1967 he began training as a teacher and married Ilze Kadegis, a Latvian student at St. Anne's College, Oxford, also training to become a teacher. He left his teaching training to continue his studies at the University of London (1967-68; Grad. Inst P.), then returned to Balliol College, Oxford (1968-69; Dip HPh Sc), before join the University of Sussex (1969-70) to study philosophy of science.

Marks' daughter, Amber Marks, is a lawyer and pharmacology specialist.

A Cannabis Empire

Although he had tried drugs at university, he had only sold cannabis to close friends or acquaintances until 1970, when he was persuaded to help Graham Plinston, who had been arrested in Germany for drug trafficking. Through Plinston, he met Mohammed Durrani, a hashish exporter and descendant of the Durrani dynasty that ruled Afghanistan in the 19th century. With Plinston behind bars, Durrani proposed that Marks sell drugs on a larger scale in London, and he accepted the offer. He formed a partnership with four associates: Charlie Radcliffe, Charlie Weatherly, and a dealer named Jarvis. However, Durrani never contacted them, so the group bought smaller quantities of hashish from other suppliers and began selling it to consumers in Oxford, Brighton, and London. After six months, Marks returned to Germany to help bail out Plinston, as his clean record made him the ideal candidate to cross the border with a large sum of money.

Once Plinston was released, he entrusted Marks with a mission to transport hashish to Frankfurt. Marks then recruited a New Zealand smuggler named Lang as a driver. After paying Marks £5,000 for his work in Frankfurt, Plinston provided hashish to Marks and his three friends (Radcliffe, Weatherly, and Jarvis) in London. The four men sold nearly 650 kilos in the space of a week, making a profit of £20,000. Subsequently, Durrani arranged for hashish to be smuggled inside the furniture of Pakistani diplomats who were moving to London, and Marks intercepted the furniture to retrieve the drugs, earning a profit of £7,500. Marks decided to expand his business by recruiting two Welsh friends, Mike Bell and David Thomas, to store the merchandise and help transport it. The team quickly grew frustrated with how profits were shared (80% of the money from sales went to Durrani), and they contacted James McCann, an arms dealer for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Marks and Plinston convinced McCann to smuggle hashish directly from Kabul to Ireland, and the two of them transported it by ferry to Wales and then to England. McCann arranged for the drugs to arrive through Shannon Airport duty-free, using his IRA connections. Marks avoided attracting the attention of tax authorities by creating fake invoices, indicating that he earned his money from selling collectible stamps and running a clothing store.

By 1972, he was making £50,000 per shipment. At the end of the year, he was approached by Hamilton McMillan of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), a friend from Oxford, who recruited Marks for MI6 because of his connections in hashish-producing countries (Lebanon, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), his charm with women, and his contacts with the IRA. The following year, Marks began exporting cannabis to the United States through the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, hiding the drugs in the equipment of fictitious British rock bands supposedly touring the U.S. He continued to expand his operations by doing business with other traffickers and regularly using his Oxford network. Since McCann risked being killed by the IRA if MI6 informed them of his involvement in drug trafficking, Marks ended the smuggling operations at Shannon Airport.

After the Littlejohn affair, MI6 cut all ties with Marks, while his U.S. operation came to an end when police dismantled a speaker filled with cannabis and arrested James Grater, one of the gang members involved, leading to arrests across Europe. Marks was arrested by Dutch police in 1973, but he did not appear in court in 1974. The British press then turned him into a media figure, spreading rumors that he had been kidnapped by the IRA because of his ties to MI6. With most of his fortune confiscated by authorities, Marks went to Italy, where he lived in a camper van for three months before secretly returning to England in 1974. It was during this time that he began a relationship with Judy Lane; the couple would later marry and have three children (Amber, born in October 1977; Francesca, born in November 1980; and Patrick, born in November 1986). Prior to this, he had a five-year relationship with Rosie Lewis, with whom he had a daughter named Myfanwy. Marks later connected Ernie Combs, a member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, with John Denbigh, a man with connections to Nepalese hashish production. With the help of the Yakuza, large quantities could be exported to JFK Airport in New York, hidden inside air conditioners, and Don Brown’s Mafia clan (led by Carmine Galante) would take possession. A deal for 500 kilos of hashish was organized and executed on July 4, 1975, making Marks a wealthy man. There were other deals of around 750 kilos, and Marks continued living under aliases in the U.K. In 1976, he traveled to the U.S. and organized a one-ton deal between Combs and "Sam the Lebanese," earning £300,000 in the process. He continued organizing deals between his various American friends and his contacts in the Far East. Seeking a new identity after his alias "Anthony Tunnicliffe" was discovered by the police, he bought the passport of Donald Nice in 1978.

"Between 1975 and 1978, twenty-four shipments totaling 55,000 pounds of marijuana and hashish were successfully imported into JFK Airport, New York. These transactions involved the Mafia, the Yakuza, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Thai military, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Pakistani Armed Forces, Nepalese monks, and various other individuals from all walks of life. The profit made by all involved approached $48,000,000. They had their moment of glory." —Marks' conclusion about the JFK Airport trafficking period in his autobiography Mr. Nice. This era came to an end when the DEA began intercepting shipments and arresting members of the New York Mafia.

By the late 1970s, the Trafficante crime family, led by Santo Trafficante Jr., was importing cannabis from Colombia into the U.S. via cargo ships, driving down the price of marijuana throughout America. In December 1979, Trafficante exported no less than 50 tons of cannabis directly from Colombia to Marks and his contacts in the U.K., enough to meet the British market's demand for an entire year. In 1980, Marks was arrested by customs for his role in importing £15 million worth of cannabis. Police had tracked associates of the Trafficante family to the location of a large cannabis depot. Upon his arrest, he was found with numerous incriminating items and £30,000 in cash.

Defended by Lord Hutchinson, Marks pleaded "not guilty" by concocting a story that he was an MI6 agent (concealing the fact that his relationship with MI6 had ended in 1973) and that the Mexican Secret Service had provided him with a drug trafficker identity to apprehend James McCann (wanted in England for his activities with the IRA). The jury found him innocent of the drug trafficking charges but guilty of using false passports, and Marks was sentenced to two years in prison. However, he was released after just five days, having already served most of his sentence before the verdict was rendered. His Majesty’s Customs later arrested him for his role in a 1973 trafficking operation, but following a plea bargain and a reduced sentence, he served only three months of a three-year sentence.

Released in May 1982, although most of his employees were still in prison for crimes for which he had been acquitted, he spent the following year managing a legitimate wine import business. Nevertheless, he continued to spend more money than he earned, and the savings he had accumulated through drug trafficking in the 1970s began to dwindle. In 1983, McCann was still on the run, and his smuggling operation was thriving. He offered Marks the opportunity to sell 250 kilos of cannabis, which Marks accepted. However, Dutch police intercepted the entire shipment and arrested Mickey Williams, a member of London’s underground networks who had agreed to help Marks with the deal.

After that, Marks traveled to the Far East to arrange cannabis deals with Salim Malik, an Afridi hashish exporter he had met through Durrani (by then, Durrani had succumbed to a heart attack), and Phil Sparrowhawk, an exporter from Bangkok. They would transport the merchandise to Ernie Combs in the U.S. Marks also arranged a 500-kilo deal with Mickey Williams, who had moved to Bangkok after his release from an Amsterdam prison. Marks laundered his money through several front businesses, including a travel agency, stationery shop, wine import company, water distribution firm, and a secretarial service.

In 1984, he was contacted to sell $300,000 worth of cannabis to a CIA agent who sought to fund and arm the Mujahideen in their fight against the Soviets (Operation Cyclone). However, the agent’s contact on the APL (American President Lines) ship suffered a heart attack and died en route, leaving the merchandise in the hands of U.S. authorities. The agent fled to Brazil to avoid prosecution. Despite being under surveillance, Marks continued to expand his smuggling activities and set up a massage parlor in a luxury hotel in Bangkok with the help of Phil Sparrowhawk and Lord Moynihan. In 1986, he settled in Majorca and continued to profit from trafficking Salim Malik’s hashish to the U.S. Meanwhile, the DEA kept monitoring Marks and tapped his phone. After arresting Ernie Combs, they nearly seized a large shipment of cannabis, but Marks was warned, and the boat was rerouted to Mauritius, canceling the operation. As he

continued to evade the DEA’s clutches, he accumulated more wealth, and his alias “Donald Nice” became widely known within international drug trafficking circles.

Trial and imprisonment

Marks was transferred from Palma to Modelo prison in Barcelona, then to Alcalá Meco prison in Madrid. There, he was given a 40-page document detailing accusations of his drug trafficking activities between 1970 and 1987, accusing him of operating a network as described in the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) . In his autobiography, Marks stated that "although the accusation against Judy and certain others was absurd, the formal accusations against me, in general terms, were true." The recently passed Sentencing Reform Act meant he faced a minimum sentence of ten years to life without the possibility of parole. The National Court ordered his extradition to Florida. After being confronted with the evidence against him, Marks attempted to build his defense by claiming that his smuggling operations were directed towards Australia and that he had never exported to the United States, and therefore did not had ever broken American law. He again cultivated the myth that he was a spy for MI6 and claimed that he had been framed by the CIA because he discovered that CIA agents were smuggling drugs into Australia. He and his lawyers spent hours poring over wiretaps to make coded conversations about smuggling to America seem to suggest the drugs were actually being smuggled into Australia; research was carried out on weather models to establish conclusive links between what Marks and his associates were saying and what was happening in Australia at the time. Marks and his wife were extradited in 1989 and he was advised of his Miranda rights while flying from Spain to the United States.

In Florida, Judy pleaded guilty to her small part in the ring and was released, having already served a few months in prison in Spain. The money Marks made from his smuggling operations was spent on legal fees. He refused to plead guilty or turn in his associates, betting that he could once again convince a jury that authorities had the wrong culprit. At the start of the trial in July 1990, Patrick Lane, his brother-in-law and co-trafficker, wrote to Marks informing him that he would testify against him in court to get a more lenient sentence. Marks was still confident of beating the DEA in court, but Ernie Combs also agreed to testify for the prosecution to secure his wife's release, and Marks had no choice but to plead guilty to charges of racketeering. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and fined $50,000; although he was initially sentenced to 15 years, he was brought back into court after the judge realized he had made a mistake in stating that his 10 and 15 year sentences were to be served consecutively and not, as he had initially declared it, simultaneously.

He spent seven years in prison at the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, Indiana, a harsh prison. He was originally sentenced to Butner, but Officer Lovato insisted he serve his sentence in Terre Haute. One of the six most secure correctional facilities in the country, Terre Haute had the worst reputation of the six for gang rapes and violence. Despite this, Marks remained on good terms with the many violent inmates held there, as he was "British and a famous non-whistleblower" and avoided conflict "by being kind, charming and eccentric". During his time there, he befriended many notorious criminals and members of four of the five reputed families, including: Gennaro "Gerry Lang" Langella (Colombo family); James "Jimmy C" Coonan, John "Johnny Carnegs" Carneglia and Frank "Frankie Loc" LoCascio (Gambino family); Anthony “Bruno” Indelicato (Bonanno family); and Vittorio "Little Vic" Amuso, and Joey Testa (Lucchese family). He also became friends with Veronza Bowers, Jr. (Black Panther Party) and James "Big Jim" Nolan of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. Due to his status as an Oxford University graduate with alleged links to the British Secret Intelligence Service, he was considered a potential fugitive and spent many weeks in solitary confinement, although he never attempted to escape or threaten other inmates or prison staff. While in prison, he enjoyed success as a prison lawyer for other inmates, getting a conviction overturned. He stopped smoking for the last three years of his sentence. In January 1995, Marks was paroled after a corrections officer testified that he was a model inmate spending much of his time helping fellow inmates obtain their GED diplomas. He was released in April 1995.

Life after release

He starred in the gangster film Killer Bitch (2010), starred in the film I Know You Know (2009), appeared as Satan in the 2006 film adaptation of the television series Dirty Sanchez, and did an appearance in the film Human Traffic (1999). He appeared as himself in AmStarDam (aka "Stoner Express") (2016).

Advocacy and policy

Marks stood for election to the British Parliament in 1997, on the sole issue of legalizing cannabis. He contested four seats at once – Norwich South (against future Home Secretary Charles Clarke), Norwich North, Neath and Southampton Test – and received around 1% of the vote. This led to the formation of the Cannabis Legalization Alliance (LCA) by Alun Buffry in 1999; the party was reformed as Cannabis Law Reform in 2011.

He has also advocated for the legalization of cannabis on numerous television programs in the United Kingdom. On October 1, 2010, he was interviewed on The Late Late Show in Ireland. Dutch cannabis seed bank Sensi Seeds dedicated their Mr Nice G13 x Hash Plant strain to Marks for his advocacy work.

His close links with the likes of Gruff Rhys associated Marks with the radical changes of the Cool Cymru movement and the changing face of modern Wales.

Books

After his release from prison, Marks published an autobiography, Mr Nice (1996), translated into several languages. He also compiled an anthology entitled The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories (2001) and a sequel to his autobiography: Señor Nice: Straight Life From Wales to South America (2006). Señor Nice differs from his previous book as drugs are not the focus of the story and, although autobiographical, the book further explores Marks' claimed ancestor, the pirate Sir Henry Morgan. In 2011, he wrote the thriller Sympathy for the Devil. His latest book "Mr Smiley, My Last Pill and Testament" ISBN 978-1-5098-0968-4 was published in 2015 by Pan Macmillan.

Marks hosted a series of book readings through 2014. At these live events, he entertained his audiences with tales of his smuggling days and his time in prison, as well as offering perspectives on the production of drugs and the arguments in favor of the legalization of cannabis.

Comedy

He was scheduled to perform at the Welsh Comedy Festival in July 2007.

Comics and video games

Marks and comic book writer Pat Mills collaborated on tie-in comics for Sony's inFamous 2 video game.

Music

In the world of music, he has appeared as a guest on the BBC music quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He also collaborated with Welsh band Super Furry Animals on their album Fuzzy Logic (released May 1996), which includes a track called "Hangin' With Howard Marks", and also worked on their singles "The Man Don't Give a Fuck” and “Ice Hockey Hair”. He was featured on the album Angel Headed Hip Hop (2009) with Lee Harris and River Styx. He has also worked with former Happy Mondays guitarist Kav Sandhu and has appeared at numerous UK music festivals including Glastonbury (2009 and 2011), Beautiful Days, RockNess, Camp Bestival, Kendal Calling and the Sonisphere Festival. He was featured on the track "MDMAzing" by Reverend & The Makers on their third album @Reverend Makers (2012).

Works on Marks

Marks was the subject of the biography High Time (1984) written by David Leigh.

Marks was also the subject of the film Mr. Nice (2010), named after his 1997 autobiography. The film starred Rhys Ifans as Marks and Chloë Sevigny as his wife Judy.

In 2013, Marks told his story in an episode of the television series Banged Up Abroad.

He introduced us to the best hashish in the world “Skin Goat”

Howard Marks, famous as "Mr Nice", is known for his commitment to supplying the famous "skin goat" hash, sourced from the mountains of Pakistan. Marks was one of the few who traveled directly to the Tirah Valley to personally select the finest quality hashish available. His quest for perfection set him apart, as he paved the way for many purists who did not have access to such qualities. Initially exporting it himself in several cars or duping customs, he then set up an international organization to distribute this precious substance throughout the world. Cleverly using his musical equipment as a cover, he facilitated export to destinations like the United States, cementing his reputation and influence in the area of illicit drug trafficking.

Dead

On January 25, 2015, it was announced that Marks was suffering from inoperable colorectal cancer. He died of the disease on April 10, 2016, aged 70.

Mark a purist?
Respected in the big leagues

Howard Marks, known as Mr. Nice, is widely respected and considered a purist in the cannabis world for several significant reasons. First, he embodied an ethic of quality and integrity in his cultivation and distribution operations, always striving to maintain high standards for the products he brought to market. His passion for cannabis strains and commitment to preserving original genetics, often landraces, has helped preserve the plant's genetic diversity. Additionally, Marks was a tireless advocate for the legalization of cannabis, not only for its recreational aspects but also for its medicinal and industrial benefits. His fight for the rights of consumers and growers marked a generation of activists and producers, strengthening his reputation among the “big guys” in the sector. By founding Mr Nice Seed Bank and co-founding CBD Crew with Shantibaba, Marks put his beliefs into action, demonstrating his commitment to raising the standards of cannabis cultivation while meeting the medicinal needs of consumers. His charisma, intelligence, and ability to navigate legal and policy challenges made him an iconic and respected figure, whose legacy lives on in the global movement for cannabis policy reform.

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19) The Legend Howard Marks aka Mr Nice

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