Cannabis world says goodbye to Howard Marks, the ‘nice’ drug smuggler

Known worldwide as Mr. Nice, Marks died last April the 10th in his house in London, “peacefully in his sleep surrounded by his four loving children”, as it says in his official Twitter account.

Howard Marks had with no doubt both international recognition and affection from the international cannabis community. Among his merits it is to be one of the first “international smugglers” of cannabis, and his life has been a constant battle for the people to have access to marijuana, not just the therapeutically. According to him, legal recognition to all who enjoy consumption with ludic aims or therapeutically has the same relevance.

He always lived as he pleased, and yet he found trouble, as his two stays at prison shows. He managed to escape the first time and, right after being arrested again, he convinced the jury to absolve him of almost all accusations. Unbelievable! It is a pity that he couldn’t redeem himself a second time, although his sentence was reduced to 7 years due to his good behaviour.

His amazing adventures and experiences all over the world were narrated in his acclaimed autobiography “Mr. Nice”, a worldwide bestseller translated into many languages and was taken to the cinema in 2009 with a film under the same title. Mr. Nice is just one out of the 43 aliases that Mark used to travel clandestinely, with 89 telephone numbers and 25 companies that he used for money laundering purposes.

Howard Marks, 70 years old, suffered since one year ago an inoperable colon cancer, but he left with “no regrets”: “It’s impossible to regret any part of my life when I feel happy and I am happy now, so I don’t have any regrets and have not had any for a very long time.”, declared to The Observer when he revealed his disease.

Kannabia’s team wants to send condolences to Howard’s family, friends and acquaintances. We met him in many events related to the cannabis world, and to us he is and will always be a huge source of inspiration and motivation.