HIGH ON HOPE
Howard Marks talks to Free Radical Sounds Part Two
B: Is America stricter than the UK with its drug laws?
H: Oh yes. The Americans are absolutely insane. They're the worst in the world, other than the kind of really way-out places such as Singapore - which I don't know how we judge them anyway.B: America is worse than here?
H: (Sounding shocked) Oh, much, much worse. There, life means life for example. Here it doesn't mean that.B: Life means until you die.
H: Yeah, it means until you drop dead. There was one guy in there and he had seven consecutive life-sentences. Just in case he managed to get off one of them in a post-conviction.B: Or just in case he managed to live four times as long as one would expect him to?
H: Yes.
B: You've been quoted as saying that you could be arrested at any time.
H: Well yes, I could be arrested now.
B: And yet earlier on I said to you, "Shall I chuck out the roach?" and you said, "They're not gonna bust me." So could you explain? Is that quote still true? Could you be arrested at any time?
H: Sure, I could be arrested now because I'm rolling a joint. I'm always carrying a joint, and carrying dope. As you say I've often been quoted as saying that I could be arrested any time. Because I always carry dope, and I've even tried to walk into a police station smoking a joint, and asked them to arrest me. Therefore it seems silly to worry about leaving a joint in the ashtray of my hotel room. Plus, I quite like promoting that lack of paranoia. I don't do this, but I would be quite happy to encourage people to leave roaches everywhere. We should just stop trying to pretend there's anything we shouldn't be doing. I think though, when I said I could be arrested any time, I think I was referring to the fact that I've broken laws in the past which I've disclosed in the book, and because there's no statute of limitation in countries like here, England, for example, they could - if they wanted to - bust me for a dope deal I did 20 years ago and confessed to in the book, you see.
B: So going back to a deal you did do 20 years ago, the bands. This deal that you did.
H: Oh with the speakers? Yeah.
B: Are you gonna name the bands that you used? The real bands?
H: Yeah, course. The authorities know which bands they were, so anything the authorities know, you can know.
B: Pink Floyd I've seen mentioned?
H: Yeah, Pink Floyd, ELP, Eric Clapton and Genesis. And I think that's it.
B: Who, within the tour companies, knew? Surely not the band members themselves?
H: No, no, just the roadie and the manufacturer of the equipment. That's all. The roadies, right, there were two or three of those, and the manufacture of the equipment which was one. They were the only people who knew. See, we couldn't tell the rock singers anyway. We'd have to cut them in. And they were making enough money anyway. (Laughs.) We definitely didn't want to tell them! And it's not as if I'm hiding their lack of participation with a kind of old schoolboy honour or something, you know, we definitely didn't want them to know.
B: Right, so the least amount of people who knew, the better.
H: Well they would have been put in awful positions. They were on the verge of making very lucrative and meaningful careers, OK. It would be very important if a load got busted that they would not get convicted for it. Especially in America.
B: Do you think the drug laws are being used to disguise the act of bringing in harsher constraints, under the guise of the "war on drugs" and similar to the 'fight against terrorism'? i.e. they use the war on drugs and the fight against terrorism as ways of stopping me being able to walk down the street at three in the morning.
H: Yes, sure. That happens. And I think only in those two areas. They certainly seem to only use those two areas, drugs and terrorism, to increase their powers. You know, like they have special powers to increase sanctions. You take with terrorism. When they introduced the special power of being able to intern someone without trial, pronounce them guilty without trial, and keep them locked in prison for years. What actually happened is that the number of incidents became worse because there were a lot of objections to that injustice. So, terrorism increased directly as a result of the special powers Act. So the Act ceased to be enforced, but it's still on the books. It's there, it was shown not to work, but it's still there to be used any time they want to. And the same thing might happen with the drug laws, of course. They use those, and that would be one of the reasons why they would not like to see drugs legalised. Obviously drugs are illegal because those in power want them to be illegal.
B: The UK's current stance in the world, of being part of America's War On Drugs, how can they keep this point of view up when history tells us that in the 1840s Britain was prepared to go to war with China in order to force them to accept opium, and actually set off an opium epidemic there?
H: Yes, it's totally inconsistent, which is why they won't allow a debate to happen. The minute anyone mentions debating it in Parliament, even though about half the population wants to see some sort of relaxation of the drug laws, they will not talk about it. Because they cannot possibly get a consistent argument going. When I was trying to debate it at the Oxford Union, OK they invited me to come along. We couldn't get anyone to take the opposing side.
'We couldn't get one person to articulate an argument for prohibition'.
B: The US introduced prohibition of alcohol in 1919, only to abolish it again in 1932 when it was seen to have failed. Why do you feel this has not happened with marijuana?
H: You have to think to what extent it failed. Precisely what were they trying to achieve with prohibition - to stop people drinking alcohol I presume? Right, well that seems to be a very wrong thing to try to do, to stop people taking whatever, is such a silly thing to try to impose. And of course it's not going to work. And it became very evident that it didn't work. With the powers that be, once they'd grabbed all the loot or whatever, the gangsters and the politicians then decided that they could make yet more money by going back to the original position of alcohol being legal, so they abolished prohibition.
B: Do you still get stopped at customs?
H: I've been stopped and asked questions but not searched. The Spanish are very friendly, I'm back and forth between Spain and England quite a bit. The Spanish are invariably friendly to me, and the British kind of semi-hostile.
B: Notoriety and celebrity status.
H: Well I think possibly in some cases, quite genuinely disapproving.
B: Are there many countries you can't visit?
H: Yeah, lots and even before I went to prison last time there were lots I couldn't.
B: What, because of your record?
H: Yeah, 'cos I'm a dope dealer.
B:Countries - can you name any?
H: Australia and America - I haven't been able to go there, other than to prison, for fifteen years or something. Singapore, I'm sure would turn me away. All sorts of countries would turn me away! I wouldn't think of going anywhere without writing to let them know I'm coming.
B: What was your first experience of a source country?
H: Yeah, that was Pakistan, and quite late on too. Like, not until about '78. After I'd been dealing and smuggling really for about eight years or so.
B: Were they quite happy to deal with you direct, or do they like to go through middlemen?
H: They start by going through middle men, but if a guy is good then they like to go direct and cut out the middle men.
B: Where would you say is the most exciting country you had to go on business?
H: Pakistan.
B: And what about for culture, and music?
H: Well, for music culture the far east places were the ones that I liked best. Because although they didn't have the music. They had the technology for Techno, OK, in the mid-80s, and were slightly more advanced in many ways in their studios in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong than the Western studios were. Because in the '80s, Western music seemed to be a bit stuck. After I got busted, the rave culture hit. But they seemed to be on the verge of rave culture there, more so than here then. So, funnily enough, that was what hit me most. And of course, there's all the primitive stuff of Pakistan, Thailand, Africa which I think perhaps you're referring to. But I'd been exposed to that so much before going there, alright? So, other than just seeing what it's really done like live, I didn't run across new kinds of tribal music or anything in my travels.
B: Does it follow, like it does here, that people involved in music smoke a lot of dope?
H: Yeah, yeah. I don't know any country in the world where the musicians don't enjoy dope.
B: Do you feel that dope helps or hinders musicians?
H: Well, I don't know, I'm not a musician. But from listening to it, I find it makes me enjoy it a lot more, which was the very first sensation I had, I think, from dope. It just made me enjoy music more. It expands my enjoyment of music a lot. Many other things too, but particularly music. Musicians I've talked to say it helps them, and I believe them.
B: What do you think of hydroponics compared to naturally grown?
H: Well I think there's always an argument to prefer natural to artificial. And an equally strong argument to prefer artificial to nothing. So I would prefer thinking it was naturally grown, but I'll certainly tolerate the hydroponically grown. No problem tolerating it!
B: So to sum up then why hasn't marijuana been legalised?
H: Because to make it happen, all who are for the legalisation of marijuana would have to, to some extent, play the game. Of registering, of being straight, going along and putting their vote down, there'd have to be candidates everywhere. Every constituency in the country would have to propose it. All those sort of things would have to happen and be organised - and they haven't been. So the answer is: simply because no one's got it together. Also, it's difficult to unify because it is such a wrong thing to prohibit the smoking of marijuana that you've got people from the extreme right to the extreme left wanting it to stop for very different reasons. So any organisation that's formed to legalise marijuana is going to divide, usually along political lines. Therefore we're fighting against each other instead of facing each other and going hand in hand to dismantle prohibition.
B Now that friends is the crux of the whole issue. If it is your desire to see at least marijuana legalised, decriminalised, or even just to see some sort of relaxation of the laws controlling you, then the only way we are going to achieve this is by ignoring our differences and concentrating on the common ground we share; and as Howard says: 'That's all that needs to be done. The rest will flow. Just go forward and dismantle the fucking shit. It's an experiment that hasn't worked'."
One love to you Howard
Peace Bimble
If you have any inquiries for Howard you can e-mail him at : howard@mrnice.co.uk
Bimble can be emailed at:
bimble@freeradicalsounds.com
