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The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories ed. Howard Marks. Published by Vintage, 2001. 548 pages. ISBN: 0-099-42855-5. RRP: £7.99. Howard Marks (below) is probably the UK's best known "cannabis celebrity". A 55-year-old Welshman who was educated at Oxford and once worked for the British Secret Service, he became a dope smuggler and was the subject of an extradition case to the US in the 1990s, where he spent a few years in jail. Following his release he has campaigned for the legalisation of recreational drugs, has stood as a parliamentary candidate in UK elections, and appears regularly on TV and in films. (If you've seen the film Human Traffic, he's the exotically-accented narrator of the "Spliff Politics" sequence. Which hits its target right on the nose, incidentally.)  The main catalyst for his elevation to celebrityhood was his autobiography, Mr. Nice. As Marks himself says in the introduction to the collection under discussion here, "When I wrote Mr. Nice, I did so with fellow elderly hippies in mind as potential readers. I was, therefore, truly astonished to discover that its unexpected best-seller status was primarily due to its popularity among people several decades younger than I was." Now every publisher knows the power of an iconic name when they see one, and thanks to that, we now have this Book of Dope Stories, an anthology of some two hundred pieces of writing on, not just cannabis, but practically every drug known to humanity - including many you'll never have heard of. (Even some animal drugs get a mention, like catnip.) They're all here: cannabis, cocaine, coffee, LSD, peyote, qat, betel, adrenochrome, speed.... The styles and sources of the extracts are equally eclectic. Some are fairly dry academic texts, sober histories or experimental reports. Some are historical documents hundreds of years old - travellers' tales from the exotic Orient or, indeed, "undiscovered" opium or cannabis dens in the backstreets of Victorian cities. Some are more contemporary: eulogies to a drug's effects, pro-legalisation tracts, extracts from well-known writers such as William Burroughs or Hunter S. Thompson. There are also many interjections from Marks himself. Basically, you name it, it's here. I enjoyed the book. It's probably too big to read from start to finish - by about page 200, however much of a stoner you are, you will tire of yet another description of swirling psychedelic colours and/or polemical rants about prohibition of this or that narcotic. But as a resource to be randomly dipped in to, it's first class. And despite the impression I might have given a couple of paragraphs ago, Marks is no talentless figurehead, lending his name to a project ghost-written by others. I don't know if he has personally selected every single piece within the anthology, but certainly the book has a personal feel, and the frequent extracts from his own (original) writings show that this is a clever, intelligent and committed man. This is a political book, for all that Marks introduces it by saying: "Althought it's hard for me to imagine anyone deciding to favour the prohibition of drugs after reading this book, its purpose is not an appeal for legalisation. The drug stories and extracts herein are chosen on the basis of their interest, rarity, amusement and provocation." At the same time, this is no book to read if you're anti-drug (or at least, close-mindedly so). You'll probably expire of apoplexy before about page 75. Or, it might just confirm all those terrible rumours you've heard about the effects of these evil substances. That's the point, you see. Drugs are not harmless, but most people who take them know that. They know that in the same way the car driver does (or should...) know that driving is risky, that eating shellfish is risky, that doing anything bar putting yourself into suspended animation is risky. What we need is information enabling us, as responsible adults, to make our own mind up. Marks' anthology doesn't glorify drugs - if you think it does, you're not reading it right. It just presents opinions, observations, beliefs and so on that don't often get heard, or have been conveniently forgotten, due to the political pressures against certain substances, to the benefit of others (which are commercially backed, like alcohol, tobacco and licensed pharmaceuticals). The reason this book works is that it's so eclectic there's always something there to be discovered. Buy it and leave it by your bed to dip into when you feel the need. Return to the top These are just a couple of my favourite passages from the book. Like the anthology itself, I don't present these in any pattern or with any comments. Let them speak for themselves. From Hassan Mohammed ibn-Chirazi's Treatise on Hemp, 1300 "'While I was in my retreat', he replied, 'it occured to my spirit to go out alone into the countryside. When I had done so I noticed that all the plants were in a perfect calm, not experiencing the least agitation, because of the extreme heat untempered by the slightest breath of wind. But passing by a certain plant covered in foliage, I observed that, in that air, it was moving softly from side to side with a soft light movement, like a man dizzied by fumes of wine. I began to gather the leaves of this plant and to eat them, and they have produced in me the gaiety you now witness. Come with me, then, that I may teach you to know it.' So we followed him into the countryside, and he showed us that plant. We told him, on seeing it, that it was the plant they call hemp." From Robert Sabbag's Smokescreen, 2001 "One of the distinguishing features of the marijuana business... was a conspicuous, and, to those who thought about it, rather consoling absence of gunplay. This can be explained by the fact that, for many of the industry's pioneers, the marijuana came first, in both time as well as importance. The industry was created by pot smokers, a casual brotherhood of aficionados, loosely associated, relatively young, usually stoned, united around little more than a near-religious passion for the noble weed.... these people were accomplished pot smokers long before they were professional criminals." From a conversation between William Burroughs, Victor Bockris and Terry Southern, published 1997 BOCKRIS: Doesn't it seem obvious that the most saleable drug of all would turn out to be the drug that would make sex better? Imagine if you could advertise and say this drug makes sex better. That's the drug that's going to sell the most, right? From Lester Grinspoon's account of his participation as a witness in the (Malaysian) trial of Kerry Wiley "I was called to the stand at 9 a.m. on Friday, December 14. The judge,... who sat without a jury, immediately expressed his irritation at my presence by asking Shafee, as he tried to introduce me, 'Why have you brought this man halfway round the globe to testify when it has been established that the defendent possessed 256.7 grams of cannabis, and the punishment is prescribed?' Shafee then introduced the notion of medical necessity and pursued the direct examination. Like so many people in the previous night's audience, the judge became increasingly interested in the medical uses of cannabis in general and Kerry Wiley's use of it in particular. The direct examination ended at 11.50 a.m. The judge then asked the prosecutor whether the ten minutes remaining before the break for noon prayers would be enough for cross-examination. He replied, 'Oh no, my Lord! It will take two or three hours for me to get the truth out of Dr. Grinspoon.' I had heard from several sources that the prosecutor, Abdul Alim Abdullah, believed it would advance his career to convict and hang the first American under Provision 39b." |