Howard Marks' Book of Dope Stories (48 page)

At the station they put us in separate glass cages and refused to allow us to use the bathroom. Instead, the brave law enforcement agents gathered around a nearby desk and made ‘wee wee’ jokes while playing with their guns.

Then the police led five other people I had been hanging with into the station, handcuffed. Apparently they had it in their minds that they were breaking up a big dope ring. It was not very comforting to be caught up in their hallucination. The police had come down as heavy as they could short of brutality. On the tip of an informer whom I would never face, even in court, I had been planted, burnt and busted. Half the people I knew in Seattle were also busted.

But although I wasn’t certain of it, and from time to time became overcome by doubt, I knew the inequities in the system would work in my favor. The thought of those unfortunates who were caught on the wrong side of the inequalities in our system often caused concern. But I was glad to be able to take advantage of points in my favor. I cut my hair and shaved my beard, aware that my Negro cell mates could not disguise themselves so easily. But then there I was a white, middle-class, first offender with a college education. I had friends in New York and Seattle raising money for bail and lawyers.

Even though I spent two weeks in jail, and the guards liked to roust us out of bed at weird hours to inspect our cells and assholes, it was all cool.

A sweet old lady judge dropped our bail from $6,000 to less than $1,000. She was impressed that my old lady had been a teacher and social worker in Harlem and that I had been, among other things, a newspaper reporter. I got the impression that she thought the jails were too barbarous for us, but not for some other types of people. I wasn’t about to argue.

Our friends sent us a beautiful, hip, young lawyer. And again, though relieved, I was disgusted because I needed an intermediary to guide me through the labyrinth of our court system. I went along, though, terribly uptight that I couldn’t speak for myself and hoped to escape a jail term.

In the end the whole thing was set up before we went to court – our plea, the sentence, even the terms of our probation.

We pled guilty. The prosecutor got his conviction. In return he recommended we be put on probation for six months, after which the charges would be dropped.

The court trip had so little to do with the arrest that at times I was sure they were completely unconnected. But that’s how it went down. I learned that doing time teaches lessons much more important than any I learned in college. But if you have to stand up and make a plea before a judge, a college education counts. Like Dylan sang, ‘He’s a clean-cut kid/And he went to college too.’

1970. From:
Getting Busted
, ed. Ross Firestone, 1972

I
N PRACTICE
,
PUSHING
weed is a headache. To begin with, weed is bulky. You need a full suitcase to realize any money. If the cops start kicking your door in, it’s like being with a bale of alfalfa. Tea heads are not like junkies. A junky hands you the money, takes his junk and cuts. But tea heads don’t do things that way. They expect the peddler to light them up and sit around talking for half an hour to sell two dollars’ worth of weed. If you come right to the point, they say you are a ‘bring down.’ In fact, a peddler should not come right out and say he is a peddler. No; he just scores for a few good ‘cats’ and ‘chicks’ because he is viperish. Everyone knows that he himself is the connection, but it is bad form to say so. God knows why. To me, tea heads are unfathomable.

There are a lot of trade secrets in the tea business, and tea heads guard these supposed secrets with imbecilic slyness. For example, tea must be cured, or it is green and rasps the throat. But ask a tea head how to cure weed and he will give you a sly, stupid look and come on with some double-talk. Perhaps weed does affect the brain with constant use, or maybe tea heads are naturally silly.

The tea I had was green so I put it in a double boiler and set the boiler in the oven until the tea got the greenish-brown look it should have. This is the secret of curing tea, or at least one way to do it. Tea heads are gregarious, they are sensitive, and they are paranoiac. If you get to be known as a ‘drag’ or a ‘bring down,’ you can’t do business with them. I soon found out I couldn’t get along with these characters and I was glad to find someone to take the tea off my hands at cost. I decided right then I would never push any more tea.

In 1937, weed was placed under the Harrison Narcotics Act. Narcotics authorities claim it is a habit-forming drug, that its use is injurious to mind and body, and that it causes the people who use it to commit crimes. Here are the facts: Weed is positively not habit-forming. You can smoke weed for years and you will experience no discomfort if your supply is suddenly cut off. I have seen tea heads in jail and none of them showed withdrawal symptoms. I have smoked weed myself off and on for fifteen years, and never missed it when I ran out. There is less habit to weed than there is to tobacco. Weed does not harm the general health. In fact, most users claim it gives you an appetite and acts as a tonic to the system. I do not know of any other agent that gives as definite a boot to the appetite. I can smoke a stick of tea and enjoy a glass of California sherry and a hash-house meal.

I once kicked a junk habit with weed. The second day off junk I sat down and ate a full meal. Ordinarily, I can’t eat for eight days after kicking a habit.

Weed does not inspire anyone to commit crimes. I have never seen anyone get nasty under the influence of weed. Tea heads are a sociable lot. Too sociable for my liking. I cannot understand why the people who claim weed causes crimes do not follow through and demand the outlawing of alcohol. Every day, crimes are committed by drunks who would not have committed the crime sober.

There has been a lot said about the aphrodisiac effect of weed. For some reason, scientists dislike to admit that there is such a thing as an aphrodisiac, so most pharmacologists say there is ‘no evidence to support the popular idea that weed possesses aphrodisiac properties.’ I can say definitely that weed is an aphrodisiac and that sex is more enjoyable under the influence of weed than without it. Anyone who has used good weed will verify this statement.

You hear that people go insane from using weed. There is, in fact, a form of insanity caused by excessive use of weed. The condition is characterized by ideas of reference. The weed available in the US is evidently not strong enough to blow your top on and weed psychosis is rare in the States. In the Near East, it is said to be common. Weed psychosis corresponds more or less to delirium tremens and quickly disappears when the drug is withdrawn. Someone who smokes a few cigarettes a day is no more likely to go insane than a man who takes a few cocktails before dinner is likely to come down with the DTs.

One thing about weed. A man under the influence of weed is completely unfit to drive a car. Weed disturbs your sense of time and consequently your sense of spatial relations. Once, in New Orleans, I had to pull over to the side of a road and wait until the weed wore off. I could not tell how far away anything was or when to turn or put on the brakes for an intersection.

Junky
, 1977

I
WON’T GO
for governments and law enforcement agencies any more; I’ll go for Rizla.

I like blue Rizla papers, but I don’t like the wankers that run the company. I rang their main factory and put on an American accent.

‘Where are you located?’

‘Llantrisant.’

‘You Welsh sure have cute place names. What does it mean?’

‘Llantrisant means the Church of the Three Saints. It’s quite a famous place, you know. We’ve got the Royal Mint here.’

‘The Royal Mint! Whaw! Isn’t that kinda like Fort Knox?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say it’s like a fort, exactly. They just make money there.’

‘You mean it’s a Federal Reserve sub-branch printing dollars?’

‘No, it produces notes and coins of the realm.’

‘Same odds. That’s real neat. What’s the real estate like there?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, to be honest. Can I ask who you are, sir, and why you are calling?’

‘You don’t recognise my voice? I’m your new boss. When I’m not working for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration as a Special Liaison Officer for the Third World Poisoning & Pulverisation Initiative, I sell tobacco to whoever the fuck buys it. To put it another way: I am Imperial Tobacco, and I’ve just bought your little Rizla outfit through my nominee company, Imperial Tobacco, for 185 million. I stuck three cheques together.’

‘I’m awful sorry, sir. I had absolutely no idea.’

‘You used to have a cute president over there called Maggie Thatcher, right? Well, she works for another nominee company of mine, Philip Morris.’

‘You know Margaret Thatcher personally, then?’

‘I don’t see a lot of the bitch now. But I worked a lot with her and her husband, Denis, who sold us paraquat to spray the Mexican dope fields. You must remember that scam. All those junkies were trying to make out that dope was safe. We sprayed the dope plantations with poison. That took care of that argument. But that was a while back. Any ways, I think we have a Welsh vice-president, who’s going to take care of marketing strategy for you guys until I get my ass over there.

He talks exactly like you. Take care of him. Show him the Royal Mint.’

‘It’ll be my pleasure, sir.’

Next day I rang Rizla at Llantrisant and talked in a Welsh accent, ‘Hello. My boss spoke to you yesterday. Is this the hole with a mint in it?’

‘This is Llantrisant, yes indeed.’

‘Look, I have just one question. Do you know that king-size Rizlas are being used for making illegal joints and spliffs containing marijuana and hashish?’

‘No, no, sir. That’s definitely not true. We often get told this, but our surveys indicate that king-size Rizlas are bought almost exclusively by long-distance lorry drivers who like long cigarettes that last a long time on very long journeys. They don’t have to stop to roll so many, you see. They save time and money this way. The idea must have really caught on. We sell loads.’

‘But why are they sold in supermarkets and newsagents and not in transport cafés? Listen, I did a little survey of my own. In almost every transport café I went to, I could only buy regular-size Rizlas. In no headshop, tobacconist or newsagents that I went to did I notice a lorry driver buying a packet of king-size Rizlas. They were being purchased by all sorts of other people: kids, boozers, and even
Guardian
readers.’

‘I couldn’t answer that. We don’t do market research down by here.’

I’m very concerned about this. I see a vast opportunity being wasted. King-size skins are being made in Wales by workers who do not know that so many millions could be sold by sensible marketing. It’s not their fault; they don’t know that it’s heads that buy the long skins, not lorry drivers. I feel a duty to let them know. After all, it’s my country, and there’s a lot of unemployment there.

A
S COOL AS
pills are, there are some without much value. Sometimes a pill is such a mistake it’s an insult to the rest of the pill world.
The worst such pill has got to be Marinol
.

Marinol, the synthetic THC pill to stop severe, persistent nausea and vomiting, is unquestionably the stupidest pill in the world. Marinol is supposed to be marijuana in pill form. If that were only true. If such a thing existed
PAGG
(Pills-A-Go-Go) would be very impressed. But such a thing doesn’t exist.

Marijuana can dramatically reduce severe nausea and loss of appetite suffered by cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Such a drug is essential to keep a patient in treatment to save his life. Chemotherapy is not only painful and debilitating, it makes people vomit until they are exhausted from dry heaves. Nothing stays down. Some people would literally prefer to die than endure the treatment. Patients who need every bit of strength they can get in a fight for their lives really appreciate a joint. Dope releases them from the hell of persistent nausea and pain and lets them eat. With marijuana they can keep weight on or even gain some while cancer and chemotherapy wage a literal life-and-death war within the person’s body. But in California, even when medical mari-juana is voted into legality, the state shuts down the skunk stores. No one is allowed to have the drug. And cops have shown they are willing to enforce this law even against emaciated, half-dead people in wheelchairs.

A few people have fought court battles to win government permission to smoke government-grown weed in government-rolled joints. For a while it looked like the $2-a-joint federal government pot would become part of the pharmacopia. In 1992 the DEA declared any and all marijuana use illegal, even medical use. Besides, they say, there’s a pill to take instead.

Marinol is the trade name for dronabinol, which, chemically, looks exactly like one form of THC that is found in marijuana. Marijuana contains at least eleven different THC molecules and scores of other cannabinoids, but dronabinol is the ‘active ingredient,’ says the government.

If that were true, taking Marinol would feel like smoking marijuana . . . and it doesn’t. It’s also interesting that the original contender for title of ‘marijuana pill’ mimicked a different THC molecule altogether. They said that particular chemical was ‘the active ingredient.’ Then some test dogs started to die off, and the pill had to be shit-canned.

Aside from the dubious idea of giving an anti-emetic to people who retch everything they swallow, Marinol doesn’t cut the pill mustard in other ways. Its effects take hours to kick in, and sometimes don’t kick in at all. When Marinol does hit, however, it frequently knocks the patient into an unpleasant stupor, causes hallucinations, paranoid reactions and depression. Patient after half-dead patient prefers smoking grass.