The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories

by Howard Marks

  The value of a bust is 10 percent to take those people off the set temporarily, and the other 90 percent is to scare other people out of it.

  HILIFE: What makes people transcend the fear?

  FORCADE: Money motivates people to be there. But the choice to be in smuggling is not made because of the money; it’s due to other factors which are social and psychological in nature. I think that people who go into smuggling are for the most part social misfits and non-conformists, antisocial people.

  HILIFE: Smugglers are antisocial?

  FORCADE: They’re not compliant to society’s rules. They’re opposed to society, they’re viruses in society. I know that this sounds something like the government’s own view, but after ten years, I’ve concluded that this is true. I don’t think it’s bad. I think it’s very good. I think that bringing in dope is very socially valuable, and I believe the other people who are involved in it feel the same way. The middle-class smuggler has a very keen sense of the social value of what he’s doing, that it’s something very worthwhile. But the money is the bottom line motivation to overcome the paranoia.

  HILIFE: Can money buy protection from arrest?

  FORCADE: There are so many young people getting high in the coast guard that there are many good opportunities to buy somebody off. Sometimes they’ll even do it for free. But on the other hand, some people who will tip you off on a marijuana thing can’t be bought on a coke thing. It’s a lot more serious. For myself, I’ve dabbled a little in cocaine, but the overall level of paranoia is so extremely high that I prefer to stay away from it. Once you get it in you still have to sell it, and if anybody down the line gets busted that bust is going to domino right back up to you. Everyone down the line may crack because the penalties are so great. With marijuana the penalties aren’t that great, the stigma isn’t great, the pressure isn’t that great and it just tends to stop at the point where the person gets busted. With cocaine, the guy who gets busted with a gram may knock it all the way back to the guy who brought in ten pounds.

  HILIFE: We’ve heard rumors of smugglers warehousing.

  FORCADE: This is an old story, and I can understand how the average American consumer with a quite legitimate paranoia about big business would be concerned about this. But the reality is that big quantities of dope have a tendency to get busted and if there’s one thing a smuggler or a ton dealer wants, it’s to get rid of this stuff and convert it to cash as quickly as possible. Marijuana smugglers, dealers, will stay up two or three nights just to get rid of it. I think that ton dealers and smugglers are subject to a lot of nervous breakdowns just because they’re worrying about having a million dollars’ worth of marijuana sitting in a garage or warehouse where a curious mailman, or a guy coming to check the water meter, or an accidental fire, or a nosy neighbour or anything like that could blow a million dollars. One would want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Whether you’re talking about the country of origin or the United States, absolutely nobody would warehouse it for a minute longer than possible, and I’d say generally the time from entry into this country to being sold to the consumers is almost always less than a month.

  HILIFE: I’ve heard stories of smugglers who have gambled away much of their fortunes sitting around with their friends, snorting lots of cocaine and playing poker for days on end.

  FORCADE: I’ve been to a few of these gatherings, but one of the reasons I’ve survived is that I’m more conservative than some of these people. These people are like meteors, skyrockets; you know, they come fast and they go fast. They have short, happy lives. I’m not like that. I come in contact with people like that, but when it all comes down, it’s very depressing. It’s a real occupational hazard for smugglers because they have access to large amounts of very pure cocaine. Most people would never be able to develop the kind of usage patterns a wealthy smuggler could develop; they couldn’t afford it; they couldn’t get access to that level of quality.

  HILIFE: Do you think doing marijuana leads to doing cocaine?

  FORCADE: No. It’s two different value systems, two different worlds. There’s a tendency among smugglers and marijuana dealers to stay away from it, because it’s a lot of additional heat.

  HILIFE: Do you get high when you’re making a run?

  FORCADE: Yeah, you get very high. One thing about marijuana, you know, is that it’s calming and it’s good to smoke marijuana and keep mellow. I also think that when you’re doing a run, there’s a certain psychological satisfaction to smoking the dope that you’re importing. It’s sort of an impetus to go on with it. There’s nothing more satisfying than smoking dope that you have smuggled in yourself. Nothing gets you higher.

  But sometimes you’re wired so high that you can smoke a lot of marijuana and not feel much at all. The adrenalin in your blood is so extremely high it really doesn’t affect you, and you smoke it more out of habit than anything else.

  You know, if you’re really good at smuggling you can make far more money than Mick Jagger can make. The strange thing about it is, the bigger you are, and the heavier you are, the less known you are. So it’s sort of like you’re the mirror image of a successful pop figure like a novelist, rock star, or sports figure. Just like a rock star gets a kick out of turning on the radio in his car and hearing one of his songs being played, a smuggler gets a kick out of going over to some friend’s house and lighting up some dope and realizing that through seven hands he’s now smoking the same dope that he smuggled in two months ago. You know your dope; you recognize your own dope.

  HILIFE: Have you ever smoked dope with a narc?

  FORCADE: Yeah, a couple of times, unfortunately.

  HILIFE: Did you enjoy getting high with him?

  FORCADE: In retrospect, no. It was extremely unpleasant to think that I had been, you know, in their presence and at ease and really conversing with them and being, as I found out later, tape-recorded by them.

  HILIFE: Oh, you didn’t know they were narcs at the time?

  FORCADE: Oh, no. You mean knowingly with a narc? No. I would never pal around with such people. Some people think that you can outsmart them, but I would never be chummy with them because they don’t have to be smarter than you to bust you. They are also very inclined to grossly distort what you might say and do under such circumstances. It’s best to stay away from them.

  HILIFE: Who is the toughest lawman you ever met?

  FORCADE: I never met the toughest lawman that I ever heard of because I was a little tougher and I managed to evade him. But I was once involved in a manhunt wherein the police were quite persistent. We had a plane which was spotted coming in and making a landing, and the police moved into the area, surrounded the plane and swooped in. We went off into the desert and hid out for about a week.

  HILIFE: What’s the most amount of bail you ever put up?

  FORCADE: $100,000 per person for five people.

  HILIFE: Any of them jump bond?

  FORCADE: Yeah, all of them jumped bond. Occasionally that’s what you have to do. I never let anybody rot in jail. Nobody’s ever been abandoned in anything I’ve been involved with.

  HILIFE: Did you ever break out of a jail?

  FORCADE: Yeah. I’ve broken out of jail. I’ve broken other people out of jail.

  HILIFE: What was your most dramatic jailbreak?

  FORCADE: Some friends of mine were transporting some dope in the southwest, and they got nabbed in Texas in a small town. They got pulled over for a traffic violation, and they searched the truck and found a thousand pounds of marijuana. Naturally there was a car following the truck to make sure nothing happened. They saw the truck get busted and so an operation was mounted. There were two guys. We were able to bail one guy out because he didn’t have any previous arrests, but the other person had some previous raps that he had jumped bail on, so they were holding him. He pretended to get sick and they put him in the local county hospital and chained him to the bed with handcuffs. We went in, pretending to be visitors, and sawed the chain
s and the handcuffs and brought him clothes and he walked out with us.

  HILIFE: What was the largest bribe you ever paid?

  FORCADE: $10,000. I’ve also given them my own guns, my watch, my passport. In one case we gave them our plane – not voluntarily, but, you know, you give them anything they want. Once you get back to the States you can always make it back.

  HILIFE: Any suggestions to someone who finds themselves in a foreign prison?

  FORCADE: Don’t expect any justice, you know. Get somebody to buy out. Don’t be a wise ass either. You’re in serious trouble once you fall into the hands of the authorities. Proclaiming your rights and stuff is very irrelevant to these people. Buy your way out, if possible. Get to someone with political power.

  HILIFE: Have you ever seen anyone tortured by DEA agents in foreign prisons?

  FORCADE: I’ve heard of this happening, but it’s never happened to me. In smuggling circles there are stories of DEA agents shooting down planes, of planes being shot down in the course of smuggling, of people caught in the process of smuggling being executed summarily, down on the other end. They don’t do it up here, but down there they feel fairly free to pull a lot of shit that they would never dream of doing inside the United States.

  HILIFE: What do you think will happen to you if dope is decriminalized?

  FORCADE: Decriminalization would make my business better than ever. But legalization, I don’t know. But smugglers tend to be very international by nature, and although there may be legalization in some countries there won’t be in others. Marijuana use is spreading very widely. People have a greater need for psychological stimulation and mind expansion, and the worldwide appetite is growing.

  If wheat was brought into this country the same way that marijuana is brought in, the price of bread would be very high. And in the future our economy won’t be able to support this kind of economic waste. If 20 percent of our imports were taken out to the city dump and burned under armed guard as they do with one-fifth of the marijuana, our country would be in even worse economic shape than it is now. As our balance of payments gets worse and our dollar gets devalued, the cost of doing this is going to be more and more.

  HILIFE: Have you ever flown or taken a boatload of your stuff across the Bermuda Triangle?

  FORCADE: It’s a weird area, there’s no question about it. You’re sailing along one minute and everything is groovy, and the next minute you’re upside down.

  HILIFE: Do you believe in an afterlife?

  FORCADE: I hope to come back as a marijuana plant, over and over and over again.

  HILIFE: Have you ever deliberately sold bad dope and made an immoral profit?

  FORCADE: I’ve sold a lot of bad dope, but that’s because it’s so hard to take it back. But I’ve also been involved in actually smuggling dope back across the border because it was so bad. In Mexico. You don’t do this with Colombian. Although we’ve actually sent back boatloads of Colombian dope that was bad. It occasionally happens, but it’s very rare. If you send back a boatload of Colombian right off a freight it’s going to take a lot of smoothing over with the connection. But bad dope moves so much more slowly. Everyone’s more dissatisfied. You may not get your money back. It leaves a bad feeling all the way along the line, whereas good dope melts away instantaneously. I’ve had to sell it. I felt bad about it, but it still gets you high and no one is being forced to buy it. It’s a pretty open market and people apparently found it more desirable than the alternative, which is no dope at all or more expensive dope. To some extent you’re measured by the quality of dope you smoke, so people are loath to have bad dope. But it still gets you high, you know, and that is what it’s about, isn’t it? Isn’t that more important than the false ego consideration?

  HILIFE: Have you had much trouble with organized marijuana-smuggling syndicates that make huge payoffs at high levels in order to bring in huge amounts of very mediocre dope?

  FORCADE: I’ve encountered these people’s representatives down in Colombia paying bribes and I’ve been aware of their operations up here, but hopefully one would no more cross these people than one would cross the police. It’s sort of like the same thing. I think that on a few occasions we fell foul of these people at the other end and they fingered us. It’s more a phenomenon you see at the other end than at this end, but we lost dope as a result. But it’s certainly a factor. They don’t like what we’re doing because our dope is better and usually cheaper for its quality, so we tend to undermine the market a bit. But it’s such a wide open market that it’s not that much a factor. The problem is that since the government’s paid off not to touch the big guys, they’re then free to bust the little guys. That’s the nature of government corruption.

  HILIFE: Did you find it necessary to take extreme measures?

  FORCADE: I can afford to drop $10,000 on somebody and lose it. I’m not going to turn a $10,000 debt into a murder rap. I’m not into dropping bodies in the bay and stuff. Other people who are more bitter and can afford such losses less will catch up with those people soon enough and I’m always happy to pass along their address. I think that when you’re in a scene like this you’re protected by your circle of friends; they’re your wall against the outside world. And if no one cares that you get busted you’re in bad shape and if you’ve been so unrighteous that people want you to get busted, it won’t be long before you will get busted or killed.

  HILIFE: Does this mean that there’s a chance a smuggler such as you might find it expedient to snitch on somebody at some time?

  FORCADE: You mean, if someone’s a rat, do you drop a dime on them? Yeah, I’ve heard of that. I’ve heard of people being fingered, because they were rotten people and they had done terrible things and they betrayed the trust of everyone around them and they deserved to be taken off the set and the police were the best people to do it. But usually one avoids this because the rotten person, once they get in jail, will then turn around and finger everyone they know.

  I think I’ve gotten this far and I’ve stayed out of jail this long because I try to be as honest as possible. I mean, by the standards of the industry I’m very honest. I wouldn’t claim to be 100 percent honest. That would be dishonest.

  HILIFE: Have you always wanted to see just how much you could get away with?

  FORCADE: In smuggling circles, to some extent one’s prestige is based on the amount of marijuana that one has brought in, or is bringing in, or is involved with. But there’s also a tendency to keep going and going until you get caught, until you get hit so hard that you’re just knocked out real good. You get addicted to the rush of doing it. Smuggling is addictive, definitely addictive. It’s more addictive than heroin. It’s the heaviest game around.

  HILIFE: What’s the most you’ve ever been ripped off for?

  FORCADE: About a million and a half dollars. I got cut out of my share of a smuggling run.

  HILIFE: Is it possible to net a million dollars on a score?

  FORCADE: It’s common, but it’s no more common than getting busted. You know, the two things can often follow each other. I think (having done it a number of times) that it takes a lot out of you. Psychologically you feel utterly and completely drained after a run. Someone who’s done five or six big runs is like a seventy-year-old person. It’s all combat conditions; it’s all battlefield psychology. You can end up with shell shock. You can end up punchy from it. Any little incident, chance, can wipe out months of work and millions of dollars.

  I don’t think that most smugglers are into it full time, because I don’t think most people could really take the pressure of being into it full time, and I think one of the purposes of smuggling is to make enough money to lay back for a while. I also think the nature of smuggling is an orgiastic kind of thing where you build up to it, you do it, and you know, you lay back for a while.

  HILIFE: How do you feel about the sexual options that your charisma as a smuggler offers you?

  FORCADE: The nature of this business works against sexua
l satisfaction in that you really don’t want to get involved in a one-night stand because you can’t afford to get involved with strangers. They get in the way of your activities and so on. Or maybe I’m just telling myself that.

  On the other hand, long-term involvement is also difficult because you can’t really promise someone you’re not going to be busted or killed tomorrow. It’s not the kind of life a woman wants to settle down with. What I’m really looking for is a lady smuggler to share my life with me, but I haven’t found anybody like that.

  HILIFE: Is smuggling pretty male-dominated?

  FORCADE: It’s very male-dominated. The skills smuggling entails are taught mostly to males, but more and more women are getting into it. Women have played critical roles, of course, in coke smuggling. There’s a certain type of male who psychologically gets off on the idea of using women to smuggle coke.

  I have also heard of women as kingpins, or queenpins, as it were. But generally, no. It’s 99 percent male. But the one thing about it is, there are plenty of openings. I’d say that in general the men in the field are more willing to work with women than the men in a lot of other fields are. It’s a field that attracts very macho-type people, but everyone who’s brave isn’t macho. And certainly everyone who’s macho isn’t brave.

  HILIFE: You said there are openings. Do you need any special education?

  FORCADE: I studied navigation. I actually went to a coastguard school and studied navigation. In fact, I’m a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary Forces. And, in the county where I live, I’m part of the sheriff’s posse. It’s a thin foothold into their mentality and their information, but it helps to have a few stickers on the window, you know.