He went from prison to author

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Howard Marks, an Oxford-educated drug trafficker who at his peak in the 1970s controlled a substantial fraction of the world’s hashish and marijuana trade, and who became a best-selling author after his release from a U.S. prison, died Sunday. He was 70.

His death, from colorectal cancer, which he disclosed last year, was confirmed by Robin Harvie, publisher for nonfiction at Pan Macmillan, which released Marks’ final book, “Mr. Smiley: My Last Pill and Testament,” in September. No other details were provided.

Marks’ drug-smuggling career started at Oxford University, where he studied physics and philosophy in the 1960s and peddled marijuana on the side. (He swore off harder substances, like heroin and cocaine, after his friend Joshua Macmillan, a grandson of the former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, died of an overdose.)

In his 1996 autobiography, “Mr. Nice” (Donald Nice was one of his aliases), Marks wrote that his induction into the drug trade followed a chance encounter with a Pakistani supplier.

It was the United States that eventually brought him to justice. In July 1988, Marks and his wife, the former Judith Lane, were arrested on the Spanish island of Majorca and were charged, along with 20 accomplices.

They were accused of involvement in a drug-smuggling ring that encompassed — along with Britain, Canada and the United States — Australia, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Pakistan, the Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Thailand and West Germany.

The authorities seized more than $9 million in cash from the group, in addition to properties including a 103-foot-long boat in Vancouver, British Columbia.

According to the indictment, Marks’ network smuggled “thousands of tons” of marijuana and hashish into the United States and Canada from 1973 to 1988. Sentenced to 25 years in prison in 1990, Marks was held in a high-security federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, before he was released in 1995.

Returning to Britain, Marks capitalized on his notoriety, writing his autobiography, the first of several books he would publish, including a novel.