Couldn't figure out the best forum to post this so figured I drop it in the best thread at rollitup:
Howard Marks, the notorious former dope smuggler known as Mr Nice, has told the Observer he has been diagnosed with inoperable bowel cancer.
“I’ve come to terms with it in my own way – which for me was about learning how to cry,” Marks, 69, said this weekend. “It’s impossible to regret any part of my life when I feel happy and I am happy now, so I don’t have any regrets and have not had any for a very long time.”
Marks, a long-time campaigner for the legalisation of cannabis, has already received messages of support from his wide-ranging group of friends. Artist Tracey Emin, the journalist Peter Hitchens, Sir Richard Branson, broadcaster Zoe Ball and DJ husband Norman Cook have all sent best wishes this weekend. Hitchens has praised Marks as a “principled defender of free speech” despite taking an opposing side on the legalisation debate. Cook and Ball have described him has “a ray of sunshine in our lives”.
Marks, who spent seven years in a high-security prison in America, has been raised by fans of his bestselling biography, Mr Nice, to the position of entertaining veteran of the drug-fuelled hippy scene of the 1970s. His confessional memoir, published in 1996, made Marks a household name and went on to sell more than a million copies.
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Marks remains unrepentant about his life in drugs, but said he is sorry for the grief it brought his wife and children. “Smuggling cannabis was a wonderful way of living – perpetual culture shock, absurd amounts of money, and the comforting knowledge of getting so many people stoned,” he said.
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Complete article at:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/24/howard-marks-inoperable-cancer-mr-nice