Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade
Drug smuggler turned author and campaigner for legalisation of cannabis Howard Marks introduces the new edition of Snowblind. the story of the legendary Zachary Swan, a mover in the cocaine trade in the sixties who set the standard for all who followed.
Snowblind made me and a million other scammers feel totally at one with our profession, and I am greatly honoured to be asked to write an introduction to this re-issue.
I obviously wanted to re-read it. My copy had long disappeared in one of many busts, so I called a host of friends, libraries, and bookshops in what became an increasingly difficult search. Eventually, Olaf Tyaransen of Dublin’s Hot Press temporarily parted with his copy, and I determined to discover just how much, if any, Robert Sabbag’s book had dated in almost two decades.
I was travelling by train to London after a mad one in Manchester and I fished out Snowblind. In no time, I was wondering why I hadn’t made a point of re-reading it years sooner. I blamed availability. There was so much I’d forgotten (an occupational hazard): the insightful articulation of how scamming is no more than a combination of waiting and winging it, preceded by the most labyrinthine of plans, fall backs, and security procedures, all somehow executed by personnel well off their trolleys; the explanation of how cocaine use was probably the most important factor in enabling America to understand the metric system; and most of all, the definition of dope, `Nature’s way of saying high’. I was in the only carriage that allowed smoking. Dope-heads were bonding with yellow-haired old ladies, pipe-smoking gentry, and stressed-out executives. Lights and skins were shared with grace and pleasure. I smoked a joint.
A million centuries ago, plants said `High’ to animals. Roots and seeds seduced tongues and stomachs. Vine, leaf, and resin interplayed with hand, heart, and mind. Drinking, smelling, and sucking were the order, but not the regulation, of the day. And Nature said, `Higher’. A pyramid here and a pyramid there. Gargling, sniffing, smoking, puking, and starving for God, Siva, and the Sun. Who’ll have the booze? Who’ll have the blow? Who’ll have a line? Who gets the fun? `I’ve got the dope. But stick to my brand. Use any other dope, and I’ll kill you. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. That fruity stuff is verboten.’ Nature asked, `Why?’ So fuck you, and let’s smuggle cider into the Garden of Eden? Adam’s apples are shite. Eve’s cool. She calls it a SCAM. Smuggling Cocaine, Alcohol and Marijuana. But is the Snake a grass?
A legacy of murderous priests, psychopathic megalomaniacs, bloodthirsty colonialist rapists, sadistic puritans, non-inhalers, and other manifestations of sinister evil have ensured that chemically induced changes of states of mind are rewarded by imprisonment and other socially acceptable forms of torture. The Society of Satanic Spoilsports feel comforted by our suffering. Our happiness disturbs them. Congratulations to alcohol. It’s done well in the rat race for the survival of the fittest psychoactive. But not without God’s creative efforts in blood transfusion: the wine of Christ: `Do this and forget your short-term memory problem.’
Murdering Spanish bullies fronted up as God’s servants and discovered that Indians from the Andes had been chewing coca leaves for three thousand years, getting high, and not getting come-down hangovers. Were Catholic priests really convinced that the effects of the leaf resulted from a pact between the devil and the Indians? Not really, but nothing haunts fraudulent missionaries more than heathens getting high. The Indians worked harder when stoned, so coca didn’t bother purveyors of the Protestant work ethic as Nature said, `High. But it’s a lie.’
The Satanic Spoilsports saw the workers were in too good a groove. They didn’t lose their breath, didn’t feel tired, didn’t feel hungry, and felt very sexy. And what was worse, they shared their highs with Blacks. Bang them away. Lock them up. Call them murderers, rapists, and friends, except Uncle Tom. Nature said, `Try.’
So how can we get the leaves we want, the herbs we want, the grapes we want. Nature said, `Lie.’
And it came to pass that the world became full of scammers. Never before have so many laws been broken without a single pang of conscience. False names, forged passports, phoney driving licences, money laundering, tax evasion, customs dodging, stolen vehicles, illegal planes, false documents, lies, lies, and lots more new lies. Who cares? It’s all for the cause. It’s not our fault they won’t let people get high. Anyway, the world of international dope dealing is fun. It’s fucking great!
I began my dope smuggling career in the late ’60s. Twenty years later, I was busted by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and was looking at life in prison. Had I not been busted until 1993, the same quantity of dope would have guaranteed me the federal death penalty by lethal injection. Zachary Swan, the paradigm of dope dealers and central character of Snowblind, would have also been sentenced to death had he performed his scams today rather than in the seventies.
An early copy of Snowblind was personally delivered to me by a New York dope dealer on December 31st, 1979. It could have been Zachary Swan. It wasn’t. He was called Billy Bronx. But Billy Bronx and I had just landed fifteen tons of Colombia’s finest weed on a remote Scottish island. Short-wave radios, walkie-talkies, scanners, nightscopes, Zodiacs, pulleys, anoraks, thermals, jeeps, ropes, formed a new tidemark as a mountain of marijuana heaved out of the sea near Holy Loch, the bastion of British/American defence. The Loch Ness monster had turned into the marijuana Messiah from the Highlands. The ’90s will be cool. Carter’s compassion will take care of Thatcher’s brass. `We’d better start the next scam before they legalise the shit,’ said Billy Bronx. `Read this when you’re chilling out, Man. It’s on toot, not reefer, but it’s really about us kind of guys. It’s the only book that has ever been written about scamming. It will always be the best one.’
Within months, I could not meet a dealer of any dope who was not reading (or had not already read) Snowblind. It became the scammer’s Bible. Hunter S. Thompson and the book’s reviewers have said the rest.
Then came the Satanic Years, the rule of Reagan, Major Thatcher, and the inappropriately named Bush. `Don’t smoke. Don’t sniff. Don’t swallow. Just say ‘No’, followed by, ‘Don’t even read about it. Don’t say `Know’.’ It’s no longer literature if it’s about scamming.’
Consequently, many English language libraries and bookshelves have had glaring omissions. Primarily through the extraordinarily talented writing of Irvine Welsh, true tales of drug culture are now occasionally permitted by the mainstream. There’s a long way to go: people are still being incarcerated for writing informative books on the horticulture of naturally occurring therapeutic herbs, and all kinds of scammers are writing their accounts. As predicted by Billy Bronx, Snowblind has stood the test of time. It’s still the best.
