What is the status of SPICE in Canon?

I think it was mentioned in the latest episode of Rebels.

 

Interesting. You know, I've never heard of spice being anything other than a drug in Star Wars. I'll have to look up some wookiepedia stuff. Maybe it was Owens way of telling Luke that bad things can happen to good people if they leave the comforts of home?


Alright, that was quick research. So, I knew that "spice" was influenced by the "Dune" series... in that, it has medical/transport uses.

Both Canon and Legend articles say it's only used for making drugs, so yeah... Uncle Owen was telling Luke that his dad was essentially one of "them Duke Boys, smuggling whiskey" through the Empire.

 

Kessel's spice mines are full of it, smugglers traded it all over the galaxy, I think Uncle Owen knew he could not keep Luke away from his destiny even though Beru knew it was inevitable he would leave, I wished they were more supportive & off course he could have saved them.

 

maybe Owen was just trying to say "your dad was one of the bad guys. end of story, now drink your blue milk". Luke probably didnt have to many questions after that since it was a common occupation. i could be grasping at straws here...

 

This Topic does bring to bear something I had always missed--Owen telling Luke his dad was a drug-dealer. I had thought SOMEWHERE in canon, Spice could have been used for medicine (poppy seeds as morphine vs herroin).

Doesn't seem like it at all.

 

Like others I'm having trouble finding anything other than casual references to spice, usually in a negative sense.

The article on Wookieepedia mentions this "In canon, the details of what, exactly, spice was were kept quite vague until "The Lost One" in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which clearly identified it as being used to make a dangerous drug, corroborated by reference material for Star Wars Rebels clearly establishes it as a dangerous drug."

So... probably just that Owen wanted a negative portrayal to Anakin and to curb Luke's desire to fly, I suppose? Being old and crotchety like he was, he might have thought the implication of a smuggler would deter Luke.

 

My understanding is that spice was never really given its drug connotations until the EU books started in on it.

Let's look back at the OT. First, there was never any mention of spice after ANH. To my recollection, it never came up in ESB or ROTJ.

What did we hear about it in ANH?

1. Imperial prisoners (droids at least) were sometimes sent to the spice mines of Kessel.
2. Owen told Luke that his father was a navigator on a spice freighter.
3. Han got in hot water with Jabba for dumping a shipment of spice before an Imperial cruiser could board him.

And that, I'm pretty sure, is it.

So, what we have are two instances where spice was mentioned without shady connotations. The Imperials apparently controlled or had their hands deep into the mining of spice. Luke's uncle came up with "navigator on a spice freighter" as his story about what Anakin did, and the offhand manner in which Luke mentions it to Ben implies very strongly that he didn't consider it anything particularly out of the ordinary.

Han was smuggling spice for Jabba, true. But given what else we heard about spice in ANH, doesn't it sound more like Han was smuggling cartons of cigarettes without tax stamps than smuggling coke?

I think Lucas' original idea about spice, as he presented it in ANH, was that it was an Imperial-made product that was shipped and sold through official (probably highly taxed) channels. And somebody like Jabba made money off of spice by smuggling it outside of official Imperial channels.

Now, I have always loved the image of Han Solo basically smuggling bales of weed under the Falcon's deck plates, but that really doesn't sound like what Lucas was setting spice up to be. It is what EU authors later turned it into, but even in the PT, the only mention of spice that I recall is the bit in AOTC about the assassination attempt having been traced back to disgruntled spice miners on the moons of Naboo. Even that doesn't really sound like a drug thing to me.

 

I was curious earlier today so I checked wookiepedia

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Spice/Canon

 

True, them living in the Outer Rim would have made them think it was something common to do.

 

Maybe Owen meant MEDICAL-GRADE Spice .

 

Just a slight correction.

Han said that the Falcon made the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs.
Greedo mentioned that Jabba had no time for smugglers who dropped their shipments or cargo at the first sign of an imperial cruiser (no mention of spice).
C-3PO mentioned the spice mines of Kessel.
While there is an implication that Han might have been smuggling spice, it's not actually stated that Han was smuggling spice, specifically.
The Kessel run could have nothing to do with spice.

I think spice in ANH was supposed to be an innocent substance. I think later materials made it into a drug or drug ingredient.

 

He who controls the spice controls the universe.

Maybe spice in Star Wars has more than one use depending on how it is refined. Perhaps spice is legal, but highly regulated and heavily taxed, so smugglers are often used to bypass those taxes and regulations. Therefore you could have both a legit freighter transporting a legal shipment of spice and an illegal spice runner smuggling contraband to avoid authorities.

 

The truth probably lies in that Obi Wan's line to Luke about his father being on a spice freighter was a throw-away line. Only long after that did anyone question or define what spice was. I'd bet my truck that Lucas had no real idea at the time what "spice" was defined as. And don't get me started on the stupid Twitter stuff trying to link Poe and spice as some sort of cultural slight. Absolute nonsense.

 

I think that was because Vader's relationship with Luke was likely not conceptualised until the Empire Strikes Back.

 

When I was younger I always took spice as ... spice.

 

I don't know. I'm sure it was the 'popular opinion' that spice was some kind drug before the EU treated it as one. I don't remember it being a surprise when the EU treated it as such. There were existing reasons to think it was a drug. Basically because it was one already in Dune, which was clearly a big influence on Star Wars in a number of ways.

Lucas knew it was a term from Dune, where it is already defined as a drug. It was culturally established as one before Star War, and GL will have known that. Why use the term if you didn't want people to think it was perhaps some kind of drug?

 

Because you want to give Lukes father a boring job, like carrying vanilla, pepper or marjoram.

 

I'm not sure that answers my question. I'm saying if GL didn't want people to think it wasn't a drug, then he should have NOT used the term 'spice'. I'm saying GL used the term knowingly, and what that would mean for how it is interpreted. Spice was already jargon and known as a drug in that other sci-fi series 'Dune', so he's letting the part of the audience that is familiar with Dune think that.

Of course, by not defining it himself in SW, he perhaps knew that the resulting ambiguity would mean that those young kids like you - and me! - who perhaps hadn't read Dune would just think it is literally spices. At least until they are a bit older...