Chapter Five
The true pioneers of the cannabis world were the smugglers and dealers who plied the trade between 1965 thru 1975, and built the huge marijuana market we have today in the US and around the world. When Reagan changed the rules and they finally shut down the Good Old Boy marijuana network, we had a baby and they call it home grown! Today most marijuana and hashish smoked in the US is produced there as well, but it wasn’t always that way. We smugglers feel it important that we clarify exactly where the exotic strains we now find in the US came from, who brought them here and when.
I have been selling Sensimilla since the ‘60s and growing it since 1970. Sensimilla is seedless marijuana, that is, the females are segregated and they spend their energy producing THC resin glands instead of seed. The seedless technique can be traced back to the great Chinese Cannabis cultures of 5000 years ago. The Chinese were the first medical marijuana culture. They separated trichomes (resin glands) and made medicines.
Author’s first batch of homegrown in Nepal, 1970
We have our own great cannabis culture and they are called hippies, many of whom roamed the planet in the 1960s, in search of the sacred weed. Their smuggling exploits from Afghanistan, Nepal, and Southern Asia are legendary. In the late ’60s, the Brotherhood of true cannabis pioneers collected seeds from all over south Asia and smuggled them into Hawaii. They were sown in Maui.
The Hawaiian climate and soil, with that combination of genetics, evolved the strains into what they call Haze today. In fact the first time I ever smoked the Haze was in 1973 in Bombay. I was told I was going to smoke the best marijuana in the world. One puff and I was in a haze daze. Super-fast acting, it comes on with a rush and has long lasting effects. I call it high anxiety marijuana, and the taste is unmistakable. I in fact sold this weed throughout the 1970s and ’80s. It was completely seedless and if you were lucky enough to find a seed, it was beyond a doubt a female. When growing female crops nature sometimes creates a male flower on a female plant that cause self-pollination, to preserve its existence. These seeds sold for as much as $100 a piece 30 years ago! The weed came vacuum packed, sealed inside half-pound tins of Macadamia nuts, with a purple dragon label, and was for export only. All the years I lived in Hawaii I always bought the best Hawaiian smoke from my connection in Denver, Colorado! Never did I see anything close to that export quality on the Islands. This was considered the best cannabis available, then came Thai weed, then Homegrown in price.
In 1973 when the hashish loving King of Afghanistan was overthrown and hashish outlawed, Jerry Beisler, the author of the Bandit of Kabul, was tossed out of the country as well. He escaped Kabul with seeds he had purchased through Saki, the famed Afghan Hippie hash connection. These seeds were collected from farmers in Balkh who had hundreds of years of hashish making in their families. Those choice seeds as well as a new quicker flowering strain, Cannabis Ruderalis, made it into Northern California and became the backbone of the Cannabis Industry in California, and led to famous strains such as California Orange, or the purple varieties that are so popular today. The purple coloration is an Afghan Indica trait. These were the first seed banks created in the US, and in those days there was still a lot of love and the seeds were spread freely!
My old friend Todd, who is credited with creating the Thai export scene and ultimately spent 13 years in prison, is a true hero and pioneer, with whom I spoke at length for this chapter. He first went to Thailand in 1976 and worked there over the course of the next 12 years.
Todd and Naila in Bangkok
It’s a misnomer to say that Thai weed or Thai sticks come from Thailand, as most of the weed that was exported came from Laos. Yes, Thai farmers grew cannabis, but in 1980 the laws changed. What once was a one-year sentence became 45 years, so production was moved over to Laos. Laos has always been the producing country for what we know as Thai stick.
When I lived in Laos in 1991 I grew weed up in Nam Ngun. The farmer I worked with was completely aware of the seedless technique. He grew his seedlings in trays, separated them into small pots and then transplanted only the females. As the cannabis grew any males that had escaped detection were removed. He also knew that any seeds collected were female, highly prized by the farmers. I also noticed that in the market in Vientiane they sold not only Lao red and gold, but also a California Indica variety that was brought over and introduced into Laos sometime in the 1980s. The California green is unmistakable in appearance.
At first Todd’s scene operated from Thailand. He bought the choicest fields and used the military to transport the many tons he exported to the West. A great smuggling innovation was introduced in 1978 when vacuum sealing and nitrogen packaging came on line. 1000 gram packages of the finest Lao weed would have all the air removed from the package and nitrogen pumped in. This prevented oxidation and the nitrogen kept the weed fresh for the at times long journey back to the West. Most shipments were sent via containers or by mother ships that plied the Pacific Ocean, and some were sent by air. This packaging kept the weed so fresh that when you opened one the whole room reeked. How can we ever forget that pungent lemony one-hit weed. I once rolled an especially fat joint of Lao Gold that got over 20 people high, and it was only half smoked!
The idea that the weed of today is stronger than in the 1960s is just not true. When the laws changed, the logistics changed and the weed coming from Laos would be trucked or taken by boat down the Mekong River into Cambodia. There, after paying the Vietnamese and Cambodian police, mother ships would come and be loaded. When this scene got hot the delivery point changed to Da Nang, where the mother ships would pull in and be loaded by the Vietnamese Military who controlled the port. Huge loads of 50 tons or more of the finest Lao Red and Gold and Green left from Vietnam. The Lao made so much money from this and their heroin trade in the 1980s that they paid off their foreign debt!
This trade was the first and some of the finest commercially produced seedless cannabis to hit American shores. Who can forget smoking their first Thai stick! The sticks went out of fashion because wrapping the weed on bamboo sticks was time consuming, so the smugglers started packing straight bud, and for the first time huge Lao buds were seen in the market place. Warehouses were set up on Communist controlled Islands in the Philippines, and mother ships would ply between there and Vietnam. Then ships would make deliveries in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to waiting fishing boats that brought the cargoes in.
By 1975-1976, Homegrown was making inroads into the market place. The seeds that Beisler and the Brotherhood and other hippies brought back from the Hashish trail in Asia were having an effect. Depending on quality, home grown began to fetch as much as the Thai weed, but never as much as the Hawaiian. Hawaiian no doubt was the best commercially produced marijuana at the time and probably still is. There is something about the climate and soil that makes cannabis grown there so special.
1980 T-shirt for Exotica Seeds — Note 10 years experience
T-shirt ad for California Orange, 1973
In the 1980s the Mexicans jumped on the seedless band-wagon and commercial loads of high quality Mexican appeared on the market, some of which sold at homegrown prices due to the California seeds they were using. The bulk of it was a good grade of commercial that sold for 25% of top price, and comparable to what you get from Canada today. By the late 1970s the Colombian connection was shut down and the scene moved to the Pacific, working the Thai trade through the ‘80s, and by 1990 the last great loads from Southeast Asia ceased.
In the day we called super pungent homegrown skunkweed. It did not denote a type of weed so much as the strong smell it gave off, and we went to extremes in packaging it. That is how the vacuum seal/nitrogen packaging technique came about, first used in Thailand because the weed was so pungent and skunky! Today they have a strain they call Sour Diesel or New York City Diesel that is totally old school. I smoked Diesel in the 1980s and I remember quite clearly the smell it gave off. Most of these strains can be traced back to the original seeds brought back from Asia.
I visited Amsterdam just to smoke the Hazes they offer, none of which had the original flavor. Yes, they have a little of the bite so you can tell the lineage but by now that original taste is lost. Some strains in California have the Haze running in their gene pool; the high anxiety, energizing, speedy high that I only like when I am in front of my computer. It’s too strong for normal functioning, and the Haze is an acquired taste. The Hazes in Amsterdam were all of the above and more, they just lacked the original flavor. I spoke to Arjan of Greenhouse Seeds of the origin of the Haze strain, and we both feel his Hawaiian has melded with his Lao gene pool so well because they are from the same lineage. Arjan no doubt grows some very good Sativas, but nothing comes close to that original Hawaiian Haze flavor, and when people smoked it they thought they had taken LSD. The Haze was an evolutionary freak of circumstance. The right gene pool, the super Hawaiian climate and soil, and people to this day try to recapture that old school flavor!
How strange to watch people take credit for strains of whose origins they have no idea, nor were they around when those strains came west. Not until smugglers like myself come out and tell our stories can the true history and introduction of these strains be traced. Funnier yet to watch conmen like David Watson, AKA Skunkman, take credit for thousand year-old techniques and strains brought into the USA by people he never met, nor was he around at the time! But as time goes by more of us will come out and write books about our adventures.
The Dutch should praise Jerry Beisler, whose large hash runs from Kabul and Kathmandu fed the emerging coffee shop scene in Amsterdam in the early 1970s. In those days Amsterdam was a strictly hash scene, marijuana was nearly impossible to find, but by the 1990s the whole scene switched over to American pot thanks to High Times magazine and their Cannabis Cup, which is held yearly in Amsterdam since 1987.
Jerry Beisler
As I said before, they shut us Good Old Boys down, but we had a baby and they call it Home Grown American. The Dutch bought many of the strains they offer from growers in California and Oregon. The famous Blueberry strain comes from Oregon and is another Afghani Indica strain known for it’s blue coloration. Those original seeds are now strains that are highly sought after by seed companies worldwide. Med Pot shops in California offer 80 varieties of top grade cannabis as well as 20 or more types of hashish, all organically grown! Growers in California have nearly forty years experience, and that great California climate. The homegrown scene at first was strictly outdoors, but in the mid 1970s hydroponics and grow-lights came in, and by the Reagan years most growing moved indoors.
California Orange, 1973
Outdoor grow, California Orange, 1973
The passing of proposition 215 in California and medical pot laws in ten other states has led to a revolution in outdoor and indoor growing on a massive scale. The US Government can only guess how much is actually grown, but believe you me it’s tremendous. Americans grow some of the best cannabis in the world and make some of the finest hashish.
It took a massive mobilization of the US Navy, Airforce, and the Coast Guard to shut down the Colombian trade. The days when cigarette go-fast boats with suitcases full of cash waited on the high seas to load up a ton of Colombian Gold from mother ships were over by the early 1980s. Like the Thai scene, it lasted about 12 years.
Some knew when to walk away, and some got taken away. One of my friends, the biggest maritime smuggler of all time, faked his death for over 11 years. Many lost everything to civil forfeiture, left with not a penny to defend themselves. It was the biggest redistribution of wealth in the history of the US. Yes, they put us out of business, but not before we created the American homegrown scene. I personally have been supplying medicine for over 40 years and have personally visited and smuggled from just about every marijuana producing country in the world. It’s time now for us to tell our tales and correct the history we created.
It’s time the credit went to those who took part in the biggest revolution of our lifetime, the Cannabis Wars. The governments have done everything they could to stamp us out, but we came back bigger and better than before. We are unstoppable, and we will grow whatever plants we need for fun or medicine. Slowly but surely we will break the bonds of the Pharmaceutical Industry. I consider turning someone on to cannabis as a reawakening from the many years of brainwashing we have been exposed to here in the US. It’s not a War on Drugs, since heroin and cocaine are cheaper than ever. It’s a war on Cannabis and our culture of peace, and I do believe we are winning; as more people are enjoying Cannabis than ever before. We must never forget that the real reason marijuana is illegal is because it promotes free thought!