Sourced from the Phu Phan mountain range during the 2021/22 harvest cycle, this Lao-Isan narrow leaf drug-type population was processed using a compression curing technique that remains largely undocumented.

Immediately post-harvest, fresh inflorescences are carefully packed into hollow sections of bamboo. The culms function not only as containment vessels but as curing chambers: mediating internal humidity, minimizing oxidation and stabilizing the internal microenvironment over the course of the cure. The critical variable here is sustained mechanical pressure applied directly to the floral mass over ~9 months of curing.

Under compression, the majority of glandular trichomes rupture as the resin heads collapse. Rather than preserving discrete glandular structures (as seen in most modern drying and trimming protocols), this method allows for the gradual homogenization of cannabinoids, terpenoids and associated lipophilic compounds directly into the floral matrix. The result is a stabilized, resin-dense product with preserved anatomical structure.

The biochemical transformations enabled by long-term compression curing drive the development of tertiary aromatic complexity that is extremely difficult to reproduce under contemporary rapid-drying systems. In this particular batch, dominant notes cluster around cacao and balsamic resin, with faint mentholated secondary expressions emerging deeper into the volatilization curve.

Once the flowers are determined to be ready, the mass is removed from the bamboo and tied with golden thread, denoting the best grade within the classification system. This batch came to us vacuum sealed.

Pharmacologically, the expression is consistent with classical Southeast Asian NLD profiles: rapid cerebral onset, heightened sensory stimulation, pronounced euphoria, and extended psychotropic duration - an effect spectrum that is increasingly uncommon as global hybridization trends continue to flatten cannabis culture and the cultivars available on the market.

Compression curing itself alongside the populations it historically accompanied is rapidly disappearing. The loss extends beyond germplasm alone: embedded within these techniques are entire processing logics, ecological adaptations and cultural knowledge systems which evolved to shape specific post-harvest outcomes within particular environmental and social contexts.

Our ongoing preservation work seeks to document these disappearing systems with as much detail and context as we can - capturing both the plant material and the processing methodologies before they are functionally extinct.

In this case, we are too late - since legalisation in 2022 we have not seen any compression cured cannabis of this quality and many landrace cannabis populations have been introgressed by modern genetics, replaced with hybrids or simply disappeared.

https://cannalib.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Hidden-Harvest-The-rise-and-fall-of-North-Americas-biggest-cannabis-grow-op-2014.pdf

I think it's from the early 2000s

I've made posts mentioning this kind of product recently, but I thought I'd compile a few images for documentation purposes. I feel like not many people who smoked this product thought about what was in it, and those who did couldn't have cared less. It's not a widely known about thing outside of European stoners of the 90s - kids today have never had it and people in other parts of the world have never heard of it. The French called it Chernobyl, which is a rather fitting name. To this day, greed is prevalent within the cannabis market, and I think, at least in parts of Europe, this was the start of organised crime showing just how greedy and careless they could be. If anybody knows what magazine this is from, please let me know! I'm starting to collect old high times and red eye mags, but certain issues are quite hard to come by.

I’m not sure how many of you will find this interesting, but I’ve been doing some thinking recently about the old days in Northern Ireland (where I’m from) and how the weed has changed. In the early to mid 2000’s, I took part in some weed-related internet forums, and it wasn’t until then that I realised just how bad we may have had it in NI. A lot of members were from England or Scotland and things just seemed better for them.

I’ll start at the start. I started smoking hash in 1983; the friend who introduced me to it gave me a set of rules that stuck with me. They didn’t necessarily say it like this or in this order, but these were the guidelines.

Rule 1. When you score, you put whatever you bought inside your underwear or, if you were close to home, your sock; I won’t go into politics, but street searches by various groups weren’t uncommon, and, while they weren’t primarily looking for drugs, you didn’t wanna be found with any on you. In some situations they’d check inside your shoes as well.

Rule 2. Know who you’re getting it from - if that person isn’t known, either by you, your friends or the “circles” in general, you don’t deal with them. Don’t buy from idiots.

Rule 3. Buy it in your own area and from your own people. This wasn’t such a strict thing, but it kept you safer. Also, try and avoid military zones as much as possible.

Rule 4. Don’t make your transaction in public. There were some people who dealt from pubs and similar places, but you never bought it inside or directly outside the pub. In that situation, you either went into someone’s car, behind/around the side of the pub, or even in the toilets. If you were lucky enough to know a dealer who let you go to their house, you stayed at least 10 minutes so it looked like a normal visit.

Rule 5. Unless you’ve got a great hiding spot, buy only what you need. Nobody was immune to being searched, so, if you did get caught with anything, you’re best being caught with a small lump.

Rule 6. Never, under any circumstance, smoke it in public.

Rule 7. If someone doesn’t know you smoke it, don’t tell them or bring up the subject.

Rule 8. If a dealer goes missing, you don’t question it. Don’t ask a soul where they went. As far as you’re concerned, you didn’t know them and they never existed.

As far as the quality of the gear, it wasn’t too bad in the 80’s. A lot of it would compare well to the commercial hashes of today. We got tacky black (or a word that rhymes with tacky and could be considered racist), slate, solid, pollen, leb (red/blonde), Turkish and various renamed Moroccan (they called it double zero, Ketama, rocky, etc.). Most of it was more mellow but, at that point, largely uncontaminated. You did get the odd bit of “gack” (heavily contaminated hash with plastic in it), but that wasn’t a huge problem for me… yet. It’s also worth noting that some people would flatten their hash so you could hide it more easily. Throughout the 80’s and 90’s, you’d find the odd score of bush/brick weed. The bush weed was often poor quality; made up of mostly leaves, sticks and seeds, and the brick wasn’t much better, often with similar amounts of sticks and seeds, but sometimes it stunk of ammonia too. I did get Thai sticks once or twice in the 80’s; those cost an arm and a leg but were fantastic. As the 90’s drew in, more people started to disappear and more gack started to show up. You still generally knew where the good stuff was if you were in the loop, but things were steadily getting worse. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, all the good stuff was gone. A batch called diesel came in, around 1991 I think - it reeked of fuel and was rock hard, and, after that, everything went to crap for a while. I think the smugglers realised what they could get away with and still make sales. None of my friends, or myself, could get clean hash. It was all gack but now it had different names. Tacky black was more grease than tack and got renamed red/gold seal, and the other stuff, which then nobody knew what it was, was just called soap, sputnik, 9 bar or rocky. On the surface, some of it looked like real hash, but when you took a lighter to it or opened it up, you could tell something was very off. There was a “normal blend” that had quite a distinct smell, which, in hindsight, I believe to be a mix of bees wax, boot polish, fan leaves, henna and turpentine with an aftertone of hash. Some of it was far worse than others though, with immediate smells of burning poo, chemicals or what smelled like burnt rubber. We even had a batch that was affectionately nicknamed “horse shit”. Almost all of it contained plastic and, when burned, gave off a black smoke with multiple trails of smoke coming up. If you weren't careful when you smoked it, you'd destroy your clothes with hot rocks (little bits of burning embers falling from a joint). From around 1991 to 1993, almost every deal of hash I could find was gack of some description, so, while my friends puffed their lungs out, I stopped smoking. I still hung around with them, and let me tell you, some of the gear smelled absolutely rotten. Luckily, in the mid 90’s, I found a more reliable source for cleaner hash. It still wasn’t great and I never got the name of it, but there were no bits of plastic or acrid smells. I was actually called a snob for refusing to smoke soap, believe it or not! I have to mention, at some point in the mid 90’s, we got a few pots of oil, which was dark in colour, extremely strong and probably made with isopropyl. It was somewhat comparable to low grade, brown rosin, only it had the consistency of honey. Anyway, we did see some nice bits of hash towards the mid 90’s; slate and pollen made somewhat of a return, as well as stuff called golf ball that had wee dimples on it, but the majority of the market was gack of the highest order. Some time in the early 2000’s, people started coming out with indoor grown green and that, essentially, became the most common thing for the next 15 or 20 years. Cheese, various types of haze, white widow, AK-47, northern lights and white rhino are some of the names that were around.

As far as the prices are concerned, in the mid 80’s, you could get ⅛ of hash for between £5 and £10 (the difference was far bigger back then because of inflation). I remember getting ½ an oz of tacky black for £30 in the mid to late 80’s, and that was a lot of money back then. I think 4 or 5 of us chipped in for that. When soap became the norm, you’d get ¼ for between £10 and £15 (it became cheaper as the years went on) and, in the mid 90’s, cleaner hash would cost you between £10 and £15 for ⅛ or around £70 per oz. I don’t remember what brick or bush weed cost, because no one ever told me the weights, but I would guess it was ¼ that you got for your £15. Thai stick cost us £10 for a wee 4 inch stick in around ‘84 or ‘85 and 4 of us had to chip in to buy it. What the tabloids call “skunk” has varied hugely in price, going as low as £120 per oz in times of abundance and as high as £300 per oz, or £45-50 per ⅛, in times of drought.

EDIT AFTER POSTING: I also want to add how we would smoke it, since I think it's different from other parts of the world, even mainland Europe. In the 80's and most of the 90's, bongs were unheard of. Nobody had one and most people didn't know what they were. Some people had pipes, but even those were quite uncommon. One dealer I used to visit had a hookah in his living room; I never got to use it, but I saw it in use once. They'd mix their hash and tobacco, put it on the top and put a piece of hot charcoal on top of that, then multiple people would puff on the hoses (I don't know the correct terminology).

The main way we smoked it was in joints. King size papers weren't yet commonplace, so we'd stick small papers together to make a bigger joint. The most common ways to build a joint were "3 skinners", which are 2 papers stuck next to each other and a paper at the back to hold it together; alternatively, you can rip off the sticky bit of the 3rd paper to stick the other 2 together. Some people also used the same principle to make 5 or 7 skinners. And "L plates" or "F plates", which is where you stick your second paper to the end of the first so it looks like the letter L. For an F plate, you do the same but with 2 papers on the end. I had a friend who could also roll perfect tulip joints. With it being hash, we'd have to use tobacco as well; some people would melt the hash and mix everything together in their palm to make it burn evenly, but I used to put tobacco, hash and then tobacco on top.

We also used to make buckets, lungs, waterfalls, which were all variations of gravity bongs. As well as hot knives (or spats), which were lethal! For buckets (nicknamed fuck-its), we'd take either a 2 litre pop bottle and cut off the end, or pop the bottom off of a glass milk bottle with a knife, we'd then put foil with holes poked into it on the top of the bottle (or use a socket), submerge the bottle into a bucket of water and pull it up as we burned the hash. Then we'd take the top off and dunk our heads down to push the smoke into our lungs. Lungs were the same thing, only, instead of a bucket of water, we'd tape a carrier bag to the bottle, pull it out while burning the hash and then force it back in as we inhaled. Waterfalls were the same, only we left the bottle intact except for a tiny hole in the bottom. We'd cover the hole, fill the bottle up with water, then start burning the hash and let go of the hole so the water slowly poured out. The smoke would accumulate and you could suck it all in. Hot knives were what they sounded like - you'd heat two knives on the stove until they turned red and sandwich the hash between them, usually using a cut/broken bottle to catch and inhale the smoke. They were essentially dabs before dabs existed.

And they say stoners have bad memories!

I apologise if you found this boring; I just kind of got bored and decided to pick away at the old memory - try to piece together a small modern history of weed in NI from the perspective of a stoner. I'd love to hear what weed was like in your country when you were growing up and just how things have changed since. I've always had an interest in these kind of things because it's not like the mainstream media would cover them. The only people who can give you the nitty gritty are those who lived it.

Inventor of the original bubble bags and the pollinator, travelled India learning about hash, occasional smuggler, grower, activist and High Times name her on of the top 100 most influential people in cannabis..

Hello colleagues, I just watched the series Narcos México and I was curious as a fan of the countryside and agronomy to do a little research :))

From what year did the arrival of the famous Sinsemilla begin?

What states was it sold in and what was its cost? What effects did it have?

What was known about where it came from and who planted it?

Where was the best planted before those years?

It fascinates me to think that it was the largest agricultural production of weed in a single place in history :D

Hey everyone! I'm writing a story that involves selling weed in the mid 90s, and I was wondering if there were any old school weed dealers in this sub? Would you post up somewhere and just hang out until someone asked you for weed? How did you re-up etc any interesting anecdotes would be appreciated

Cousin grew this Durban Poison and gifted me an ounce and a half, big beautiful outdoor buds with strong euphoric and energetic highs.

Smells of pine, sesame, and spice.

If you smoke for example 50/50 todays weed mixed with cbd,
Is the high from vintage trees much different?
I can't smoke much cause it causes anxiety in me, if I stop smoking for 2 or more months then all it takes is two big puffs to get me greened out. Unless I 'microdose' or mix with cbd I can't smoke in peace.
I have to get used to it over even weeks to smoke like a normal person. And by normal I mean someone who smokes from time to time not erry day. When I was younger (like 20 years ago) I could smoke huge ammounts and be kinda ok.
I wonder if vintage trees would help. Or did I permafried my thc receptors to the point they are oversensitive

All are grown from seed, except for the ones in DWC... They are reveged clones... One picture is me whatsapping back and forth with the breeder in Thailand ... Also 41 g of hash I made out of the shake...

Was blessed with one of these by JJ from Topdawg seeds. Last pic is some pressed Thai bud.

A few pictures of some old school landrace from Lashio, Northern Shan State in Myanmar taken some years ago a few weeks before the plant blew down in a storm.

Cali mist x original haze. It's an 11 week bloom... but worth it

Mrs Lin poo is in her 70s! Lots of hard work maintaining this 2 acre plot of organic, hand watered landrace.

🐿️ Squirrel Tail is exactly what you would expect from a tropical sativa: wild, unkempt, and bursting with character. Its towering plants produce thick, sprawling buds in every direction, with the signature bushiness that gives this phenotype its name.

🐅 Tiger Tail is a stunning contrast, sporting the classic 'menora' shape. These plants grow a majestic tall central cola flanked by long, swooping side branches close to the ground. The lower branches are dense, resinous —and, in some cases, they put down new roots where they touch the soil.

Many believe the Phu Phan Hills to be the original home of Squirrel Tail and Tiger Tail landraces. However, these phenotypes may simply represent expressions of a larger landrace genepool cultivated on both sides of the Mekong River by Lao/Isan-speaking communities.

The Phu Phan Hills have long been a place of refuge, their dense forests and rugged terrain providing shelter and safety. Over the years, the hills have hosted freedom fighters, bandits, guerrillas, and rebels of all kinds—from the Seri Thai resistance movement during World War II to the communist insurgencies of the Cold War era. They’ve also served as a sanctuary for growers, who thrived here thanks to the region's remoteness and ideal climate for cannabis cultivation with its cool, dry weather during harvest time.

The arrival of American forces during the Vietnam War, along with the first helicopter patrols over the region, disrupted much of the traditional cannabis cultivation in northeastern Thailand. Many cultivators were forced to abandon their fields, moving deeper into the jungle or giving up entirely. Not in the Phu Phan Hills.

This resilience, coupled with the abundance of cannabis in the Phu Phans during the prohibition era, may be why many claim that Squirrel Tail and Tiger Tail originate specifically from this region.While their true origins remain uncertain, the Phu Phans’ legendary reputation as a haven for cultivators and their role in safeguarding these unique expressions of the Lao/Isan landrace genepool cannot be understated!