Was weed better in the '60s?

(sigh) Its a curse of modern man to automatically believe ourselves more sophisticated than the ancients...

Its just nonsense, much of the real art has been extincted by the war on drugs among other things...
Paraquat sickened and demoralized many cultivators that had been recipients of the ancient knowledge needed to maintain what were essentially recessive strains.

In afganistan it was reported in the late 80's that all the prime hash producing fields had been bombed out. ; continuous war in the middle east; a shift to cocaine as a more profitable export from southern Mexico, central and south america,.... all contributed to the decline and eventual extinction of many of the greatest strains of weed ever cultivated in the history of man.

 

Sure the culture of pot cultivation has experienced some setbacks, but overall the weed is more potent today. We used to have to smoke a whole joint to get really stoned, taking just one hit would just mellow you out. I remember high-end strains like Acapulco Gold, Panama Red, Michocan, Sugar Jamaican and your top-grade Colombian, but your typical street weed today is as good if not better.

When some states passed laws making possession of less than an ounce a minor misdemeanor or even an infraction, the natural reaction was to come up with more potent weed and sell it in smaller quantities. Producing marijuana with higher THC has become a science.

 

Sitting in Montreal Airport-get approached by a hippy chick who wanted to have a smoke outside-had some kinda black hash-by the time I got back indoors-I couldn't tell where I was-took a while to figure out who I even was.

 

***

 

I'll agree with that. Science, not art. Quantity over quality...
No ones gonna take the time to breed stains that are low yield and slow maturing (Thai sativa comes to mind)

The Greed factor is too HUGE!

Weed today may be in general more potent in terms of THC than your average street weed in the '60s and 70's but
THC is not all there is to a quality buzz and a connoisseur smoke...

Weed today seems to be getting more generic all the time.
I know I'm not the only one that bemoans the lack of quality imported Weed.

cmon' lets hear from some Texans and the other border states...I know theres still got to be some quality smoke coming out of southern mexico.
it don't make it this far north though...sigh


Hey old timers, remember the 'Munchies"? caused by the lower "inactive" cannabinoids (Delta5 and Delta 6 isomers predominantly)
so prevelant in that wonderfull columbian bud. I hardy ever get the munchies like that from modern domestic weed.

 

You are correct. A nephew told me he had the best bud on the market. It was called Super Silver Haze. I took four drags on it, and I can assure everyone that it is not as good as the weed from the past. In fact, it was missing the best part of the buzz.

Of course, he gave me the talk about how I only remember it being better because it was the good old days, or how I've built up a tolerance to thc when I was younger. It never fails to amaze me when someone makes claims about the potency of something they've never had.

 

Thankfully, it just keeps getting better and better. Wish I could say the same for LSD.

 

I found this on another site.

Strains did not become a lot more potent. The way pot was tested for THC changed and the result was the appearance of a much higher percentage of THC.

Here is an example of an Afghani strain tested using the old method of testing and the newer method of testing.

Newer method: THC Level: 21.6% measured upon the rest of cannabinoids.

Old method: 7.4% measured upon the rest of organic substances belonging to buds like: amino-acids, sugars, terpenoids, vegetal hormones, and cannabinoids

(determined by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry)

Another example of what is surely a fake Colombian Gold

Newer method: THC Level: 19.3% measured upon the rest of cannabinoids.

Older method: 7.8% measured upon the rest of organic substances belonging to buds like: aminoacids, sugars, terpenoids, vegetal hormones, and cannabinoids
(determined by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry)


Did you notice how a strain tested using the old method of testing (cannabinoids only) registered 21.6% THC but when the very same strain was tested using the old method the THC level was only 7.4%? Did you notice how a strain tested using the new method of testing (cannabinoids only) registered 19.3% THC but when the very same strain was tested using the old method the THC level was only 7.8%?

Need another?

Newer method: THC Level: 17.7% measured upon the rest of cannabinoids.

Old method: 5.9% measured upon the rest of organic substances belonging to buds like: aminoacids, sugars, terpenoids, vegetal hormones, and cannabinoids

(determined by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry)


I'm going to research this further.

 

the weed was no where even close to the weed that we get now...i smoked plenty of both....nowadays you can get coma weed all year round everyday iof the week....back then the coma weed was far more rare and harder to find

however

the hash and oil
both in quality and abundance was way way way way better back then...we used to get nepalese hash...morroccan 00...killer pakistani....killer hash out of india and turkey...my god the hash out of turkey would blow you kids away....and the honey oil that was around in 1975?...we have never seen it since.... now the hash markets are controlled and its all about the money.......but the weed just keeps on getting better...

 

Everyone I know from my day has the same complaint about today's "super" strains; you smoke it, you feel it coming on like a real sativa, but it just never arrives. Disappointing . . .

Don't get me wrong, it had a definite effect--quite relaxing--but no real buzz like yesteryears's primo, and it doesn't last as long.

 

Here is the experience and opinion of a sativa breeder who had just listened to someone talking about crossing sativas with indicas.


Nooooooooooooo.........

Man I read all your threads and they're so informative even if a lot of them are cut and paste of other people's stuff.

This is where I've had enough though. In several threads you start off going on about breeding and how you like the great strains of old.... then straight away you start in with this crossing with indica crap. I'm sorry but it is just real bad advice.

I'm a sativa breeder and like many other sativa breeders around the world we spend all our time trying to breed indica genetics out of sativas. Have you got any idea how long it takes to breed even a single indica cross back out of a line? Do the Mendel maths...

Even the landrace sativas these days have indica in them from back in the 70's when the drug cartels took pakistani genetics all over the world so they could get two crops per season instead of one.

Why on earth would we want to do what you are suggesting? The Dutch have spent the last twenty years doing exactly that!!! They completely stuffed all the old sativa lines. Have a look at the old catalogues that you yourself posted up. The standard Dutch idea of breeding is take a sativa then cross it with Afghani. They crossed everything with Afghani.

Since then what you suggest... crossing sativas with AK47, White Widow etc has been done a thousand times. It doesn't produce a good plant at all. It produces a mongrel with phenotypes all over the place. Have you ever actually tried to work with a three way cross or a four way cross?

That is not what we want at all. Genuine sativa breeders (I've been doing it 30 years) these days are searching the globe trying to find landrace genetics that are still clean... and it's just about impossible.

A true equatorial sativa grows into a small tree. They used to be THE MOST COMMON cannabis phenotype from Thailand, Columbia, Mexico and some African strains. They grew 16 - 25 feet and took nine months to fully mature. These days the only tree sativa left that I know of is the Nepalese and nobody has the seeds. The strongest one was always Thai but I haven't seen a genuine Thai tree for years. There is still some original Thai strain seed in Holland and Spain but it's very hard to trust it after twenty years of Dutch breeders selecting the earliest flowering, short plants to seed.

Without exception the most potent equatorial sativa was always the stuff that took longest to finish flowering (20 weeks plus), grew ridiculously tall and was most likely hermie. All the traits that are considered undesirable by Dutch "breeders." Look at the Haze strains they carry now compared to the huge Haze plants that were actually produced by the Haze brothers. Yet the seedbanks have the cheek to call it "Original Haze."

There is not a single old school sativa breeder that I know of who actually believes that crossing with an Indica is a good thing or wants any AK47 or whatever in a sativa line. Why on earth would we want that? Contrary to popular belief no old school grower believes that any of the Dutch strains are more potent than a true equatorial sativa. They're not even close. That is nothing but good marketing by the Dutch to sell their product. Crossing anything except another sativa only weakens the line and introduces a lack of resistance to mould.

The correct way to maintain a pure sativa line but lower height and flowering time is to do it with another sativa. You can cross with something like Kerala or Laos to lower height and use a Himalayan or Swazi (Even Durban) to bring back flowering time a bit. Or you can use something like pure Indonesian which is an absolutely amazing sativa.

The problem with breeding sativas is pure greed. That's all. The Dutch got greedy. An average dope plant produces thousands of seeds. In the old days we could buy 70 pure sativa seeds for $5. You could get 200 Mexican seeds for $20. In reality that is all they are worth anyway. Dope seeds aren't rare. The Dutch have artificially inflated the market value and held it there while they hook teenage kids on growing stunted plants in closets. They've convinced a whole new generation that closet growing is dope growing.

To breed sativa properly you need a LOT of seed. Sure you can get a lot off one mother plant but to breed correctly you have to maintain genetic diversity in the P1 line, not breed it all from a single plant. The Dutch have forced up the price of seed for landrace sativas and muddied the original gene pool. We can't afford to buy 500 seeds anymore, even if we could get them, just to grow them out and pick the ten best to breed from.

Not only that but once upon a time the Dutch practically gave away landrace sativa seed because it stretched too much and took too long to flower. Now they won't even sell it if they do have it. They jealously guard it and keep it to backcross into their own lines because indica hybrids just don't retain their potency when they're inbred or crossed. They produce big buds that look pretty but they have no kick to them.

The most potent killer weed I've ever smoked has always been rubbish looking small pure sativa buds. Usually Thai or Indonesian or Vietnamese. Loose fluffy buds with no weight to them at all, no massive crystal formation, not super sticky, no fancy colours... but with a kick like methamphetamine or crack.

This is my personal opinion from my own experiences growing breeding crops of sativas off and on for thirty years. I've never done a crop in my life that wasn't a seed crop and my biggest was 1500 plants with all my sativas in one place.

 

^^^ Straight up storch.

Thanks

ZW

 

that stuff did look pretty heady. What were the red clumps?

 

Resinous globules.

 

Interesting post, storch. Thanks.

 

Today's is far better than in 1968 when I started

 

Weed today may be better. But smoking back then was better

 

Well first off, heres a pretty recent news article about a boarder town
http://www.pro8news.com/news/More-Potent-Marijuana-Becoming-Common-In-Laredo-140957523.html

pretty good news, i love the out-dated proPIGanda



Anyhow, I just left Texas, and I must say, there was some redonkuloulsy killer bud just about everywhere. I mean KILLER. I'm not sure how much of it is coming from over the boarder, its some stanky stuff. there are a shit load of indoor grows in the middle of the big cities like Houston, Dallas, and Austin especially.

Its funny how even though folks'd have some of the kindest buds around, barely anyone knew what any of the strains were called.

man some awesome bud in tehas, but i just moved to cali, and of course the bud's been on par so far, and even just a little less expensive. not to mention the more reasonable laws

 

thanks for the report, I was kinda talking about outdoor grown sativa...
you know, brown weed, 'Mexican'..
Indoor weed has as much of a chance to be good no matter were it's grown.

yeah the propaganda in that article is typical for southern states newspapers lol

 

The weed back then was something new- even though it doesn't come close to the strength of the weed these days it was just as effective as a communal bringing together of the tribes.
But the question was - was it as good as todays?- -no ,not even close- There was more hash around, and the prices for a lb of Mex was about 250.00 bucks in NY- but you had seeds and stems to deal with -
It was a ritual to use the top of the record player (that plastic cover) to clean and separate the seeds and stems from the weed-
Its wasn't a science - but it was fun-
jjack