The Changes In The Attitude To Marijuana Throughout Histury

That sleak and discreet vape pen you are holding, that gives you the high but no the pot smell is a very recent invention and before we even start talking about your vape pen or other concentrates you are using we should look a look at the long history of marijuana plant itself and how our relationship with it over time changed. Cannabis is known today as being the most popular illicit drug, more prevalent than all others combined, but things have not always been like this.

Marihuana is one of the species we have been co-evolving with for a long time, close to 12,000 years. This means we have changed the plant and the plant has changed us. There have been artefacts discovered 12,000 showing we used the cannabis plant for clothing, building, food and ceremonies. But as we started taking over other parts of the world, so did cannabis. Cannabis seems to originates from central Asia where it started its journey from. Next it migrated to and the Middle East, where hashish (a paste made of cannabis resin) became a popular edible intoxicant. And these, my friends, is the oldest form of concentrates we still use to this day. From there, it spread to India, where it became a holly drink, then into Africa, where it was used as medicine and to boost courage before battle, and then stransatlantinc slave traders carried it to the Americas.

In early America (17th century), hemp was the only type of cannabis plant grown on American land. And it was vital for American farming. However, warmer climates got the psychoactive kind, such as Mexico and after the Mexican revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, refugees brought it with them to America. During the 70’s in America, marijuana was brought mainly from Mexico. To cut off the flow of cannabis across the border, the US paid Mexico to spray their marihuana fields with herbicide in 1975, and US decided to grow its own. But the cannabis sativa plant only grew in the warmer parts of US like California. That changed in the late 70’s when Americans brought from Hindu Kush mountains the shorter cold-resistant cannabis indica and they started cross breeding forming what we call today hybrids. This hybrids were then cultivated in all US states. Testing marihuana for the THC levels in the 90’s, you would only get an average between 3%. However, by 2008, the overall average THC content would hit 8.8%, and in 2008, the highest result from testing cannabis was 37% THC. But the appetite for stronger product lead to what we know today as: sugar wax, shatter, dabs, crumble, you name it. Now going back to the history of concentrates, hashish is the oldest form of concentrates and the most potent because it consists of resin only. Journal of Experimental Botany published an article featuring 2,700-year-old psychoactive resin from the cannabis plant. It was found in a grave in central Asia, Turpan China. And it’s the oldest evidence of cannabis being used as a drug.

Production of resin concentrates did not change significantly since the XIX century, but as the appetite for more potent marijuana plant grew, so did the need for other type of products. Solvent based extraction was used for thousands of years, however only after the 40’s the manufacturing of a product intended for oral consumption through vaporization started. In his book, Cannabis Alchemy: The Art of Modern Hashmaking in the 70’s its short description on how cannabis “honey” oil is prepared. The main solvents used were pure alcohol and activated charcoal. In the late 70’s Michael Starks elaborates on this methodology in his book Marijuana Chemistry: Genetics Processing and Potency offering a deeper look into effects of different solvents such as chloroform, ethanol, petroleum ether, and isopropanol, among others as well as different extraction methods and purification procedures. This is one of the earliest and most detailed accounts of the origin of modern hash oil. Closed loop systems were the next big step into the making of concentrates. This took the risk out of the butane extraction which was a highly dangerous procedure. Moreover, old-school methods were unable to extract all the phyto-components, and/or they were leaving toxic residues in the final product. The extraction process was perfected and taken into the mainstream in the early 2000’s and it set the standard to a new set of specialized products.