The
Redistribution of Marijuana Wealth, Cannabis: the Goose
that Lays Golden Eggs!
Read the story By Joe Pietri at counterpunch.org
Joseph
Pietri is the author of 'The King of Nepal'.
Joe's
wife Victoria Anne Pietri departed from planet Earth Wednesday January
25th, 2006. She will be sorely missed by her husband, and all those
she has left behind. Please keep the Pietri family in your thoughts
and prayers.
*PLEASE CONTACT JOE* if you are familiar with and
have availablity of Microsoft Frontpage and would like to help Joe
with some minor updates for his site, www.kingofnepal.net.
Interns preferred, however light financial compensation is negotiable.
Email: jpietri1@msn.com
Read
about Golden Tar Heroin and the Black Prince: the DrugTrail
ends in Kathmandu,
at counterpunch.org
Update:
the DrugTrail ends in Kathmandu Part II
Joe
recommends watching Noam
Chomski on Pot by Treefish on Pot-TV.net
Check
out Joe's other projects at icecold.org
ICE
WARS: OR WHO INVENTED THE BOMB!
Xmas 2004 was especially nice when one of my gifts contained copies
of Cannabible 1&2. The pictures were wonderful and it showed
how the US grows some of the best marijuana in the world. The chapter
on Water Hash is really where my story and investigation began.
I took exception to Jason King, the author of the Cannabible giving
credit to Sadhu Sam and Neville for inventing the water hash technique
in the early 1980’s!
I
first saw Water hash in 1968, when two loads came into New York
City! It was more like putty than resin hashish. The first load
had been shipped to the US. It was moldy and had been packed still
a little wet before shipping. The second water hash load came in
airfreight from Kabul and was fresh and pressed and packed correctly.
It was in excellent condition.
I
first saw the exact water hashish technique that Robert Connell
Clarke describes in his book Hashish in Peshawar Pakistan around
1973. While leaving a message for my connection at the Kyber Hotel
I ran into some Danish smuggler friends from Kathmandu and they
invited me up for a chillum. They were using the exact technique
to clean up the local pollen for their smoking stash. The water
separation technique can be traced back thousands of years to the
industrious Chinese who used the plant for food, medicine clothing,
sails, tents, rope, etc! They were the first to practice sensimilla
techniques, they separated the males because the stalks grew stronger,
and the females produced more medicine. They were the first to make
medical hashish and used it as an anesthetic during surgery as well
as for pain afterwards. The Chinese have been using medical cannabis
for five thousand years. Medical hashish was still available in
pharmacies in early twentieth century European countries as well
as in the US.
Water
separation has always been the best technique for making hashish
that was only practiced by master hashish makers! That’s why
in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s in the Trans High
Quotation section in High Times Magazine water hash was quoted as
being available in Kabul at three times the price of the local hashish.
It fetched the same prices as the fabled Mazar I Sharif hashish!
The Danes no doubt learned this technique from Afghan Hash masters!
We can thank the Chinese who grew opium in Mexico from 1900 to 1930
for teaching the cannabis sensimilla technique to the Mexican farmers
who in turn passed it on to us in North America!
February
24th, 1997 the inventor applied for a U.S. patent on his new technique
for making hashish and called it ice water extraction. He developed
the machine that is now the Xtractor 1000. The difference between
separation and extraction is this, in separation you first sieve
the pollen and then use water to separate the plant matter from
the trichomes, but you can also take marijuana grind it up and then
use water to separate the trichomes from the plant matter. The Ice
Water Method processes the whole plant, dried or fresh and removes
the trichomes fiber free for a purer extract. You really do not
want to damage your bud or leaf, which sieving and grinding does!
The ice water does the trick: it makes the resin brittle and non-sticky
for removal while leafs still flex. A big leap from shaking second
grade powder in mason jars and waiting for fall out. This “shaking”
procedure sure could not and did not lead to what we call “bubble”
now! Ed Rosenthal wrote an article about hash making in1996 in High
Times and did not mention water extraction even though he sold Sadu
Sam’s recipe years earlier! The smartest thing the inventor
ever did was to apply for a US Patent before he exposed his process,
which produces the purest hashish possible! I owned a pollinator
and when I got my extractor, I sold my pollinator the next day.
The tumbling effect of the pollinator damages the trichomes and
breaks everything up so you get a lot of plant matter in your hashish!
The pollinator is obsolete as compared to the Xtractor, but even
with the extractor, don’t believe that ‘turn your trash
to stash’ crap. Your extract will only be as good as the material
you put in!
A
month before the 1997 Cannabis cup the inventor went to Amsterdam
and met with Mila of the Pollinator Company, he demonstrated the
machine and process and signed a contract with Mila to distribute
the Xtractor. It was then shown at the Cannabis cup as well as workshop
demonstrations during the cup. In a May 1998 High Times there is
an article on the Xtractor which states Mila’s company Pollinator
as the distributor. July of 1998 Mila introduces her new invention
the Ice O Later, a direct rip off of the inventor’s genius!
The Dutch even used the inventor’s original diagrams in their
own advertisements! I met Mila recently at the Cannatrade show in
Bern and she was worried about her reputation after a conversation
I had with Grow Magazine. Mila was never part of the Smuggling scene
on the Hippie trail, she was a hippie chick in India, believe you
me she wasn’t in the Tribal Zone or in Blakh scoring hashish!
Mila had also invented the Pollinator, an idea also given to her.
Mila
marketed her Ice O Later bags around the globe in direct violation
of the contractual agreements she made with the inventor and all
he could do is wait for his patent to be issued and it was on 12/12/2000,
patents for the Netherlands and Canada are soon to come on line
as well. Mila will be forced by law to honor her contract and pay
10% of her business to the inventor! In hindsight she should have
formed a close relationship with the inventor who is an Einstein
of Hashish. Instead it sent the industry in a backward spiral because
Mila’s rip off led to other’s copying her as well. Today
you have several companies selling Bubblebags, Shwag Bags, Kabulbaba
Bags, Bubble Sacs, all direct copies of Mila's Ice O Later, and
the superior Xtractor. Rumor has it that Mila dressed down the Bubbleman,
an Ice O Later with an extra bag that did better than the Ice O
Later itself, in Canada for ripping her idea off! Funny eh! The
reality is, though, that these other products cause unnecessary
work, they don’t add up to the inventor’s original genius,
and they simply break up the trichomes too much as compared to the
Xtractor.
All
in all, Mila’s reputation is kaput! All the other people who
ripped off the Ice O Lator system may have to pay the inventor as
well and let’s hope so! Imagine if the inventor would have
been supported instead of robbed, who knows what amazing new concepts
he could have come up with! In the 1960’s and 1970’s
the Counter Culture feared the legalization of marijuana and the
take over of the marijuana industry by big Tobacco. In fact Tobacco
Corporations copyrighted the brand names such as Acapulco Gold,
Panama Red, and Thai Stick. Today we have that corporate greed in
the Cannabis Industry! (To be continued…If one wants to do
his own investigation about: “Where do the bubbles come from”
there is an Icecold Files CD with more than two hundred pages of
documents available from www.icecold.org)
