I haven't, been busy doing other things. Earlier in this thread there are a load of quotes from Sam that dispute what RCC said about Haze being developed over three years. Sam has given contradictory information about the dates so I don't put much faith in the timelines either he or RCC have written about. Then there is the further contradiction of the dates written on the bags the Haze seeds Sam sold to Nevil were in, they are earlier than 1971.
I tried to research the origins of the term 'Haze' as applied to pot and the evidence is hard to find. Sam has posted a Haze poster from 1976 at icmag a few days ago:
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=4179206&postcount=927
But earlier than 1976 it's the words of Sam and RCC that form most of the references to Haze and their words are to be taken with a liberal pinch of salt.
Jimi Hendrix wrote the song 'Purple Haze' in late 1966 in London. He performed it for the first time on US soil at the Monterrey Festival in California in 1967. Purple Haze was one of the biggest hits of that year and was played all the time on the radio during that 'Summer of Love'. The song inspired Owsley Stanley to name one of his acid batches 'Purple Haze'. Hendrix said he was inspired to write the song by a dream where he was walking under the sea. In the dream, he said a purple haze surrounded him, engulfed him and got him lost. It was a traumatic experience, but in his dream his faith in Jesus saved him.
But where did Jimi first hear the term 'Haze'? He could have just picked the word out of the ether I suppose but I doubt it.
I think the term 'Haze' entered popular culture durign the Vietnam War in the 1960s. There is a book called
Red Haze: Australians and New Zealanders in Vietnam that I am trying to find a copy of in the UK:
black dog books | books | Red Haze: Australians and New Zealanders in Vietnam by Leon Davidson
There are a few references to the term Haze or Hazed from the 63-69 period of the Vietnam War, for instance, Purple Haze was what Viet Nam vets called the Purple Heart medal, since after you were wounded, they gave you morphene and you entered the 'Purple Haze' with a medal pinend to your bedsheets.
Also, Hanoi and most of Vietnam is almost perpetually covered in Haze (the atmospheric condition):
Another reference to Purple Haze I found was that it’s a slang term for the M-18 violet smoke hand grenade used by United States armed forces during the Vietnam War:
Nearly every soldier carried one or two of them hanging off the front of his webbing:
There is a book called 'The drug hazed war in Southeast Asia' by Jay Dee Rubal I'm trying to find too, it's 50ukp used on Amazon so I need to find a cheaper copy.
Anyways, I think it's pretty definite that the terms 'Haze' and 'Purple Haze' were already in popular culture well before 1971 and whatever Sam and RCC and those probably mythical Haze Bros were doing in Corralitos in the early 70s.
I don't think it's possible to trace back exactly when people first starting using the term Haze in reference to pot, Hendrix wrote the song in 66 but where did he take the term? He was a soldier in the US Army so he could have heard the term from a wounded vet in reference to his Purple Heart medal or the one about the smoke greanades which he would have been familiar with as they are used extensively in basic training. The US first got involved in Vietnam in 56 so I think the closest we can get is to say that sometime between 1956 and 1966 the terms Haze and Purple Haze entered popular culture and at some point in those years it came to be applied to pot.
I don't know when the shipments of Thai weed to the US started, probably it began with the odd few pounds of sticks brought back by returning soldiers. Nevil reckons the heart of the Haze he knows is a Thai and I don't see it as much of a stretch to imagine returning wounded Vietnam vets dropping out and going to live in the hills of Cali and planting the seeds from the sticks they brought home.
Who knows, but I am sure people were calling pot Haze long before 1971.
