The origins of Haze

[british_hempire]

Haha, I see the ball is already rolling with this Haze test thing, you guys should compare notes and colaborate. Just wish I could come down under and join in all the fun you're bound to have doing the hard work of growing and sampling it all!

Anyway, the line I work with (and Positronic, and Flyingdutchmen, and Seedsman, and everybody else who's ever described/offered "Original Haze", including this early description from Sam), and what Mr. Nice works with, are two different animals - but both good imo.

I tend to agree with Tom, the Seedsman and TFD Hazes both lean heavily to the sweet, citric Thai/Indian side and are pretty different to the tastes from the MNS Haze hybrids, rare to see a deep spicy pheno from the Seedsman/TFD version.

It is this difference that has allowed some people to speculate that the Haze Nev used wasn't Haze. Tom Hill himself made some wise crack about 'slipping some Aussie genes in there' at icmag last year I recall clearly.

Now, I'm not for one second saying that Nev didn't have Haze, he's detailed carefully the story of what happened when he got the seeds from Sam and I firmly believe it's true. Nev mentioned the oldest dags of seeds were from the late 60s which doesn't fit with Sam's tales.

I've often speculated in my own head about what really happened in Cali with Haze. I'm certain there was weed being sold under the name Haze in the 60s, that much is almost definite. Sam gives dats in the 71-73 range for the creation of Haze, that doesn't fit/ Sam and RCC say the original Haze began with a Mexican/Colombian and the Bros added South Indian and Thai genes to that in successive seasons.

Well, how about this for a theory, and I think it's a good one that is close to the truth:

Haze was originally Mexican/Colombian hybrid pot, the best anyone had seen in the mid 60s when it first appeared. It was sold by the BOEL, probably grown and developed by them, maybe in Hawaii. Sam was in High School at this time and he would have been a teenager when the Haze hype began, I can imagine him desperate to score a lid of Haze instead of all the (nice but not as special) Acapulco Gold and Michoacan Brown that was so commonly available.

Late 60s, 1967 onwards, Thai of very fine quality, the best as good as Haze began appearing in the US due to the Vietnam war. So when Sam had finished his education and returned from the hippie trail to Afghanistan (he wrote he was there in 71) I expect when he got back to Cali he set about growing. I doubt he was growing seriously before 71, he was too young and busy with school and travelling one would think from what he writes about his life.

So what if the Bros were Sam and Rob and the story as they have told it about taking the Mexican/Colombian, growing it under glass for the first time in 71 and adding the Thai and Indian in the next two years is true (I suspect it is true) all along?

That means Sam is the creator of Original Haze, which is what him and Rob call their Haze but they didn't originate Haze the name or the pot, they just took it and worked with it then took credit 20 years later when no-one who knew better was around to contradict them. That makes them guilty of not name-checking the guys who came before them and probably they didn't even know, they just had Haze seeds they had collected from Haze buds scored in the Bay Area and no link to the growers or breeders who made it. Sam wrote that Haze was fetching 500 an ounce in the early 70s, well just picture two early 20s baby boomers like Sam and Rob with a nice greenhouse in Corralitos to grow in an the desire to make money. What better way than growing the seeds from the most expensive weed around and seling the crop for that magical 500 an lid.

Being up and coming botanists, they bred with this Haze and made the version we are all familiar with today. Fast forward to 1985 and Sam is in Holland, needs the cash so sells the last of the Haze seeds to Nevil, not the Original Haze he bred himself from Haze, Thai and Indian but the Haze that made the name famous in the 60s in the first place.

Sam wrote about spending days sifting through kilos of Thai sticks to find the few seeds, why did he do that? Probably to find Thai seeds to grow to cross to his Mexican/Colombian Hazes. Sam visited Kerala in 70 or 71 when he was travelling the hippie trail, he probably picked up the South Indian he put into his Original Haze while there.

So Sam has Haze seeds which are Mexican/Colombian, Thai seeds he picked out of the best shipment of sticks he saw and South Indian seeds he smuggled back from the trail, it's 1971, he's in his early 20s, lives in the epicentre of weed growing at the time and has access to a greenhouse where he and his mate Rob can start their growing and breeding work. You know what happened after that - Sam tried to 'save' the Haze as he put it, spent a few years working with it then moved to Holland and passed the baton to Nevil who did far more with it than Sam did making Sam a bitter old git.

Irony of ironies, turns out there was something as special as the Mexican/Colombian Haze from Cali growing in Australia long before Nevil even met Sam and could have provided Nev with the same treasure chest of sat genes to breed with without the accompanying baggage of false histories and cloudy lineages that Sam's Haze been carried.

I think it must be karmic in some way that Nevil has now encoutered and bcome enamoured with this Aussie rival I speak of and is going to work with it. I would not be surprised if Nev wishes he'd had Mullumbimby Madness in 1985 and never had to bther with Sam or his accursed Haze!

Sam could redeem his character to some extent in the eyes of many people if he would just stand up and finally tell the 100% truth about the origins of Haze, that it started with the BOEL and he came along later and worked with it to make his own version.

Long and short of it, Sam's attempt at preserving the special qualities of Haze wasnt very successful, hence the 1 in 20 ratio, you have to wonder, are those 1 in 20 special plants actually the Mexican/Colombian Haze phenos and the other 95% are Thai and Indian phenos?

On the other hand, Nevil did a wonderful, legendary even job of preserving the special qualities of Haze by hybridising it. I, like many people remember how good NL5Haze was, and the best of it was like that 'acid pheno' Tom talks about from his Haze but better because it had the 'bottom' that Nev thinks (and I agree with him) is needed to round out and ground the Haze high. Like Tom wrote, without that bottom in there you will find the high too overpowering and uncomfortable, too paranoid and unsettling. tend to think if you had the acid pheno of Tom's Haze and the best pheno of NL5Haze side by side in front of you, the Haze would be the more interesting to smoke for the first time but the NL5Haze would be the one you'd keep coming back to time and again because it had the good parts of the Haze experience without a lot of the bad parts.

So you got to ask yourself, isn't this a large part of why Sam is so bitter and hates Nev so much? Sam spent a decade or more messing about in Cali with his Original Haze and came up with nothing to hold a torch to what Nev created within 3-4 years of meeting Sam for the first time. There's a story about Eric Clapton crying the first time he saw Hendrix play live because he immediately realise he had been totally outclassed and could bever compete with this guy. I bet Sam felt the same whay the first time someone gave him a bud of Nev's NL5Haze to smoke. For a decade in Holland they called the NL5Hazes 'Nevil's Haze'* and because Nev handed out some cuts like the A5 and C5, it became established as the de facto ultimate sativa weed in the country. Sam must have heard people talking about how good Nevil's Haze was almost daily for that decade, it must have driven the fella half mad - he brought Haze to Holland but no-one wanted it or smoked it anymore (remember what Frans wrote about how popular the pure Haze clone was at Positronics) and instead, all the buzz was about a hybrid of Haze made by someone else. First time I met Sam he admitted to me that if I wanted to grow Haze under lights I should go for Nevil's Haze because 'Haze under lights doesn't work too well'. I bet he hates admitting that.

(* the actual strain 'Nevil's Haze' came almost a decade after NL5Haze which was refferred to as Nevil's Haze from 89 onwards)

So what Tom has preserved is likely Sam's inferior version that is only a hybrid of the original in the first place and what he really should have done is select and stabilise for that 1 in 20 acid pheno because that was what made Haze's name in the first place back in the 60s and keeping in all that variation is only preserving the Thai and South Indian parts and I don't see any point in that because those genes are already commonly available from TFD in the form of Haze Mist (South Indian x Haze), Kerala Krush (South Indian x Skunk) and Thai-tanic (Thai x Skunk).

Sounds to me like searching for that 1 in 20 acid pheno is not really worthwhile because the same qualities are easier to find with smaller populations from Nevil's Haze because Nevil had the pure Mexican/Colombian BOEL Haze to work with and Tom only had Sam's inferior hybrid of it as his starting point so Nevil was at a huge advantage from the get-go.

Finally, it must be noted that since Nevil reappeared Sam has not made one single post and he has had tons of reason to speak out. Again, you got to ask why and the answer is almost certainly because the truth is the story I just outlined and after 30 years of taking all the credit and bending the truth his reputation in the public eye wouldn't survive the hit it would take if he finally came clean.

I'm sure that story has pissed a few people off and I don't really care. I'm just telling the truth as I see it after studying the topic and sometimes the truth hurts therefore if anyone is hurt, doesn't it logically follow I must have been getting close to the truth?

Anyways, I'm so through with the whole Haze history thing, it's the future that interests me and it doesn't lie with Haze, that ship has sailed, it lies with the Australian heirlooms and if fellas down under succeed, the word Haze won't be half as prominent in the next 30 years as it was in the last 30.

 

[british_hempire]

havent grown seedsmans version, but all reports and pics i saw were far away from that what i grew from tfd, less sativa, more indica ... if i was about to guess, id bet it has skunk in her, just by the looks of it, and just by the looks of it, its not even intresting to me ... sorry, thats not a haze for my understandings, especially when i think of some 25% haze crosses which were more hazy in those terms ...

also posis and tfd lines are different, seedsmans too

of course you know that when u deal with it for some time

There are a number of Seedsman strains that they bought in bulk from Sam, - Indian Haze, Haze Skunk, Original Haze and Haze Mix. These are analagous to the TFD strains Haze Mist (Indian Haze), Fuma De Dios (Haze Skunk) and Haze (Original Haze). The Haze Mix is the other three mixed.

I've grown two packs of the Seedsman Original Haze, it's definitely pure sativa, takes over 60 days to even show sex when sprouted under 12/12 lighting and won't begin forming flowers until you drop the light regime to 11/13 and won't ripen unless you further reduce to 10/14 in later flowering. To me, it really resembled a Thai type, mst of the plants could have been mistaken for a Thai dominant hybrid of Thai to another similar sativa.

I've also grown Seedsman's Haze Skunk and it was as you would expect from a hybrid of a sativa to skunk, 12-14 week plants, the odd one a bit quicker or slower than that, the skunky ones were better than the hazy ones which weren't anything like any MNS Haze and were more like a Thai/Skunk hybrid.

Never done Indian Haze, had two packs, neither germed.

I know tons of people who have grown the Seedman Haze variations as they are sold all over the place here in the UK and are very cheap, I don't know one single person who kept one single cutting from any of them but I do know of qute a few people who hold onto cuttings from MNS Hazes.

That should give some insight into the respective qualities of the Seedsman and MNS Hazes. If Seedsman did buy their stock in bulk from Sam as Tom the owner told me years ago then it's quite a damning verdict on Sam's versions of Haze isn't it?

 

[Kangativa]

Interesting about the Hazes there BH, I have OT1 growing now so at least we can compare that to the NH's straight away.

 

[british_hempire]

Glad you found it interesting, when I wrote it I pictured it giving you fellas something to sit and chat about over a fat Mullum/Oaxacan joint later. Either you'll agree with me or have a good laugh about how wrong I was, either way I just hope you have a laugh!

The OT1 interests me. Of course the origins are mysterious and OT1 just said he got it when 'Haze was being developed field scale'. Without knowing more it's impossible to say what it is but let me hazard a guess:

As I said, Haze started in the 60s in Cali, it sold for upto 500 an oz, so you can bet that it spread through the communes where the domestic grow scene began like wildfire. OT1 travelled in America, not sure of the time frame but if he was there in the 60s then I suppose there are a ton of communes all over the West Coast where he could have stopped and picked up some seeds that he was told was Haze. Maybe he visited 'The Farm' in Tennessee where a lot of the BOEL followers decamped to in the early 70s after it got less welcoming for hippies trying to 'get back to the earth' in Cali and saw field scale growing of sativas from Cali while he was there which we know was going on there at the same time Sam says the Bros were active in Cali.

Whatever the actual case, I'm sure OT1 told the truth about having picked it up in the US on his travels but that leaves a huge scope for what he might have obtained. Could well be what he got contained some of the Mexican/Colombian Haze from Cali, I strongly suspect it does and it represents someone's attempt at preserving that original BOEL Haze. It might be a linebred version or it might be a hybrid to another sativa line but at least it isn't largely Thai and Indian like Sam's version probably is so it is much more interesting to me than Sam's version. Whoever worked it way back when may well have done a far better job of preserving some of that magic than Sam did. If there is magic there, I'm sure you fellas have the wherewithall to find it and put it to good use! I wish you the best of luck...

I envy ya, your ability to grow trees and having to sit down and directly compare four variants of Haze from different breeders, that would be nirvana to me like it would to many of us!

 

[burt]

"Sam tried to 'save' the Haze as he put it, spent a few years working with it then moved to Holland and passed the baton to Nevil who did far more with it than Sam did making Sam a bitter old git."

He did just that-when you preserve or "save"-you don't bottle neck the pool?!?
Sam told Neville that haze hybrids were where the magic happened-why do you think Neville never released a pure haze?
Sam is bitter for a whole lot of reasons-you ever hang with first generation hippies who lived in tents? he's first generation-we owe him a huge debt-he was a true hipster in every sense of the word-and traveled the world-he served the universe i think
We can only sit here and come up with wild imaginary tales spun by genes he helped save-be good

 

[JessE]

the real haze connections goes back to BOL and hawii, Rainbow bridge etc. Owsely's purple barrels aka purple haze came first.

Hi coop
Interesting, as in the past this information has been discussed and originated from one particular source here at the forum in fact, though I believe little evidence was ever put forth to arrive at any certainty's to enforce related statements as anything other than suspect. Do you by any chance have any evidence linking BOEL, Hawaii and haze coop? I believe a number of us would be interested in anything related to the subject.

 

[burt]

I believe Sam was intimately involved with BOEL-who financed his trip to the hash trail?
I wish he'd come out with the book already, statute of limitations has expired-its been over 25 yrs now-he can speak the truth-but who wants the truth when the fiction is so enticing?
Write the book Sam, and dedicate it to Nick Sands sunshine

 

[JessE]

Hi coop,
Well as there are many variations of story surrounding haze, we are often left with hear say with little evidence to make any kind of concrete statements. On a few occasion's the notion of a BOEL, Hawaii and Haze has been put forth, but its almost as if that idea was derived out of the thin blue air because we have not seen the proof to say one way or another. I believe a few assertions were made, but ultimately called into question which were never fully rebutted.

Ultimately I believe we would all like to rely on the best information available, and that seems to be few and far between. We are lucky enough to have the words of the main characters involved in hazes development in Holland, but anything before that seems to draw many questions. I would hope that any information presented as fact in this thread follows the already existing trend of at least posting some type of evidence to back up any assertions levied. As ultimately we want to be as accurate as possible and not muddy the waters with our attempts to bring a large mouth out the bend.

There are many of us over the last few decades who have been greatly impressed with the varieties of haze hybrids that have been available to the general public. There is something very special about this line, which is why threads such as this one continue long after their initial postings. Whatever the true origins of the Haze here at MNS which has fueled so much passion, we are all quite lucky to have a chance to see what all the fuss is about.

There are a few lines here at MNS that are haze related one simply should not do without in their collections. The early haze and critical haze are both fascinating varieties to me, along with the newer NL x Haze hybrids. But the SSH, MH and NH are honestly hard to walk away from. Now this is where you run into problems, where decisions need to be made! Likely a good idea to just buy them all right? lol

 

[JessE]

Hi Coop,
So nothing linking Haze with Boel and Hawaii? I was getting excited there for a second, thought we were on to something... Keep us updated if you come across anything. I would find it of great interest personally.

 

[JessE]

That is the link Jesse.
The brotherhood growing grass in Hawaii in 1969. And Nevil claiming haze seeds from the same year. The brotherhood was also very large on the east coast and everywhere else. Back in those days too you don't just move stuff outta the docks without the help of others.

There's going to be no concrete evidence of 1969 Brotherhood Hawaiian Haze. But those where the ones in the game at the time.

Hi Coop,
Its certainly an interesting theory, I agree with you. But as you mention above, there is no evidence to support a link between haze and the BOEL and Hawaii. I believe one previous attempt to link Haze to BOEL and Hawaii involved the 1973 Senate hearings involving BOEL, but when that information was scrutinized only a connection between marijuana and BOEL could be made. If that is the standard in which we measure connections, I would argue a number of locations could lay claim to being the originators of Haze.

What we do have however are articles from old High Times interviews, where interviews with individuals identifying themselves as the Haze brothers ultimately suggest the origins of haze are in fact unknown. That the seeds were given to them by a surfer/hippy. This is among the oldest documented stories on the variety, which I would be willing to entertain as a semi plausible piece of information surrounding the line. Regardless of question-ability, it stands as an example of putting forth a theory based off some type of evidence, but as we've previously discussed, the ultimate story will depend on who you choose to believe. And the stories due vary, to an interesting extent to those who have paid attention to the exact details...

Ultimately there are a number of questions left unanswered surrounding the line, and the truth will likely remain in question long after we're all long gone. Though hopefully the line itself will remain alive and well in the hands of responsible parties who understand and respect exactly what it is we're dealing with. The hybrids I have worked with have all impressed me, likely as much to do with the genetics as it does with those who worked the lines to what it is today. When I think of the best cannabis in the world, MNS Haze hybrids come to mind immediately.

 

[JessE]

I have always been curious about who exactly wrote these articles, who the Haze brothers actually were, and who ultimately is the source for the information presented. If it was determined for example, all of these parties were in fact one in the same, that could narrow down possible avenues to consider though it would not offer any concrete proof in my book at least. A monkey wrench could easily be thrown into a number of possible scenarios when considering things, such as people acquiring an already very nice line and attempting to take credit for it or other explanations such as the line coming from Australia, Hawaii, Afghanistan lol etc. Which is why ultimately sticking with the facts, with verifiable information is likely the best avenue to explore. Because speculation can quickly lead to a very chaotic picture.

When I originally read the article posted above from "R", something immediately stood out to me, "I'd hear from fortunate friends about the amazing, epic Haze tasting parties they'd hold.."

And of course if you're familiar with the basic history of the High Times Cannabis Cup:

I first visited the Netherlands in 1987 to write an article on the founder of Holland's first cannabis-seed company. Titled "The King of Cannabis," the article described how an Australian named Nevil got access to some of the world's greatest known strains of cannabis, and established a mail-order company in Holland that eventually made him rich. He lived in a mansion filled with growrooms that I dubbed "Cannabis Castle." While working on the article, I met the founders of Cultivators Choice, an almost defunct American cannabis-seed company. They told me about the spectacular California harvest festivals of the '70s.

HIGHTIMES.COM > CANNABIS CUP HISTORY

The similarities could in fact be nothing, but its also something interesting to consider. Especially if the two stories are related, what would be the common thread in both? We know the second story is tied in with Cultivators Choice, and we can link some specific individuals to Cultivators Choice. If there is a connection, what would that mean about the ultimate origins of "R's" tasting party stories? Consider the time line between "R's" article and 1987. A number of avenues to explore when one considers what information we do have. Ultimately though it may be a chase that brings us right back to the unknown.

 

[biteme]

my recent experiences with seedsman gear, in particular the old lines, has not been good. IF you can get it to germinate the end result is a huge question.

there was a period where the boel had their hands in the importation of just about every mj variety world wide of any merit at all. in the big pic, those huge boat loads had just been waiting to happen but channels of distribution were not yet in place. this was the true forte of the boel and san fran beckoned at that time. the good smoke came thru sf in those days. and sams was on the afghan hash trail? and financed by who? methinks he was too young but hold this thought for further review. lol. nev might know? peace-biteme

 

[bigherb]

Hello fam

Its a beautiful morning

Im happy too see the focus is back to the topic,Im extremely excited to nkow that we will have acomparison of what we know as the purest haze lines and it will be done by folks who will not only do them the utmost justice but finish the grow and show.Best wishes kanga n DM ,maybe throw some TFD Ohaze aswell.

I like to add in short that the origins of haze have as much to do with the boel as SAMS


R is not RC he was awriter at HT with the intials RR,maybe somone can varify this but the writing style give it away aswell.


1luvbigherb

 

[british_hempire]

Come on Jesse, wise up, 'R' was Rob Clarke. All the magazine writings about Haze are from the Sam/Rob camp so they are all singing from the same hymn sheet and telling the same story. For the truth you have to look elsewhere.

I wrote about this before, but the term 'Haze' goes back to the early 60s and has military connections. Jimi Hendrix was a soldier and he heard the term 'Purple Haze' while in the army as it was used to describe the smoke grenades they used that produced clouds of purple smoke. The Owsley Stanley acid batch that got labelled Purple Haze was named after the song, Owsley confirmed this, it's a well-known story. Jimi wrote Purple Haze the song between August and Novemeber 1966 while living in London, Chas Chandler who was managing him at the time confirmed this. The song was recorded in Novemeber in London and Hendrix performed it live for the frst time on US soil at the legendary Monterrey Festival in the Sumemr of the following year which of course, was the (in)famous 'Summer of Love'. Owsley Stanley was there at Monterrey and met Hendrix and Hendrix dropped some Owsley acid but it wasn't the Purple Haze batch. Purple Haze the song was one of the most played tracks on US radio stations that summer so was a huge part of the sountrack to the Summer of Love. Owsley listened to the radio while he was mixing up the batch he called Purple Haze and heard the song so many times. He doesn't clearly remember how/why/when he chose the name but suspected it was because there was no better marketing gimmick than to name the acid after the biggest number 1 hit single of the time.

Hendrix always claimed he wrote the song after having a dream where he was under the sea and became enveloped in a strange purple cloud.

All of that is easily verified as fact.

Now, as for the term Haze itself, where did that come from? Like I said, it came out of the jungles of Vietnam. US forces were involved in various semi-legitimate and semi-covert operations there as soon as the French left, so while the actual shooting war with large-scale US involvment didn't really kick off until 65 there were a lot of US personnel out there years before that. 'Hazed' became a common term among US servicemen and as more and more cycled through it spread. When it transferred into popular culture is unknown but it's safe to say it was already widespread by the time in the early 60s when Hendrix was in uniform.

Some research into the BOEL is essential to understand the Californian and wider US dope scene at that time. The BOEL were most of the market, they completely dominated things, these were not crazy dirty hippies they were very smart and sophisticated businessmen, guys like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Jay Miner, Sam Tramiel who all came from the same place and built the modern computer industry or George Lucas, the BOEL guys were of the same calibre just they chose a different trade.

It is easy to prove that the BOEL were financing sophisticated cannabis farms in the 60s in Hawaii, the weed produced there was said to be the very finest around and was shipped to the Bay Area in a vast high-tech operation, they had the latest best packing technology using vacuum sealed foil. The packages were a kilo each and had a printed dragon label, that much is also proven. But what was it? Was it called Haze? Was it the Mexican/Colombian we think sparked off Sam's work? The BOEL hired the best academic graduates from the top universities like UC Santa Cruz and Berkeley, the people they hired to run their farms were top calibre, the BOEL aimed to produce the best weed they could so they could charge the best prices, there was no pint in producing something at the same level as was being produced at that time in Mexico in vast quantities, I mean, what was the point in growing Oaxacan Gold or Michoacan Brown in Hawaii when the Sierra Madres at that time were covered in marijuana fields, remember, this is long before Nixon and The War On Drugs, it was a different world. The BOEL spent a ton of money on their Hawaiian operation so you can bet they didn't skimp on the genes, they were more than savvy enough to know they needed something new if they were to produce something special. It can't be proven of course, but I expect it is very likely they hired the best botanists and horticulturalists, provided them with the best seeds from around the world and all the best equipment and resources and them them to work on Hawaii to create the best pot possible. Whatever it was they came up with we know it was shipped out in those dragon-emblazoned foil packages and must have been pretty damn good as it sold for what at the time were said to be stupendous prices. If Acapulco Gold was the Ford family car of the time, the BOEL Hawaiian shipments represented the Rolls Royces - the cream for the elite who could afford it. Sam was in High School at this time.

What connections Sam has to the BOEL I don't know and don't much care, I don't think he's that important in this story to be honest.

So while there is a lot of room for speculation in this whole thing, lots of it can be tied down by fact. To summarise the issue would go something like this:

In the 1960s in California there was an explosion in the consumption of weed, the economy was booming, people were spending more and more on leisure and the times they were a changing as someone sang. The US-Mexican border was pretty much wide open and weed was flowing north like crazy, a lot of it good quality golden brown coloured almost sensimilla and it was dirt cheap. Sometime in the early 60s the term Haze became widely used so that by the mid 60s it was commonly used in reference to smoking weed - getting 'Hazed' was a term first coined by US servicemen.

By the mid 60s the weed market was getting so big that there existed different markets for different levels of quality, for the first time sophisticated, discerning consumers were demanding better and better product, the masses were still happy toking on Mexican imports but there were a growing number who wanted better and the changes in society meant they had the disposable income to spend. The people who were supplying most of the market at that time were the BOEL and they were making more money than they could spend, they became a global enterprise running huge shipments of hash from Asia, weed from SE Asia, Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere. Sometime during their heyday the BOEL setup a farm in Hawaii to produce the best possible product for the very upper tier of the consumerbase. They shipped the weed produced to the mainland in state of the art vacuum sealed packages emblazoned with a dragon print and it was widely recognised as the very best quality yet seen and brought the very highest prices. The end of the 60s coincided with the downfall of the BOEL and it was all over.

I'm not saying this BOEL weed from Hawaiia was Haze or was even called Haze I don't know.

Now, isn't it a coincidence that a young guy who probably worked for the BOEL started growing an exceptional Mexican/Colombian hybrid right at the time when the BOEL had just disintegrated? Isn't it likely that this guy would start his growing career by planting the very best seed he had been able to obtain? We know the best around in the late 60s was that BOEL 'Dragon' weed from Hawaii, it had to be, otherwise why where they able to get such high prices for it? So this young man would have been smart and even if he wasn't part of the BOEL, he would have known (like everyone else in Cali knew) that the BOEL were the source of the best stuff. Being smart, he would have chosen to plant the best and it's just logical he planted seeds from the old Hawaiian operation's output. He'd been on the hippie trail in the year or two before and had collected seed from the best sativa weed he had encountered, which was in Kerala in South India which at that time was still enjoying legal cultivation of ganja and was producing extremely fine quality for sale in the tens of thousands of licensed shops. He also had seeds from the very best Thai that had passed through the Bay Area in the late 60s. So being smart, he thought the best thing to do was to grow these three truly exceptional seedlots and interbreed them, that way he might just create something even more special than what he began with.

Now that last paragraph is just me speculating about Sam. He said he was in High School in 1965, in Kerala in 1970 and Kabul in early 71. He said he returned to Cali from Afghanistan in 71. He also said he was the source of the Thai and Indian seeds that were grown there and crossed to the Mexican/Colombian they began with so all I'm doing is connecting the dots and comparing to the bigger picture of what was happening at the time and it does seem to all fit together.

Until Tom Forcade came along and started High Times in the mid 70s there was pretty much no sources of info at all on any of these subjects. Time magazine did a big feature piece on Mexican cannabis production in the mid-70s too and Cherniak started on his photo books. Mel Frank came along in 78 and Jorge Cervantes and Ed Rosenthal just after that. Until that article about 'Jingles' was posted a couple of months back we had almost nothing in written form about Sam from the 70s. It must be remembered that High Times was dominated by the articles of Rob Clarke and Ed Rosenthal and they are both close collaborators with Sam so everything written in that magazine is from their side of things and deliberately distorted (or just made up) to make it look like Sam started everything when the truth is rather more complicated and there are many others who deserve an equal share of the credit.

Sam's story as far as Haze goes doesn't even start until he returns from Kabul in 71 and that is when the BOEL ended so really, that doesn't mark the beginning of the Haze story as Sam and his cronies have been telling it since the early 80s through High Times; what it really marks is the closing of the first chapter of the Haze story and the beginning of the second chapter. The third chapter begins in 1985 when Nevil bought Haze seeds from Sam and the fourth chapter is yet to be written but I think pen is about to meet paper and chapter four is just beginning to be written, will be set in the Outback somewhere and will feature the return of the main character from chapter three.

It's like a Greek saga and I'm much more interested in staying tuned for the final installment instead of rewinding to the beginning.

 

[british_hempire]

I like to add in short that the origins of haze have as much to do with the boel as SAMS

And how the hell do you know that? You don't you think that and it's not the same thing.

Haze came from California, no disputing that.

The weed scene in California in the 1960s was the BOEL.

To imagine that anything of any significance to do with weed happened in California in the 60s without the BOEL being involved is pretty ludicrous.

You clearly haven't grasped just how large and widespread an organisation the BOEL were, they were more like a major international corporation dealing in cannabis of all kinds than a group of hippie surfers. Nixon didn't launch the War on Drugs for nothing, the BOEL became so big and made so much money they came to be viewed as a threat to national security, hence the Senate hearings followed closely by the declaration of The War On Drugs.

It's worth remembering that the BOEL's largest market was NYC, go watch that film with Johnny Depp about the BOEL and take note of the scene in the airport where the NYC end of the connection tells him he needs more weed, Depp asks how much more and the guy grabs him, pulls him close and says 'a LOT more'. Eventually they were flying cargo planes full of Colombian dope up to the East Coast. Tom Forcade wrote about the last shipment of primo Colombian to make it in the early 70s in HT, what he fails to mention is that was a BOEL shipment and part of the profits from it was used to setup High Times. So face facts man, if you were smoking high grade dope in the US in the late 60s or first couple of years of the 70s it is almost certain it had been smuggled by the BOEL. The domestic cultivation scene only began because the BOEL disintegrated, when they were still operating, no-one was interested in homegrown because the ships and planes full of primo import dope were running non-stop. The end of the hippy dream at the end of the 60s gave rise to the 'Back to the Earth' movement and the hippies headed away from the Bay Area and into the hills of north Cali or up into Oregon. Many went to Tennessee to 'The Farm' which was the leading back to the earth settlment in the early 70s. Those hippies took the seed they had saved from the primo imports and planted them and that is how domestic growing got going. Sam and his tales of Haze Bros in Corralitos in 1971 to 74 fits exactly with this timeline, the BOEL had just ended so Sam needed a new gig.

So while no-one has yet been able to directly and irrefutably link the BOEL to the origins of Haze it is almost certain they are linked as the BOEL are at the root of the modern US cannabis scene so it can quite reasonably be said that everything begins with the,

 

[bigherb]

The only thing certain is death

Boel played a major part in the cannabis scene no question ,Sam has never mentioned Boel in any association with the haze .

You'll understand soon enough

 

[british_hempire]

Why can't you understand that Sam isn't the oracle of truth you keep making him out to be.

Why would Sam mention the BOEL? Two good reasons off the top of my head why not - firstly that would be admitting to having been involved with a major organised crime syndicate, something Sam would never do; secondly, he wants to take all the credit himself.

 

[cannatari]

Come on Jesse, wise up, 'R' was Rob Clarke. All the magazine writings about Haze are from the Sam/Rob camp so they are all singing from the same hymn sheet and telling the same story. For the truth you have to look elsewhere.

I wrote about this before, but the term 'Haze' goes back to the early 60s and has military connections. Jimi Hendrix was a soldier and he heard the term 'Purple Haze' while in the army as it was used to describe the smoke grenades they used that produced clouds of purple smoke. The Owsley Stanley acid batch that got labelled Purple Haze was named after the song, Owsley confirmed this, it's a well-known story. Jimi wrote Purple Haze the song between August and Novemeber 1966 while living in London, Chas Chandler who was managing him at the time confirmed this. The song was recorded in Novemeber in London and Hendrix performed it live for the frst time on US soil at the legendary Monterrey Festival in the Sumemr of the following year which of course, was the (in)famous 'Summer of Love'. Owsley Stanley was there at Monterrey and met Hendrix and Hendrix dropped some Owsley acid but it wasn't the Purple Haze batch. Purple Haze the song was one of the most played tracks on US radio stations that summer so was a huge part of the sountrack to the Summer of Love. Owsley listened to the radio while he was mixing up the batch he called Purple Haze and heard the song so many times. He doesn't clearly remember how/why/when he chose the name but suspected it was because there was no better marketing gimmick than to name the acid after the biggest number 1 hit single of the time.

Hendrix always claimed he wrote the song after having a dream where he was under the sea and became enveloped in a strange purple cloud.

All of that is easily verified as fact.

Now, as for the term Haze itself, where did that come from? Like I said, it came out of the jungles of Vietnam. US forces were involved in various semi-legitimate and semi-covert operations there as soon as the French left, so while the actual shooting war with large-scale US involvment didn't really kick off until 65 there were a lot of US personnel out there years before that. 'Hazed' became a common term among US servicemen and as more and more cycled through it spread. When it transferred into popular culture is unknown but it's safe to say it was already widespread by the time in the early 60s when Hendrix was in uniform.

Some research into the BOEL is essential to understand the Californian and wider US dope scene at that time. The BOEL were most of the market, they completely dominated things, these were not crazy dirty hippies they were very smart and sophisticated businessmen, guys like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Jay Miner, Sam Tramiel who all came from the same place and built the modern computer industry or George Lucas, the BOEL guys were of the same calibre just they chose a different trade.

It is easy to prove that the BOEL were financing sophisticated cannabis farms in the 60s in Hawaii, the weed produced there was said to be the very finest around and was shipped to the Bay Area in a vast high-tech operation, they had the latest best packing technology using vacuum sealed foil. The packages were a kilo each and had a printed dragon label, that much is also proven. But what was it? Was it called Haze? Was it the Mexican/Colombian we think sparked off Sam's work? The BOEL hired the best academic graduates from the top universities like UC Santa Cruz and Berkeley, the people they hired to run their farms were top calibre, the BOEL aimed to produce the best weed they could so they could charge the best prices, there was no pint in producing something at the same level as was being produced at that time in Mexico in vast quantities, I mean, what was the point in growing Oaxacan Gold or Michoacan Brown in Hawaii when the Sierra Madres at that time were covered in marijuana fields, remember, this is long before Nixon and The War On Drugs, it was a different world. The BOEL spent a ton of money on their Hawaiian operation so you can bet they didn't skimp on the genes, they were more than savvy enough to know they needed something new if they were to produce something special. It can't be proven of course, but I expect it is very likely they hired the best botanists and horticulturalists, provided them with the best seeds from around the world and all the best equipment and resources and them them to work on Hawaii to create the best pot possible. Whatever it was they came up with we know it was shipped out in those dragon-emblazoned foil packages and must have been pretty damn good as it sold for what at the time were said to be stupendous prices. If Acapulco Gold was the Ford family car of the time, the BOEL Hawaiian shipments represented the Rolls Royces - the cream for the elite who could afford it. Sam was in High School at this time.

What connections Sam has to the BOEL I don't know and don't much care, I don't think he's that important in this story to be honest.

So while there is a lot of room for speculation in this whole thing, lots of it can be tied down by fact. To summarise the issue would go something like this:

In the 1960s in California there was an explosion in the consumption of weed, the economy was booming, people were spending more and more on leisure and the times they were a changing as someone sang. The US-Mexican border was pretty much wide open and weed was flowing north like crazy, a lot of it good quality golden brown coloured almost sensimilla and it was dirt cheap. Sometime in the early 60s the term Haze became widely used so that by the mid 60s it was commonly used in reference to smoking weed - getting 'Hazed' was a term first coined by US servicemen.

By the mid 60s the weed market was getting so big that there existed different markets for different levels of quality, for the first time sophisticated, discerning consumers were demanding better and better product, the masses were still happy toking on Mexican imports but there were a growing number who wanted better and the changes in society meant they had the disposable income to spend. The people who were supplying most of the market at that time were the BOEL and they were making more money than they could spend, they became a global enterprise running huge shipments of hash from Asia, weed from SE Asia, Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere. Sometime during their heyday the BOEL setup a farm in Hawaii to produce the best possible product for the very upper tier of the consumerbase. They shipped the weed produced to the mainland in state of the art vacuum sealed packages emblazoned with a dragon print and it was widely recognised as the very best quality yet seen and brought the very highest prices. The end of the 60s coincided with the downfall of the BOEL and it was all over.

I'm not saying this BOEL weed from Hawaiia was Haze or was even called Haze I don't know.

Now, isn't it a coincidence that a young guy who probably worked for the BOEL started growing an exceptional Mexican/Colombian hybrid right at the time when the BOEL had just disintegrated? Isn't it likely that this guy would start his growing career by planting the very best seed he had been able to obtain? We know the best around in the late 60s was that BOEL 'Dragon' weed from Hawaii, it had to be, otherwise why where they able to get such high prices for it? So this young man would have been smart and even if he wasn't part of the BOEL, he would have known (like everyone else in Cali knew) that the BOEL were the source of the best stuff. Being smart, he would have chosen to plant the best and it's just logical he planted seeds from the old Hawaiian operation's output. He'd been on the hippie trail in the year or two before and had collected seed from the best sativa weed he had encountered, which was in Kerala in South India which at that time was still enjoying legal cultivation of ganja and was producing extremely fine quality for sale in the tens of thousands of licensed shops. He also had seeds from the very best Thai that had passed through the Bay Area in the late 60s. So being smart, he thought the best thing to do was to grow these three truly exceptional seedlots and interbreed them, that way he might just create something even more special than what he began with.

Now that last paragraph is just me speculating about Sam. He said he was in High School in 1965, in Kerala in 1970 and Kabul in early 71. He said he returned to Cali from Afghanistan in 71. He also said he was the source of the Thai and Indian seeds that were grown there and crossed to the Mexican/Colombian they began with so all I'm doing is connecting the dots and comparing to the bigger picture of what was happening at the time and it does seem to all fit together.

Until Tom Forcade came along and started High Times in the mid 70s there was pretty much no sources of info at all on any of these subjects. Time magazine did a big feature piece on Mexican cannabis production in the mid-70s too and Cherniak started on his photo books. Mel Frank came along in 78 and Jorge Cervantes and Ed Rosenthal just after that. Until that article about 'Jingles' was posted a couple of months back we had almost nothing in written form about Sam from the 70s. It must be remembered that High Times was dominated by the articles of Rob Clarke and Ed Rosenthal and they are both close collaborators with Sam so everything written in that magazine is from their side of things and deliberately distorted (or just made up) to make it look like Sam started everything when the truth is rather more complicated and there are many others who deserve an equal share of the credit.

Sam's story as far as Haze goes doesn't even start until he returns from Kabul in 71 and that is when the BOEL ended so really, that doesn't mark the beginning of the Haze story as Sam and his cronies have been telling it since the early 80s through High Times; what it really marks is the closing of the first chapter of the Haze story and the beginning of the second chapter. The third chapter begins in 1985 when Nevil bought Haze seeds from Sam and the fourth chapter is yet to be written but I think pen is about to meet paper and chapter four is just beginning to be written, will be set in the Outback somewhere and will feature the return of the main character from chapter three.

It's like a Greek saga and I'm much more interested in staying tuned for the final installment instead of rewinding to the beginning.

Excellent and informative post, BH.

I am a huge Hendrix fan and what you say is 100% accurate regarding that.

Y'all remember that Jimi is the true originator of Haze. If you don't believe me, look at the next likely candidates:

Guy: "Dude...kin I get a lid of that Daydream Believer from 'ya?" LOL!

Dude: "Yeah, I'll have to pick some up at the next Daydream Believer Tasting Party for 'ya."

Guy: "Cool. Do you know what color it'll be this year?"

Dude: "I'll ask the Daydream Believer Brothers."




When you're pissed off because I got Daydream Believer stuck in your head, you'll know I'm right!


Peace.

 

[british_hempire]

Pleased to meet another massive Hendrix fan mate, I still remember the first time I heard Voodoo Chile, I was 14 and it changed my life. I remember thinking 'how have I got to 14 and not heard this before?' My dad is a Johnny Cash and Glenn Campbell fan so go figure...

I really laughed at your 'Daydream Believer' skit, you really understood what I was getting at when I talked about why Owsley picked the name, I can just picture him in the lab mixing up some chemicals while whistling along to Purple Haze on the radio.

Maybe if Owsley had preferred The Doors he would have called it 'The End' although that's a sinister name for an acid tab. Dunno if I'd wanna swallow anything that I was told was called 'The End!' The end of what FF? lol

 

[cannatari]

BH, glad to hear that you're a Hendrix fan. I call my garden the "Electric Lady Land".

If Haze is ever able to be fully resurrected, I think it would be poetic justice for the line to be named after a Hendrix song/album like Spanish Castle Magic or something.

Did you know that when his stash box was sold at auction it still had some seeded bud in it? It would be the ultimate memorabilia to grow Jimi's weed.

Fry you're brain on that.

Thanks for the link, coop.

Here's one of my fav's:YouTube - Hendrix 12 String


Peace.



"I thought it was beautiful." -Jimi Hendrix