As the Sordid Affairs Editor at HIGH TIMES, it frequently so happens that I am called upon to deliver an expert opinion regarding certain illicit drugs.
"Hey, Dean," a gentleman who tanks up after work in the same overpriced, stodgy midtown tavern as I each evening asked me some little while back, "what's Thai Stick?"
"Thai sticks? That's seedless marijuana grown in Thailand."
"Marijuana?" he asked sceptically.
"It just so happens," said I proudly, for it was ever so, "I have a couple buds of stickless Thai on me, imported authentically from Bangkok, at this moment. Here, take a whiff," I invited, uncapping the plastic film can and gesturing in the direction of his nose.
He recoiled as though I'd suddenly magicked up a puff adder out of my jacket sleeve. "No, that's okay, I'll take your word for it."
I was puzzled. "It's just grass," I emphasized, taking a long emerald skunky whiff out of the can for reassurance. "The sweet little people in Thailand take special care to butcher all the male plants in their crop as soon as they bud, so they get all-female seedless reefer at harvest, two to three times stronger than mixed-sex reefer. Then those sweet little Thai people hand-pat the bud, flat, every single one individually, and layer them carefully so's they don't sweat together in the bottom of the slow boat between Bangkok and Vancouver."
"I heard a girl overdosed on it a couple days ago. Dead."
"Overdosed on what?"
"On Thai Stick."
Total flabbergast. "Uh, Thai sticks are marijuana. Nobody ever OD'd on marijuana."
"Well, I dunno. I just heard it was Thai Stick, that's all."
Thai Stick. As it turned out, I knew the girl in question, very slightly. She died of an embolism, the coroner ultimately reported; but she was young enough, about eight different kinds of street drugs were associated with her demise, by neighborhood word of mouth, before the official report came down. And one of the drugs was what everybody seemed to be calling by the consistent misnomer, "Thai Stick," as though this were some weird new bathtub-chemistry kind of PCP that had just hit the streets: "Thai Stick."
But it all cleared up considerably for me, weeks later, when I belatedly learned that the national TV after-dinner news media had been broadcasting all kinds of lurid pot-scare propaganda right about the time that girl croaked, to promote the passage in California of a special "Thai Stick" bill. "Thai Stick," right, that's where the term came from.
The California Bureau of Narcotics Control and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration want to pass this "Thai Stick" law so that they can send up growers, dealers and smokers of homegrown California sinsemilla marijuana for full predecriminalization prison terms. Under this proposal, anybody caught holding seedless grass of more than 2 percent THC content gets screwed. To sell it to the honest folks of California, these pot-scare specialists call it "Thai Stick" legislation, to conjure up the immemorial and irrefragable West Coast prejudice against slant-eyed Chinky-Chinamen feeding narcotics to Caucasian children so's to sexually molest and industrially exploit them in their legendary hand laundries and chop suey dens.
And they did such a great job with this pornographic anti-pot propaganda that the electronic whores of "ABC Nightline" and so on picked it up and titillated and horrified the nation with it for a week, between six-figure commercial slots for nonbiodegradable tinted toilet tissue and privately operated internal-combustion vehicles. That week a girl in my neighborhood suddenly died from spontaneous complications of a formerly premorbid circulatory disorder, and it got blamed-by sophisticated Manhattanites of my own beloved generation on Thai-stick marijuana. Not that she had ever been known to smoke Thai sticks, even by her two-year roommate... Christ, this must be happening nowadays all over the country every time a kid drops dead...
Coincidentally at just about the same time as I was slowly going absolutely berserk over this insanity, someone mailed to the Sordid Affairs desk a partial transcript of a criminal case at law involving sinsemilla marijuana. They gave no indication who they were, or what exactly the case was about, or even in what jurisdiction it was being tried. Typical Sordid Affairs material. It appears to involve the eminent top-dollar dope defense attorney Mr. Ray Silverstreak, Esq., and some business with 104,000 Thai sticks busted somewhere out West, and it seems to have a happy , ending.
Anyhow, it made me feel better to read it. I hope it does the same for you.
MR. SILVERSTREAK: The defense now calls Mr. Haman Budplucker to the stand.(The witness is sworn and seated.) Mr. Budplucker, you are a resident of the state of California, county of Humboldt, are you not?
THE WITNESS: I am, sir.
Q. Now sir, I ask you if you were convicted in the year 1980, in the state of California, of the crime of the manufacture and cultivation with intent to sell a Schedule One Controlled Substance?
A. I was, yes.
Q. And what was the precise nature of this controlled substance, sir?
A. Sinsemilla marijuana. [The word 'sinsemilla' is spelled for the Recorder.]
Q. Sinsemilla marijuana. That's a Spanish term meaning "no seeds," isn't it?
A. That's right.
Q. And in fact, the arresting officers testified for the record in your case that there were no seeds to be found at all among the seven tons of marijuana which they seized in your curing shed. Correct?
A. "Not a seed in a semiload of it," that's what they said. Damn fine weed, sir.
Q. No seeds. Now, it requires considerable skill and expertise to bring up that much marijuana without a single seed in it, doesn't it, Mr. Budplucker?
A. Damned hard work, sir. Terrible effort.
Q. Haven't you and all the other growers and merchandisers of sinsemilla marijuana been extensively criticized, by legions of marijuana consumers, for overpricing your weed outrageously and arbitrarily?
A. God, you hear no end of it. Thing is, they do all this bellyaching about high prices, but they don't look to see the reason for it, and it's right there in their Baggies, the damn dumb addlepated doped-out bunch of-
THE COURT: Take it easy, Mr. Budplucker. You're out of the business now forever, or at least that promise was the condition of your early good-time release from Atascadero, I understand.
THE WITNESS: Aw-hem! Sorry, Ed, it just really gets my goat to hear all that damn dormer and blitzen over high-priced seedless. Thing is, look here. You go along for years selling regular commercial weed, maybe two percent THC, brought up in Colombia, moved in through Miami or Pamlico, stored and broken down and trucked in ki's to Berkeley, and stored again and broken down and brought up to you in pound bricks. And you break the bricks down to zees, and retail them around to your regular customers. You follow, Your Honor?
THE COURT: Are you trying to put us entirely to sleep? What's this "zee" refer to?
MR. SILVERSTREAK: "Ounce," Your Honor. The witness is speaking of sinsemillia marijuana which is so powerful, and so expensive, that it's merchandised in quantities of half an ounce, or even a quarter ounce.
THE COURT: Proceed.
THE WITNESS: Now, what with all the smugglers and warehousers and drivers and cops and lawyers that have to be paid, all down the line, you wind up charging forty dollars for an ounce of dried-up old seed-ridden Dago reefer with white specks of aspergillus on it. And didn't they used to carry on and bellyache about that, until they got used to it?
THE COURT: Boy, did they ever.
THE WITNESS: So finally one year you say, hell, why not cut out all them fool middlemen? And by a couple seasons later, you're bringing up the prettiest, daintiest, greenest little sinsemilla sweeties in all creation. Come harvest, you cure it and bag it in zees, and go do your usual rounds. Let's say Lester 'Pester over in Eureka, now he's been buying a zee of Colombian off you every three weeks, on schedule, for forty dollars, for years. And since he's a friend and all, you charge him the same for this weed your whole family busted their asses over all fall. Because you're friends! Don't it just make your ass burn white when you think about them ungrateful, doped-out-
THE COURT: Aw-hem, Mr. Budplucker.
THE WITNESS: Okay, Lester Pester of Eureka has his zee of seedless weed. Now, three weeks later, you go by Lester's place as usual, all faithful, making your deliveries on schedule. And Lester, he says, "Aw, hell, Ham, I don't need no reefer this week. I still got half, two-thirds left out of that last lid, man. That is some fine, knock-your-socks-off weed, man, you know? Blame fine powerful reefer there. You all come on back maybe Tuesday after next, and I'll be set for a refill. Right on, good buddy. Say hi to Sarah and the kids."
THE COURT: I think I catch your drift now, Ham. And when you return to Lester Pester in Eureka a week from Tuesday?
THE WITNESS: You caught it all right, Your Honor. Old Lester here, he still wants to pay just forty dollars for his lid of grass, only you just lost forty dollars, because it took him twice as long, and then some, to get through your lid of seedless. So you got to charge him eighty dollars a zee now, just to barely break even, and that's when the bitching and bellyaching start. And like I say, you hear just no end of that in the sinsemilla business. Almighty damn, you have to make up all these tomfool stories about how much money you supposedly spent camouflaging and booby-trapping your pot patch against the helicopter potnappers-
MR. SILVERSTREAK: Let's try for a simple equation, Mr. Budplucker. You're growing seedless marijuana which is at least twice as potent as ordinary seeded marijuana, correct? What does the term "potency" mean in this connection, sir?
A. It refers to the relative content of the cannabinoid delta-nine tetrahydrocannabinol in the aggregate herbaceous plant material, sir.
Q. Then your sinsemilla marijuana, containing over twice as much delta-nine THC content as ordinary seeded marijuana, conveys a "high" that is more than twice as intense, per quantity of aggregate plant material smoked. Is that your observation?
A. Both in my own subjective estimation, and from my close and extensive observation of other individuals, yes, sir.
Q. To summarize, then. Your sinsemilla marijuana, twice as potent as seeded marijuana, is bought half as frequently by your customers. True, Mr. Budplucker?
A. Essentially. Sometimes it's even worse.
Q. Why do you think it takes them twice as long to get through an ounce of your double-proof weed, Ham?
A. Several factors. They roll smaller joints. They smoke less at each smoking session. They smoke less frequently The great majority of them only smoke my sinsemilla marijuana on special occasions, like parties or first-date seductions or a new Star Wars release, and smoke ordinary commercial seeded marijuana otherwise.
Q. Now let's project, Mr. Budplucker. Suppose that your sinsemilla marijuana became as prevalent in the United States as ordinary seeded marijuana, at a similar price per ounce. Would that cause any dramatic change in broad social patterns of marijuana use, with consequent impact on the epidemiology of health risks associated in the research literature with marijuana smoking?
A. Well, people would smoke a lot less marijuana, in terms of marijuana as a crude, compound herbaceous drug preparation. They would thus reduce the chronic intake into their respiratory tracts of nonpharmacological "tars"-polynuclear aromatic by-drocarbons, water-soluble cytotoxins and other potentially toxic nondrug fractions of crude vegetable smoke.
Q. Then the obvious consequence of more sinsemilla on the street market would be a decrease in the chronic exposure of marijuana smokers' lung tissue to these possibly toxic, nondrug ingredients of marijuana smoke.
MR. CATERWAUL (Prosecutor): Your Honor, could the people approach the bench? Out of the witness's hearing?
THE COURT: Oh, yeah. Anything you wish. Mr. Silverstreak?
MR. CATERWAUL: [In conference.] Look, Ed, I've reconsidered. I'm ready to plea-bargain Ray's boy down to high mopery with intent to spit on the sidewalk.
MR. SILVERSTREAK: The stipulation?
MR. CATERWAUL: That you never bring that fucking drone Budplucker into the same courtroom with me again as long as I work here. I want to grow up to be a top-dollar dope defender myself someday, y'know.
