Information about Hashish

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Hashish (from Arabic: حشيش ḥashīsh, lit. "grass"; also hash or many slang terms) is a preparation of cannabis composed of the compressed trichomes collected from the cannabis plant. It contains the same active ingredients as cannabis (but in higher concentrations than other parts of the plant), produces the same type of psychoactive effects and is mostly illegal in the same extent; see the main article Cannabis (drug).

Hashish is often a solid or paste-like substance, of varying hardness and pliability, and will soften under heat. Its colour can vary from green, black, reddish brown, or most commonly light to dark brown. It is consumed in much the same way as cannabis buds, often being smoked in joints mixed with tobacco or cannabis buds, or in smoking pipes, or vapourized. It can also be eaten or used as an ingredient (baked into cookies or cakes, or added to stews and chocolate).

History

It is believed that hash first originated from Central Europe, as this region was among the first to be populated by the cannabis plant, which may have originated in the Alps. Traditionally, Cannabis sativa subsp. indica has been cultivated for production of hashish. Others speculate that it might have first been introduced in what is currently Swiss areas of Central Europe, at first being made by rolling dried marijuana plant material over carpets and collecting the resin glands (and extraneous material) falling into the pile^[1]

Hash quickly spread around the world after the Arabs began to gather and trade it. Production of hash later spread to the Middle East (Lebanon), and from there to North Africa (most prominently Algeria, though in post-colonial times Moroccan production has dominated) and then South Asia (mostly in India and Pakistan).

The word assassin may have been derived from the Arabic word حشّاشين (haššāšīn), or "Hashshashin", the medieval Shia Islamic sect of militants founded by Hassan-i-Sabah in northern Iran. The Hashashin were allegedly inspired to commit murder under the influence of hashish (alternately, the term Hashashin may simply refer to followers of Hassan-i-Sabah.) The legend of hashish-eating assassins began with a vague mention by Marco Polo, and was embellished by 19th century French and American writers, fascinated by orientalism and eager to present hashish as a menace. The legend gained great popularity especially by Charles Baudelaire in his Artificial Paradises of 1857. Others argue that the term could have been created due to political reasons, in order to discredit the sect. It has also been suggested that if hashish were in fact consumed, it had been adulterated with stronger materials, the effects of hashish being well-known and easily recognisable at that time and place.^[2]

Consumption of hashish saw a dramatic increase in the 20th century, becoming a popular pastime in Europe and America, gaining prominence in the hippie scene. Hashish levels declined significantly in the United States starting in the 1980s for several reasons, including the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Mostly the decline was due to a huge jump in price and quality of imported marijuana. This increased the popularity of marijuana use in North America, and encouraged new growing methods of marijuana with more THC such as growing marijuana indoors.

Manufacturing processes

Hashish is made from tetrahydrocannabinol-rich glandular hairs known as trichomes, as well as varying amounts of cannabis flower and leaf fragments. The flowers of a mature female plant contain the most trichomes, though trichomes are found on other parts of the plant. Certain strains of cannabis are cultivated specifically for their ability to produce large amounts of trichomes. The resin reservoirs of the trichomes, sometimes erroneously called pollen, are separated from the plant through various methods. The resulting concentrate is formed into blocks of hashish, which can be easily stored and transported. Alternatively, the powder consisting of uncompressed, dry trichomes is often referred to as kief instead of hashish.

Mechanical separation methods use physical action to remove the trichomes from the plant. Sieving over a fine screen is a vital part of most methods. The plants may be sifted by hand or in motorized tumblers. Hash made in this way is sometimes called dry sift. Finger hash is produced by rolling the ripe trichome-covered flowers of the plant between the fingers and collecting the resin that sticks to the fingers. Trichomes and resins can also be collected passively through cleaning of scissors that have been used to cut the plant, or containers like a kief-box used to store it.

Ice water separation is a more modern mechanical separation method which submerges the plant in ice and water and stirs the mixture. Trichomes are broken off the plant as the ice moves, while the low temperature make the trichomes more brittle so they break off easily. The waste plant matter, detached trichomes, and water are separated by filtering through a series of increasingly fine screens. Kits are commercially available which provide a series of filter screens meant to fit inside standard bucket sizes. Hash made in this way is sometimes called ice hash, or bubble hash.

Chemical separation methods generally use a solvent to dissolve the desirable resins in the plant while not dissolving undesirable components. The solid plant material is then filtered out of the solution and discarded. The solvent may then be evaporated, leaving behind the desirable resins. As THC is fat-soluble, it also dissolves in butter, which can then be used for cooking (see hash cookies and Alice B. Toklas brownies). The product of chemical separations is more commonly referred to as honey oil, hash oil, or just oil.

Quality

The main factors affecting quality are potency and purity. Different cannabis plants will produce resins with unique chemical profiles that vary in potency. The manufacturing process may, to some degree, introduce less desirable materials such as tiny pieces of leaf matter or even purposefully added adulterants; these reduce the purity of the hash. The THC content of hashish usually ranges from 15–20%, and that of hash oil from 30–40%.^[3]

Fresh hashish of good quality is soft and pliable and becomes progressively harder and less potent as it oxidizes.(Levine 1944)

Hash is generally said to be black, brown or blonde. There is also hashish of greenish or reddish hue. A green tinge may indicate that the hashish is impure, which has been cut with low-quality leaf or contains high quantities of chlorophyll. A yellow tint can indicate presence of cannabis pollen, which has a sandy color.

Low quality forms of hash often contain adulterants used as cutting agents added to exaggerate the value of hash through increasing the volume or including other cheaper drugs.^[4]. Such forms usually possess a low potency and may have a strangeness in taste and feel. The adulterants in the hash may range from waste material from the cannabis plant to products such as soap (hence the name soap bar). The low quality may lead one to smoke more to get the same effect, and may increase the adverse effects done to the lungs.

Because hashish, particularly in Northern Europe, is often adulterated, some people have started boiling their hash in water for a few minutes and then drying it before smoking. This is thought to remove all water-soluble adulterants while the psychoactive cannabinols remain intact as the temperature is not sufficient to destroy them and they are not soluble in water.^[5]

Hashish by region

Production

Hashish is traditionally produced in desert conditions. It is traditionally found in a belt extending from North Africa to North India and into Central Asia . The primary hash-producing countries are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Morocco, Egypt, and India.

Charas is the primary product. Much of the hash available is high quality, although some adulterated product is available, easily identifiable by its relatively low price. Charas, a substance that is hand-rubbed directly from the cannabis plant, is generally produced in Nepal and India.

A visitor to the Rif Mountains and the town of Ketama in Morocco in December 1976 described the production of hashish. Workers rubbed the leaves of the cannabis plant over fine muslin fabric. In unheated huts, each worker had his hands and arms inside a regular one hundredweight (50 kg) plastic fertiliser bag containing twigs and leaves of the cannabis plant. In the mouth of the bag was a plastic washing-up bowl. Stretched over the bowl was a sheet of "zero-zero" grade muslin. The worker rubbed the leaves of the cannabis plant over the muslin, resulting in a fine powder ending up in the bowl. When 100 grams of the powder was collected it was then wrapped in more fine muslin, put onto a heated metal plate, and rolled down with a bottle. This process produces a slightly sticky solid brown mass in the form of a square slab, around half the size of a paperback book and about ½ cm thick. This block is wrapped in cellophane. Sellers of this Moroccan hashish pointed to the imprint of the muslin on the surface of the block, and declared it proof that the product was "zero-zero", top quality.

In Afghanistan there is a method of making hash that resembles charas. First, cannabis resin is placed on a large heated mortar, then the resin is threshed with a heavy object. The result is a very gooey, sticky black hash. This method is mostly used in villages around the Hindu Kush mountain region.

Hash is also produced now in the deserts of northern Mexico; however, the demand for it and thus amount produced is insignificant compared to that for "fresh" Mexican marijuana, especially into the lucrative North American market.

Consumption

Hashish was always the variety of preference in Europe (although this preference is slowly changing towards the buds of the plant) , and was widely available in North Africa and parts of Asia. It is less popular in the US and other producing nations. Hashish is more compact than marijuana, it keeps better, and is easier to smuggle than marijuana. When it has been smuggled by amateurs, it often suffers from longish periods of bad storage, so the quality can vary considerably. Older hashish can easily be recognised as it is hard and has no smell (heating with a lighter is a common test).

By the 1990s, the popularity of marijuana in the developed world was increasing, as more potent versions were being grown. The Cannabis Cup held every year in Amsterdam attempts to evaluate the quality of the latest varieties.

In France and the German- and French-speaking parts of Switzerland, this is known as Maroc (Maroc meaning "Morocco" in French). In Spain it is called Costo, and Chocolate. In the United Kingdom, it is variously known as brown (also a name for heroin in some parts of the UK), hash, resin, solid, and block. Older names include shit and dope. In the Netherlands, this is called Maroc, Lieb (Lebanon) or, from quality zero being best to secundeira being worst: triple zero, zero zero, super primaira, primaira, secundeira. In Brazil, it is commonly called haxa. Also, there is a branch of nearly white powder hash (pollen or kief hash) that is the result of not stamping the raw material for the more common compressed hashish.

Soft hash is usually dark brown to black in colour and goes under the name black in France, squidgey or soft black (named due to the colour and properties of the hash) in the UK. The very potent Paki Black is so named because it originates in Pakistan. Soft, dark hash in the Netherlands is normally referred to as Afghan. Popular Kashmiri brands are Citral and Fungus.

Hashish use is experiencing a resurgence in parts of North America (especially the Pacific Northwest) with the popularity and commercial availability of ice-water extraction kits.

Preparation and methods of use

Like ordinary cannabis preparations, hashish is usually smoked, though it can also be eaten or vapourized.

Hash is often crumbled into tiny pieces or formed into shapes to obtain maximum surface area when burning. Hash can be smoked in most implements used for cannabis smoking, sometimes a pipe screen is used. Often hash is mixed with tobacco, cannabis, or another herb. Heat may be used to bond the hash to the other smokeable substance. This mixture can be rolled up into a cigarette or smoked in a pipe.

A piece of hash may be ignited by cigarette coals or other means and placed inside a container. The smoke that collects inside can then be inhaled. Dabous or Khabour (stick in Arabic) is a North African technique. Bottle tokes or BT's is a similar method found in Canada and also in Russia. Another popular method coined "boot rips" that has been adapted from bottle tokes is used in the Lake Tahoe area of northern California, this method is preferred by skiers because it is easier to smoke in inclement weather. It involves cutting a hole out of a bottle and lighting a cigarette and using the hot ember of the cigarette to adhere the hashish and put inside the bottle, where now the hash burns instead of the cigarette.

Hash can be placed on very hot pieces of metal and the resulting smoke inhaled. Hot knives is a method that involves heating up knives on a stove and then crushing a little ball of the hash between them and inhaling the released smoke with a straw. Hash cones is a method where a piece of hash is attached to metal wire and then heated.

See also

• Cannabis (drug)
• Club des Hashischins - A club in Paris in the 1840s, dedicated to explore the effect of drugs, specifically hashish.
• Charles Baudelaire - A member of the club mentioned above, who in Les paradis artificiels (1860) described the effects of opium and hashish.
• Fitz Hugh Ludlow and his autobiographical The Hasheesh Eater (1857).
• Charas
• Keif
• Legality of cannabis by country
• Honey Oil

Further history

• Erowid Cannabis Vault: Hashish History
• The Hashish Club - Paris 1840s
• W.W. WILLOUGHBY: Indian Hemp (HASHISCH), 1925

Further reading

• Hashish by Robert Connell Clarke, ISBN 0-929349-05-9
• Artificial Paradises by Charles Baudelaire; first edition 1860
• The Hasheesh Eater by Fitz Hugh Ludlow; first edition 1857
• Indoor Marijuana Horticulture, by Jorge Cervantes, ISBN 1-878823-29-9 ; 2001, reprinted 2005

References

• Marijuana Potency, Michael Starkes, 1977, And/Or Press Berkley California, ISBN 0-91504-27-6 Chapter 6 "Extraction of THC and Preparation of Hash Oil" pages 111-122.

External links

• A recent publication on hashish production and trafficking in the Rif area of Morocco
• How to make bubble hash
• How to judge hashish quality
• Analysis of adulterated hashish
• A Collection of Hashish Photography
• Neil Montgomery of the University of Edinburgh's findings on adulterated hashish
• Bibliography of scholarly histories on cannabis and hashish. (Updated to include article abstracts.)
• International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, released by the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, March 2005.

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