Poll: Has the quality of marijuana improved over the years, or not?

[whitebb2727]

Yeah, I hear you.

Decarbing has something to do with the end result. I'm sure there's a perfect temp. and length of time, I just can't guarantee I hit perfection every time. Jar to jar of the same strain can vary.

I've never been too disappointed so I must get close, but batch to batch can vary with nothing changing that I can pick up on.

How does your knowledge and technique on how to do it compare now to back then?

 

[BleedsGreen]

I was 3 years behind you.

Mexican brick was $20 an oz. for the next 7-10 years. Colombian $30, Colombian Gold $40, Jamaican $30.
You could buy a pound of brick for $75 if you bought 5. After you rolled some seeds off and took out some huge stems, you had 12-13 oz. you could sell for the standard $20.
Mid to late '70's thai stick started showing up. $200 an oz. and I grabbed as much as I could get. That was the only thing I thought was out of this world good, then I found out that soapy taste was opium.

Price went from $20 to $200 real fast in the '80's. It wasn't the late '60's block weed anymore though, and was noticably better. Hawaiian weed started showing up and domestic from Arizona, Texas and the south. Some of the best weed we'd get was Oaxacan. Big bright green buds.

It's gotten better. Way better. I've grown weed inside that looks better, tastes better and smells better than anything pre-1990. The only thing better had opium on it.

And now, that way better weed gets extracted to 80%-90% THC. I'm guessing Mexican block was 3%-5% and the 1st weed I grew outside in the '70's was about the same. Big ass difference from 3% block or semi-unskilled outdoor to 90% prefilled cartridge. I never got knocked on my ass in the '70's but I can do it now .

I bow down to your memory, awesome and thanks for the reminders

 

[BleedsGreen]

I don't know but I sure do love weed and I think my life would have been way more disappointing without the experience . I for one am happy I found this plant when I was a new teenager and have never really walked away from her in all those years, some may call it addicted, others self medicating, to me it was just how I wanted to enjoy my existence. The best thing to ever happen in my life was to marry a women who loves this plant as much as I do to spend my forever after with!

 

[tyler.durden]

No. I'll take anything from 1973 - 1978 over everything today, just my opinion (but I was there) Most of the hash we got back then had tons of opium in it too! Nice!
* I would add that I grew and bred NL5 and the real skunk from 85 to 95 and that wasn't even as good as the stuff back in the 70s, but it was a lot better than most anything today, I honestly don't know what's happened to cannabis in the 20 years that I was mostly away ?
Also if you're talking about weed from the 90s then you weren't there in the sixties and seventies and you don't know. Not trying to start an argument, just stating a fact.

Facts? Like how the gov't is dropping chemtrails on us from jets, and that the Earth is flat???

 

[voodoosdaddy]

Last time I made cannabutter I used 2 zips of outdoor in a lb. of butter.

Made 48 cookies. Eat a whole one and your mind will race like a motherfucker in about 45 minutes to an hour. Uncomfortable beyond 1/2 a cookie.

I made brownies with 2 oz. in the '70's. Not the same.

You say outdoor. Does that mean your own outdoor homegrown or outdoor brick weed? BTW man I used butter for years. I'd take all my trim and put it in a crock pot with a lb or 2 of butter and it was great. A couple of years ago my buddy turned me on to using coconut oil and I'll never go back. It hits way harder and quicker imo. Try it out if you get a chance.

 

[tangerinegreen555]

You say outdoor. Does that mean your own outdoor homegrown or outdoor brick weed? BTW man I used butter for years. I'd take all my trim and put it in a crock pot with a lb or 2 of butter and it was great. A couple of years ago my buddy turned me on to using coconut oil and I'll never go back. It hits way harder and quicker imo. Try it out if you get a chance.

What I made last fall was my outdoor.

What I made in the '70's was brick the 1st time. In the '70's, you wouldn't use primo, it was scarce and more expensive.

Even now I wouldn't use indoor except for trim. Outdoor is cooking weed. Modern day mids. Not enough full sun days.

I have plans to use coconut oil this year using a friend's recipe. I don't really like the yucky butter taste and the wife hates it.

 

[Adam Tripper]

One factor that may explain why the sativas of today do not seem to have the trippy edge they had back in the 70s and 80s is the cure. And I don't mean careful slow dehydration, but heat curing and fermenting of the weed. Back in the day farmers in Colombia and Mexico would cut down the plants and pile them up under the sun as if they were trying to compost them, then after this "sweating" period they would select the flowering tops and compress them into bricks, where the fermentation would continue during transport.



In Africa today they use heat to ferment the buds, and the high from the resulting "Malawi cobs" is exactly like the old folks remember from the 70s. Today's big problem is that since consumers judge quality by the look of the weed ("rock hard" "nugs" that are green with "crystals") nobody wants heat-cured weed, which would look terrible under modern standards (actually the most trippy sativas look stringy, brown and absolutely no crystals in sight).

Note that I only talk about sativas; indicas do not respond well to heat fermentation. But sativas absolutely need to be heat cured to become as trippy as you remember from the 70s. I would recommend next time you grow a sativa that you find disappointing (something from Ace Seeds for instance, if you try it right away after harvest it will be disappointing), give it a sweat in something like a yogurt maker, cure it for a couple of months, then try it again. You'll be in for a big trippy surprise.

 

[ANC]

lol, it gets enough heat cure in black bags stacked on the back of a truck in the sun.

 

[Beachwalker]

One factor that may explain why the sativas of today do not seem to have the trippy edge they had back in the 70s and 80s is the cure. And I don't mean careful slow dehydration, but heat curing and fermenting of the weed. Back in the day farmers in Colombia and Mexico would cut down the plants and pile them up under the sun as if they were trying to compost them, then after this "sweating" period they would select the flowering tops and compress them into bricks, where the fermentation would continue during transport.

View attachment 4161869

In Africa today they use heat to ferment the buds, and the high from the resulting "Malawi cobs" is exactly like the old folks remember from the 70s. Today's big problem is that since consumers judge quality by the look of the weed ("rock hard" "nugs" that are green with "crystals") nobody wants heat-cured weed, which would look terrible under modern standards (actually the most trippy sativas look stringy, brown and absolutely no crystals in sight).

Note that I only talk about sativas; indicas do not respond well to heat fermentation. But sativas absolutely need to be heat cured to become as trippy as you remember from the 70s. I would recommend next time you grow a sativa that you find disappointing (something from Ace Seeds for instance, if you try it right away after harvest it will be disappointing), give it a sweat in something like a yogurt maker, cure it for a couple of months, then try it again. You'll be in for a big trippy surprise.

^

 

[too larry]

When I started 4 finger lids/$10 was standard; then like coffee, lids gradually became 3 finger normative for same price. I was drafted in '69 and when I got out in '72, lids were $25 and sneaking down to 2 1/2 fingers. Course it was a bit better quality and one could buy 1/2 and 1/4 lids, almost of unheard of a few years before. I suspect that around this time "lids"=oz and you heard oz more and more

Young folks don't even know what you're talking about when you say lost lid boogie.

 

[too larry]

We always called 3/4 oz. a 'lid'. Because we didn't have anything else to call it.

A 1/4 was a nickel bag because it was $5.

A 1/2 was a dime, $10

A lid was $15 and an oz was $20. That's not to say they always weighed 7-14-21-28 grams. But everybody had a cheap inaccurate hanging scale you could buy for a buck. Always saw drug deals outside bars with guys holding the bag on those shit scales saying it's under or over depending if they were buying or selling. Lol.

I'm a youngster, only 57. When I started smoking in 1973 a nickel was how much fit in a matchbox. After buying a few nickels, I learned you could buy a lid for 20 bucks, sell 3 nickels and still have about half the lid for five bucks.

 

[ANC]

I just think we remember weed more fondly due to the low tolerance we had at the time.

 

[too larry]

One factor that may explain why the sativas of today do not seem to have the trippy edge they had back in the 70s and 80s is the cure. And I don't mean careful slow dehydration, but heat curing and fermenting of the weed. Back in the day farmers in Colombia and Mexico would cut down the plants and pile them up under the sun as if they were trying to compost them, then after this "sweating" period they would select the flowering tops and compress them into bricks, where the fermentation would continue during transport.

View attachment 4161869

In Africa today they use heat to ferment the buds, and the high from the resulting "Malawi cobs" is exactly like the old folks remember from the 70s. Today's big problem is that since consumers judge quality by the look of the weed ("rock hard" "nugs" that are green with "crystals") nobody wants heat-cured weed, which would look terrible under modern standards (actually the most trippy sativas look stringy, brown and absolutely no crystals in sight).

Note that I only talk about sativas; indicas do not respond well to heat fermentation. But sativas absolutely need to be heat cured to become as trippy as you remember from the 70s. I would recommend next time you grow a sativa that you find disappointing (something from Ace Seeds for instance, if you try it right away after harvest it will be disappointing), give it a sweat in something like a yogurt maker, cure it for a couple of months, then try it again. You'll be in for a big trippy surprise.

I saw that sun drying on a PBS doc back in the day. {has to be true}

 

[too larry]

My 2 cents. I smoked and bought weed from 1973-75. Then smoked, grew and bought from 1978-2002. Been smoking and growing again since 2015.

In the early 70's it was a crap shoot. Most of the time you got crap. Some of the time you got gold.

Late 70's it was already changing. Still lots of crap, but if you knew the right people, the gold, red, etc, etc, could be had. It just cost more. One of my biggest regrets was not making seeds of some Thai my speech teacher gave me. It was just a tiny nugg, but had 7 seeds in it. I didn't grow them out until I had gone and come home from the Navy. I only had one plant make it, so no seeds. But it was true one toke shit.

By the early 80's homegrown was catching on. There were some strain names, but they were like Carlos Cream, that sort of stuff. Almost all had grower's name in them. My BIL made a cross in 1988 that I got some f1 seeds from in 2015. Named after the two growers, it was Jack Carlos Cross. I grew out a few and made seeds, the best being Chicken Pen 1. Then the next year I grew out some bag seeds in a side by side grow with the CP1. While the old stuff had fewer problems, it was not as heady as the bag seed. {from an $120 ounce} And the two parent strains of Jack Carlos Cross was cutting edge in 1988. At least in my neck of the woods. So yes, on average, pot is better today.

 

[tangerinegreen555]

How does your knowledge and technique on how to do it compare now to back then?

Oops, you sure have a point there.

Didn't know what decarboxylate meant in the '70's and cannabutter wasn't in my vocabulary yet. But, there were guys around who figured out things over time to jack things up a little.

I remember heating Crisco in a frying pan (recipe called for Crisco or similar brand) and sauteeing the weed till it smoked a little before adding to brownie mix. A buddy told me to do it. And, the 1st edible I ever had was sauteed weed like that, a couple joints worth in an individual store bought chocolate pudding in college.

So yeah, learned a lot since then. But our crude ways worked somewhat.

 

[whitebb2727]

Oops, you sure have a point there.

Didn't know what decarboxylate meant in the '70's and cannabutter wasn't in my vocabulary yet. But, there were guys around who figured out things over time to jack things up a little.

I remember heating Crisco in a frying pan (recipe called for Crisco or similar brand) and sauteeing the weed till it smoked a little before adding to brownie mix. A buddy told me to do it. And, the 1st edible I ever had was sauteed weed like that, a couple joints worth in an individual store bought chocolate pudding in college.

So yeah, learned a lot since then. But our crude ways worked somewhat.

Lol.

I remember as a teenager three of us ground a quarter bag up and divided it equally and washed it down with a pop.

I got surpringly high.

 

[tangerinegreen555]

Lol.

I remember as a teenager three of us ground a quarter bag up and divided it equally and washed it down with a pop.

I got surpringly high.

We used to put hash on McDonald's burgers. Lol.

 

[tangerinegreen555]

We used to put hash on McDonald's burgers. Lol.

I was just thinking about the time me and 3 buddies went through McDonald's drive through in the '70's and ordered 4 hamburgers.

The lady's asking us if we want fries and drinks and my buddy hollers, 'hey lady, we aren't here to eat'.

 

[dstroy]

I'd love to find that high school high again. I'm not sure if it's age that has made a difference, or just the shear amount of crossing this with that has F'd everything up. I'm not saying weed isn't good these days. I can say getting high isn't like it use to be.

I took that 12 year being in the military break, and I grew up in WA. Totally different stuff now man, everything I used to get was green to dark green, smelt like pine trees and had a sharp taste. Now people use fruit and spices to describe strains instead of do you want fucked up or super fucked up with extra cheese?

.02c

 

[Fubard]

I believe that.

Here's the thing though.

I can follow the same recipe and use the same bud and the batches be different.

I don't know why but it happens.

Because every single bud on the same plant is not equal, they're plants and not precision built mass produced machines where every component is identical.