OMG Remember When?!
By MK Thomson
December 6 2023
We have come a long way with the availability and acceptance of marijuana in our lives and culture. But it wasn’t always like that! Those of us old enough to remember know when things were very different and getting a hold of cannabis was a huge challenge and expensive. And forget about edibles and concentrates! Edibles were a dream and concentrates didn’t even exist. You didn’t know what you were getting and you didn’t quite trust the person getting it for you – but you didn’t have a choice so you just convinced yourself that since it’s cannabis, the dude must be chill!
For those who are younger and have had the good fortune of living in the age of medical marijuana, dispensaries, and the vast array of cannabis products, gather around for story time. We’re going to share with you how it was back in the day before even medical marijuana was being discussed seriously in California – a stoner’s version of “walking to school barefoot in the snow” with how it used to be with cannabis.
Most people would come just short of calling their cannabis connection a “dealer” – after all, dealers dealt drugs, and even back in the day most pot smokers realized the difference between marijuana and street drugs. Still, most of our cannabis retailers were usually pretty shady! You never quite knew where they came from or what their story was. Still, it was your connection and you didn’t have any other way to get your cannabis, so you just threw caution to the wind and hoped that it all turned out OK.
Not only was the connection usually shady but there was this quiet but omnipresent voice in the back of your head that wondered if your connection was really a cop. Buying from a dubious person in off-the-beaten-path places was nerve wracking enough, but then the thought of getting busted only added to the anxiety of the transaction. Man, once you got your stash it was like you could breathe again! Then quickly you forget all the questionable and scary things you just went through. That was until it was time to replenish!
I remember the first time my connection asked me what I wanted! I thought I had gone to cannabis heaven because you got what you got. Sometimes it was good marijuana, sometimes it was full of sticks and seeds and sometimes it was questionable if it was even marijuana. Luckily marijuana was almost never laced with any other drug or replaced with some nefarious substance. It was always marijuana, just of many varying levels of quality and potency. Regardless, you took the (very low) risk because there wasn’t an alternative. And cannabis was almost always the same price, no matter what you got – which was usually $50 for a quarter ounce or $10 dime bags of about 1 gram. Outrageous considering today’s prices!
Then there was the brick schwag marijuana from out of town. You would sometimes get these chunks of cannabis that, again, were full of sticks and seeds. This schwag cannabis was no doubt grown outdoors in massive clandestine growing fields without much care for true marijuana horticulture. This was literally marijuana marijuana. The good thing with this chunky cannabis was that it was cheap (it was the only type of cannabis that was) and good for making your own edibles – which was almost always limited to good ole Better Crocker fudge brownie mix. In a pinch this cannabis was great, or you could mix it with the more expensive and better quality stash you were über-rationing.
Then once in a while, you would have a connection that could get a hold of some really great cannabis. Closer to the time that medical marijuana was gaining traction in California, I had a connection that could get really good cannabis My connections said it was shake from actual medical operations in California – but really, who knew? And who cared? It was good cannabis and he was a solid connection – until he wasn’t. He just up and disappeared one day. Oh well, that’s how it was.
Then there were the times when it was just dry. That’s it. No cannabis anywhere. Those times just plain sucked. You would ask all your smoking buddies and anyone you knew who smoked. Sometimes there was a plethora of cannabis available, then other times there was just none. The demand was always there but the supply wasn’t. You would hear rumors of busts and cops cracking down, but being an underground activity you never really knew what was going on in the underworld of cannabis.
True story: When I was living in Miami back in the day, I was driving to the Beach across the Julia Tuttle Causeway (I-195 down there) and saw a huge billboard that was undoubtedly taken out by the Miami Dade po-po. The solid black billboard with huge stark white letters read: “If you think it’s dry now, just wait.” A not-so-subtle message that you might as well stop looking for cannabis (or any other drugs; Miami had a pretty big cocaine trafficking problem back then). I double-checked with my connection – a DJ at one of the clubs on Washington Ave, no less! – and he confirmed that there was nothing to be had. “Oh well,” I lamented, “Lemme know when you have something.”
That’s how it was. Sometimes you had cannabis; other times you just didn’t.
Anyone from those days has an honorary Master’s degree in scaping bongs and pipes for the excess resin. This was a highly-skilled art to collect the sticky, stinky substance and clump it together in a smokeable format. Unraveled paperclips, bobby pins, needle-nose tweezers, even the metal clips at the end of some ballpoint pens – anything that could get inside the bong or pipe and get that precious resin.
To be honest, I really didn’t like smoking resin. It’s stinky and can do a number on your throat. Now that cannabis is readily available, there’s no need to scrape bongs and pipes. You want to keep them clean, but long gone are the days when you scrape out resin to smoke. (Thank gawd!)
Every stoner from back then likely remembers where they were when they first heard that you could buy marijuana in Amsterdam – and not on the street! In legit retail stores called “coffeeshops”! It was like hearing about a freshwater well after crawling through a desert for years. It sounded like heaven. Even further back, before the internet allowed us to check out social media, Google images or Reddit, we relied on rumored stories from people who had backpacked through Europe and their adventures in the Netherlands (which was almost always only a visit to Amsterdam). Or you could check out a “Let’s Go” travel guide to see if this was really true.
Then for the few lucky, you could take a trip to Amsterdam to check it out yourself. The first time I went to Amsterdam when I was in college, my friend and I walked around not sure where to go for cannabis. We also didn’t want to make anyone angry by asking if they sold marijuana, because in the US and Germany (where we were studying at the time) you would never think about walking into a restaurant and asking if they sold ganja. The proprietor would probably run you out of their place! I think we finally found the Bulldog on the Leidseplein and bought some there. We quickly realized that the whole city was used to marijuana tourists and were happy to help us out, answer our questions, and even roll out joints!
Though this post talks about things that we had to do when cannabiswas illegal, I feel it’s OK to talk about it now since so much time has passed. Of course, we do not condone partaking in anything illegal, questionable or even in a gray area. These stories are only to entertain readers about how things were back in the day before medical and rec cannabis. And also to inspire a sense of appreciation for everyone and everything that contributed to the acceptance and legalization of this wonder cannabis.
Enjoy responsibly and legally!