What other countries have you visited since then to watch growing?

I checked out gardens in Mexico, all of Central America, Chile, Peru, Columbia, Bolivia, Brazil, Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, England, and Canada. Oh yeah, I forgot about the multitude of gardens in Oz (Australia) and New Zealand.

Did you visit the Seed Bank?

Yes. I saw an ad for the Seed Bank in HIGH TIMES and rang them up. The first time I was in the Netherlands was in 1974, but this was 10 years later. I talked to Nevil, the founder, but I didn't believe all the stuff he was saying, so I decided to go see the Cannabis Castle for myself. Sure as shit, everything he said was true! I couldn't believe it. The entire basement of the Castle was a series of grow rooms, outdoors, there were two greenhouses and a field of plants alongside. They even had a cannabis compost pile.

Next I went to New York to report to HIGH TIMES. I told the guys they had to go see the Castle for themselves.

When I was there the first time, Nevil showed me and article from Regardys (???), an insider's Washington DC political magazine. A free lancer who'd done articles for HIGH TIMES wrote a feature piece for Regardes about the Seed Bank. When I showed it around at HIGH TIMES, that's when they went to see the Seed Bank personally. Shortly after that, they started the Cannabis Cup.

What did you have to do with the Seed Bank?

I made sure that HIGH TIMES knew about it and how important it was. Seeds were the only uncompleted part of the growing circle. There were lights, know-how and information. The only thing lacking was genetics.

What happened later, after you stopped growing and stopped writing because of the strange visitors who wanted to know too much about you?

I moved into a big house on a hill near the West Coast. The cops kept coming by and asking questions. So, I had this really easy tactic, I called it the “fish bowl”. I took all the curtains off of all the windows so that you could see right through the house. Any time the police wanted to look in and see what I was doing, they could.

Once the RICO laws became effective, I knew I could never go into a grow room in the US again. That’s when I started traveling a lot. Now, I spend a lot of time in Canada and Spain. If it weren’t for the weather, I would spend more time in Switzerland and Holland. Dealing with the puritanical weirdness in the US is very frustrating.

Tell me how you see the herb has changed from the 1960s until today?

The major changes have been the result of breeding. In the 60s we had Mexican weed, Colombian soon followed, then Hawaiian Pacalolo and Thai/Vietnamese weed, even Panama Red. We called it “punta roja”, red point because the pistils looked reddish. Much of the bud we were smoking was pretty good. Later growers in California started breeding and producing the best shit. That's when we started noticing that we could manipulate it to make it better.

Where did the genes for that stuff come from?

It was all old hippies that could travel around the world and bring back genetics from India and Morocco and other exotic places. Then Nevil was the first guy to really corral the best varieties in the world under one roof. But it started in Northern California, north to BC in the early 1970s, and by the 1980s these guys had figured out that they could put the sativa and indicas together and by doing so plants would mature faster. They also figured out they could make plants grow shorter. When halide lights came along, they put short plants under the lights. And then cloning became popular. If you could clone you could control the life of the marijuana plants. So everything kind of came together. It was the seeds, the breeding, the travel to get the seeds, and then lights came on the scene, then cloning . . . and then the demand went up. It was a synergistic thing.

When did high pressure sodiums first come out?

1972.

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