Over the last year or so I’ve read about and on occasion met with the newly minted ‘cannabis CEOs’ in America (men and women who’re at the vanguard of creating a sustainable cannabis industry in America post prohibition). Most of them talk in couched terms regarding what they ‘hope’ to see happen with a legal cannabis market in the US or issue over-the-top and breathless press releases that seek to attract investor attention.
However, Vice Magazine has produced a very fascinating and revealing short documentary featuring a real life cannabis industry CEO who walks the walk when it comes to not only taking substantive legal chances to further his businesses, but one who lives his life as-a-always-interested-stakeholder in the future of humans being able to access high quality cannabis products.
Having met Amsterdam’s Arjan Roskom of the famed Green House coffeeshops and seed company on a number of occasions previously, I was hardly surprised when Vice contacted me to review their documentary that Arjan was featured and had provided them an insider’s view of what it is like to be a genuine cannabis industry maverick.
The Vice documentary focuses on Arjan and his lead cultivator traveling to the deep jungles of Colombia to re-locate three famed sativa strains of cannabis historically cultivated in this region of South America.
Cannabis kudos to Vice and Arjan!
Wow – Fascinating! Watching this really makes me want to grow my own. Unfortunately, for now, I live in a really hick backward thinking state (Virginia) and the risk of growing even one plant is too great…
Searching for some of the best Cannabis sativa of the world. This is some cool serious stuff and it’s making me smile. 🙂
Are these strains Colombia Gold, Colombia Red, and Colombia Black?
I got one of them right, Colombian Gold. The other two I keep forgetting what those names are. It’s a good video to watch.
I think i sampled some of the Red in the early 90s,it smelled like moldy hay until you got close to the bud’s and then you could sense a rich hashish-coffee like aroma,it tasted like hash too and scary strong.
But most of the other Columbians that i smoked where fairly weak by today’s standards,but with a mellow, happy and euphoric buzz.
These Swashbucklers are not that different than the ‘Dutch East India Company’ that brought exotic spices to Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. How can you can you argue with ‘consumer demand”.Be it cinnamon,nutmeg or cannabis
And for the naysayers that look down on anything that is not lime green and smells like a skunks ass,that dismiss the golden and brown colored pot as schwag or dirt weed. Realize that most of the modern hybrids have equatorial land-race ancestry in their genetics that impart the flavor and the potency to you’re favorite strains.
That is all.
I recall buying using and distributing some of the most incredible strains of Columbian weed back in the 1970’s…Santa Marta Gold would turn 5 heavy smokers into numbed and spaced out wrecks…unreal stuff. Average gold was still awesome and sold for 200 a pound all day and no shortage ever. the one time I smoked a red joint…supposedly panamanian red but who knows, a buddy burned a small joint with me in the morning and we drove to a breakfast restaurant…by the time I read the menu and the waitress asked what we wanted, I literally could not speak..i had to grunt and point at the menu as I was so wasted that my voice simply could not work..it was stunning potency…I have never smoked any weed in the last years since sinsemilla came about that could match the old strains..columbian sativa’s were the most incredible weed on earth and I wish I had saved the thousands of seeds we so blithely threw away back then…if only we could recreate those magnificent plants today…ah, for the old days!!
Yes we sure did get some great (guess it was) Panama Red that had the most fantastic aroma and left you pretty messed up simply because we had been smoking some pretty trashy weed at times, the great weed didn’t get around to all areas and it was great despite that it had seeds which would be worth far more than the weed today.
The other great weed I have ran across has also been seeded and just wonder how potent it could have been; old Mexican bag weed can grow into some very sweet bud if done right and IMO any person on Earth should be allowed to be self sufficient by growing their own next to the tomatoes it is beyond belief that you cannot.
I am just baffled at how it became illegal and has remained despite the lies more people are learning the truth and it really lessens respect for anything the government has to say even if they would say the sun is shining I would need to look for myself as Uncle Sam is the Uncle few want around as he lies, cheats and steals.
No doubt, the old rare Santa Marta Gold was of unparalleled quality by ANY standards. I would take it over any indica hybrid strain today. The taste and buzz were both distinctly different from the indoor grown stuff that dominates the states today. It simply was the best.
This is cool and all but if you consider some facts you might see these guys in a different light.
Until around 1980 the best pot was imported to the US from Thailand, Africa and Central and South America. All sativa. Around 1980 seeds from Afghanistan were imported to Europe. These seeds were a different variety of cannabis, indica. Because the indica plant flowers faster and produces more it was crossed with sativa. Stealth grows are easier with faster more productive plants. Seed breeders capitalized on this. So, the quality of the best pot in the world was compromised due to prohibition.
My opinion is that the sativas need to be protected. Introducing polluted genetics into an area where landraces are know to exist is unconscionable. The video at 12:56 shows them offering seeds? I know these areas have imported seeds long ago so this isn’t new.
I would prefer to see someone with preservation as their main interest doing this. It is probably too late to save some of the landraces. With legalization, hopefully, the childishly named indica polluted pot will just fade away.