From
DJ Short article
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Opium Soaked Herb
An element was added to certain shipments of Thai herb in the 70's: "early water."
A by-product of the heroin trade, early water was the leftover water used to create the heroin from the raw opium.
It contained all of the constituents of opium except most of the heroin.
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The curing Thai herb was soaked in the water and redried to absorb the opiate alkaloids. The result was a high that was sought out by some, but more than most bargained for. A good wash was an enjoyable thing, but some were over-laced, which caused a dilemma for those who would start spinning after a few hits on a joint.[/FONT]
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https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=136452
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As im convinced most thai stick was just potent weed and never went near any heroin wash ,
the place they had the opium was a long way from where the sticks were grown as i mentioned and unlikely one group would cooperate with the other , either the sticks would have to be transported or the heroin water .. seems unlikely to me ,
no offence dr , but i dont believe too many thai sticks ever underwent this process despite the western idea it did ...
if it can be proved id have to think again of course , but as far as im aware its just stories due to folks spinning out on strong cannabis they had not encountered before ...
id need to see evidence because i dont believe the stories ...
probably said that to make a few extra bux ,
we had the brown thai stick here too , it didnt have any opium on it , i spoke with one of the smugglers and am still friends with him , he said it wasnt true and there was no opium on the imported thai sticks ,
imagine the overdoses , the addicts etc stuff like that would create , and yet .....
we had golden thai after the sticks were gone , it was stronger than those brown sticks ...
someone also mentioned opium being smoked differently to how we smoke gunja ,
but im not up on smoking opium so i cant comment on that , maybe someone else knows ...
i would add it just wouldnt be commercially viable to do this either , firstly the cost of opium , and secondly the logistics of getting it from one part of thailand to another to mix it ,
the thai sticks were not grown in the same area as the opium ,
so someone would have to transport either tonnes of sticks , or tonnes of water or opium , this is not doable ,
perhaps someone once saw or tried some opium laced weed , but its very very unlikely it was available commercially and exported in large amounts for everyone to try ,
it is as mentioned an urban myth ,
it was just strong weed , there was nothing added to it to make it so...
sure it makes for a fun western story , but its not based on any facts ...
It doesn't seem like this will get settled because once beliefs get deeply established, no amount of evidence to the contrary will change them.
But I'll give it a try anyway.
I'm old enough to have seen, smoked and sold plenty of Thai sticks. That experience runs from about 1975 to 1987-88. I first saw them in the northeast, NYC-CT area but in 1978 I moved to northern California where I saw them every spring and summer for years. Typically they came in to fill in the market hole when local homegrown from the fall harvest ran low.
Like anything, quality varied. The best were just fantastic. The best were considered on par with the best homegrown even though the smoking experience was quite different. Mainly, that was because the sticks were pure tropical "sativa" and by 1979, most all CA homegrown was hybrids of "indica" and "sativa", often leaning toward "indica".
A very big factor in the nature of what Thai sticks were was the cure. Tying and bundling sticks with freshly harvested mostly dry(but not completely)material pressed out the air space in the buds and densely packing them in tropical heat had the effect of an anaerobic curing process. That plus the time it took to get them to the US, usually 3 to 6 months.
That cure when done right, intensified the aromas and effect. An effect that under optimum circumstances was profoundly strong. If there was anything that might convince someone there was more to sticks, that was it.
Many batches of sticks passed through. Where I was however, local homegrown was the generally the dominant product. Often more average quality sticks were skipped or passed along because we had options for high end smoke. By about 1982, actual sticks became rare to see. It all switched to being "untied" or "stickless". At first some of that was exceptionally good. I remember one batch in particular that was not hard pressed, dark green, had visible trichomes and a great spicy fresh aroma.
As the 80s progressed, quality mostly diminished and it was very rare to see quality that matched previous years. I traveled to Thailand a number of times in the late 80s. The US driven War on Drugs was really going strong and having an effect. It was not easy to find high quality weed at that time in Thailand. I hardly ever came across actual sticks there. I did have some hill tribe opium experiences, including hiking through poppy fields after harvest.
So to answer the question, I don't believe there was such a thing as sticks "dipped" in opium or heroin water or hash oil. I never encountered such a thing although I would often hear people tout that "these sticks are dipped in opium man". I smoked many such sticks and never felt an opium high, developed any sort of dependence, or ever experienced any withdrawal symptoms. At times they would be smoked for weeks, plenty of time to get a physical dependence but I never got it or knew anyone who did. They were usually just really strong, that's all. Even at the time, the topic was debated. And some people just really wanted it to be true and you couldn't convince them otherwise.
If you've ever seen opium in Thailand, you'll know you can't "dip" anything in it. It's thick and tarry. And while it's a big world and I certainly could not claim to know everything or seen it all, if anybody ever managed to soak sticks in heroin water or whatever, it's not clear what that would've created. If it would even have succeeded in a product that was a Thai stick, that would look and smell and smoke like a Thai stick but have the added opium high. It was a myth then and it remains one now.
Yep the stuff isn't like hashish, you have to torch the hell out of it and half of it runs down into the pipe. li.
wow sounds like folks were really capitalizing on that stuff cause at the source it was cheap as chips ,I personally don't think thai sticks were opiated, but in regards to the economics of it, I don't see people mentioning that Thai Stick was one of if not the most expensive pot to ever exist. High Times market prices from '76 put it at 20-30 dollars PER STICK; for context 20 dollars in 1976 adjusted for inflation is ~$95. If you paid $100 dollars for like an 1/8th wouldn't you want to believe there was something "beyond pot" about it?