- Opiated Thai Sticks: Myth or Truth? -

[Dr. Purpur]

do u think they smuggled the thai sticks from the north east ,way over to the far north by the tonne and then dipped them in the water ,

and then an even longer trip to a port , then sent them on from there ,



or do u think they smuggled this water that seems to be a mystery as to exactly what it is and whether it has any value at all , all the way from the north to the north east and then the farmers there , in collaboration with folks they dont associate with , dipped them , then redried them , and smuggled their "enhanced" sticks to a port ??


thats some logistics going on there isnt it and all for a few cents each stick ....



do you guys think sam skunkman who went there during those years a dozen times and asked the locals what the story was with the opiated sticks , was lying , or being lied too by the thais he had gotten to know in those dozen trips ??



do you think peter maguire who purchased and smuggled thousands of tonnes of thai sticks who also said it was an urban myth was lying aswell ,

or perhaps the guys on the other end receiving their thai sticks who had never been to thailand , were making up a story because they knew this stuff would knock folks for a 6 , so it would be easy enough to convince them it had something added and it would make them a few extra bux ??



dr purpur , you have not described what the high of cannabis mixed with opium would be like ,
only the high of good cannabis ,



and you cant explain what this secret dipping sauce is ,
just that u know it happened because someone told you right??



Im not calling you guys liars as rev suggested , you were duped into buying something for more is all ,,

but you not only bought into the story , you have then convinced yourselves its true and helped spread it as though it was,
on top of that you ignore all information presented to the contrary by people who were there and saw the process and purchased the product ...

so no amount of first hand accounts ,, science , logistics or common sense is going to change your minds it seems ...



with that in mind , i think we are wasting our time here , and you stubborn old buggers wont be changing your minds in any hurry , maybe if the guy that bullshitted to you in the first place came around and said he wasnt sure and was just told this information also, it might help ,
but thats going to ruin his reputation , so unlikely going to happen ..

I had always wondered the same, until I saw it in a documentary, with them processing the sticks in bus tray like grey tubs. I said documentary, not some joe blow side show. It was over an hour long. It may have been a history of cannabis doc.

So, we lost 50,000 men in Vietnam. There were so many guys over there for that war. They had a big problem. Do you recall what that was? Heroin addiction. It was wide spread. Opium and heroin. There are reports of soldiers buying pre rolled joints laced with opiates. They loved it.

Lots of Thai sticks came back with our soldiers. They shipped shit loads back. Opiates are water soluable, right? If they were smoking them over there, they likely would have brought the same back.

As for Sam....Are you suggesting he spoke to everyone there? Come on. I like Sam. He and the Haze brothers lived not far from me.

You are far too emotional about this. If and when I post a documentary on it, what are you going to say? Let me clue you in. You are going to say that doc is a lie! Right?

It doesnt really matter to me. Im not religious about it, but if they were adding it to black hash, why not add it to sticks as well

 

[Donald Mallard]

im keen to see this doco u keep going on about dr ,


was it actually thai sticks being dipped ??

was it in thailand ??



i recall you saying it doesnt matter t o you at all a while back ,
but here u are still defending it , so i guess it does matter , at least a little right?? lol ..



as far as sam talking to everyone , of course not ,

but the thai stick operations were located in one part of thailand ,

a few provinces in the north east , word travels quite fast with thai people ,

they would know from their grape vine what others were doing ,
so it wouldnt take talking to all of them...



the reports of pre rolled joints posted by hempy were in vietnam if my memory serves , not thailand , they are different countries and joints are not thai sticks ...



you havent mentioned how you think they smuggled all the weed , or water from one part of thailand to the other , is it in the doco ??

im interested to know how they did that since its quite a ways and would take cooperation from 2 totally different thai poeples to achieve who even today wouldnt do something like that ...

would one group buy this water and then pay for the transportation at a loss just to impress a few westerners ?? or did the other group buy all the sticks and transport those and then do the dipping to enhance a product that needed no enhancing in the first place ??

tell me more about this opium high you got from these enhanced sticks compared to the non enhanced ones ??



im not emotional about really , i just like facts to fit with stories is all ,
and yours dont , so im trying to put enough of them together to make it more believable because so far it doesnt add up at all ,
im sure you can see that cant you ??

or are u simply ignoring all the information that contradicts your story ??


the black hash they were reported to be adding it too was definitely not in thailand ,
and said to also be an urban myth , maybe they both are ??

 

[paradoxlost]

I mean I don't see why you wouldn't dip a thai stick in opium water if you had both. It's like another product you have now. I'm sure the dipped sticks were more expensive in bulk but due to the ridiculous high margins of street pricing you don't change the street price. I'm not a opiate lover, but I like trying shit and I definitely would have dipped it just to check it out. I'm sure there are people like me out there

 

[Stocktont]

Soaring bright euphoric head high

doesnt sound like an opium high to me either ,
based on what my friend staying here told me when i questioned him recently , he experienced it quite a number of times in south east asia also

but a great cannabis high though ,



that sativa grown in the south east asian tropics also has some different affects to the stuff grown in more temperate climates ,
which may cause folks to think it has something added ,
it can be quite trippy and almost darn scary at times depending on tolerance , set and setting,
very energetic and certainly not lethargic like one might expect from opium though...

quite an aphrodisiac at times also ,
im not sure opium has those attributes in its high??.

There's something special with the climate and the environment in said country and though there are a lot of different climate zones which all seem to produce a slightly differentiated product there's a commonality amongst most of the south east asians grown around here. They are all that kind of electric, inspiring, cerebral, happy, trippy kind of weed though many types might not look much to the world. Of course they need to be grown properly. There are too many examples of bad growing practices and post harvest handling that makes a lot of the commercially available cannabis flowers look, taste and smell pretty sub par. But even amongst some of those badly produced examples there are some with really great effects. This is all subjective though and as I love these types it is a joy for me to live and explore them here in the tropics. There's something special to smoking this kind of weed here going for a walk in the jungle, hiking through mountains tracking up dried out (in the off monsoon season) waterfalls and passing through the mountains in caves. There's nothing like smoking some really good thai weed, preferably locally grown and cared for a bit, sitting on a tropical beach with turquoise clear blue waters in the front and the swaying palm trees to your back. It just seems like these types are made for those kind of days. To me it feels like I get connected to the soaring environment smoking the cannabis from these regions.

 

[yesum]

Sounds awesome Stocktont. I think the high of the really good sativas is enhanced by being outdoors in nature and your location is one of the best.

 

[HAZENACIOUS]

I remember the sticks, a vet used to sell them $20 for a green stick, the "chocolate" or brown sticks were twice the price and vet dude couldn't keep them in stock. Usually he was sold out of the chocolate or opiated thaistick. It had a brown oily tar on it that was difficult to wash off your hands, had to be Smoked in a pipe. When I smoked it, it knocked me out, gave me the spins, even threw up off it once. I didn't really like it, but some people sure did. No soaring headhigh, that was the green sticks, but even they had a strong almost overpowering stone, not like the typical bright tropical sativa highs.

 

[Cvh]

Stocktont, seeing you're Thai or currently residing there. What's your opinion on Opiumnated/Opiated Thai Sticks. Just your personal thoughts.

 

[Donald Mallard]

I remember the sticks, a vet used to sell them $20 for a green stick, the "chocolate" or brown sticks were twice the price and vet dude couldn't keep them in stock. Usually he was sold out of the chocolate or opiated thaistick. It had a brown oily tar on it that was difficult to wash off your hands, had to be Smoked in a pipe. When I smoked it, it knocked me out, gave me the spins, even threw up off it once. I didn't really like it, but some people sure did. No soaring headhigh, that was the green sticks, but even they had a strong almost overpowering stone, not like the typical bright tropical sativa highs.

we never got any green thai sticks ,
just the brown followed by golden thai not on sticks and much later some compressed stuff that is the same as u get there now , but its reputed to be grown in laos ..



the brown stuff we got never had any oily substance on it , it was sticky from resin , but no oily stuff added ,
funny how your experience varies from dr purps but both claim to be toking opiated weed ,

it doesnt sound like yours was done in the early water as dr purps claims his was ,
i find it unusual those stories dont match , even the "high" sounds different , it would have me thinking they are different things all together ...

i also vomited once on the brown thai sticks , but it was my first time smoking a bong , so as i have mentioned before , such strong herb and 4 bongs in a row on a 14 yr old kid , its going to have quite an affect ...

the golden stuff we got that wasnt tied to a stick was better than the brown stuff , even stronger ....



were these oil laden sticks you got more expensive than the typical green ones u got ??



but even they had a strong almost overpowering stone, not like the typical bright tropical sativa highs


have you ever toked any thai grown in thailand or laos since to see what sort of high and how strong it is regardless of anything possibly added ??

 

[Donald Mallard]

There's something special with the climate and the environment in said country and though there are a lot of different climate zones which all seem to produce a slightly differentiated product there's a commonality amongst most of the south east asians grown around here. They are all that kind of electric, inspiring, cerebral, happy, trippy kind of weed though many types might not look much to the world. Of course they need to be grown properly. There are too many examples of bad growing practices and post harvest handling that makes a lot of the commercially available cannabis flowers look, taste and smell pretty sub par. But even amongst some of those badly produced examples there are some with really great effects. This is all subjective though and as I love these types it is a joy for me to live and explore them here in the tropics. There's something special to smoking this kind of weed here going for a walk in the jungle, hiking through mountains tracking up dried out (in the off monsoon season) waterfalls and passing through the mountains in caves. There's nothing like smoking some really good thai weed, preferably locally grown and cared for a bit, sitting on a tropical beach with turquoise clear blue waters in the front and the swaying palm trees to your back. It just seems like these types are made for those kind of days. To me it feels like I get connected to the soaring environment smoking the cannabis from these regions.

i found that also , the smoke seemed to enhance everything and immerse you into the local vibe ,


it was the same with the jamaican weed we smoked when we went there , its hard to beat toking the local stuff where it is grown ..

Sounds awesome Stocktont. I think the high of the really good sativas is enhanced by being outdoors in nature and your location is one of the best.

thats what we always used weed for when we were younger ,
to enhance what we were already doing ,
we would get high , then go to the beach ,

the local water hole , etc ,

i think that is the joy of energetic sativa highs vs indica which might have you staying home instead ....

 

[mexcurandero420]

Chiang Mai '77

 

[Organilush]

Ever seen opium smoked?

They have to force it to vaporize with a strong flame.

Doesn't sound like smoking a joint at all. It would go out, no?

I haven't read through the entire thread so maybe someone else has brought this up....

....but it's the contrary, opium alkaloids are destroyed by heat pretty easily so one has to be delicate with the flame. One is trying to vaporize the material, not burn it. Any direct touch with the flame will totally destroy opium. One does not need to "force" opium to vaporize.

A typical flame is 3000F+ degrees...Morphine starts to melt and boil below 500F degrees.

Vaporizing/smoking opium is done with a similar approach to how one would vaporize/smoke DMT....Gently.


I'm sure it'd work somewhat in a joint, but it's not the most effective/efficient method...(same with DMT)



.

 

[HAZENACIOUS]

we never got any green thai sticks ,
just the brown followed by golden thai not on sticks and much later some compressed stuff that is the same as u get there now , but its reputed to be grown in laos ..



the brown stuff we got never had any oily substance on it , it was sticky from resin , but no oily stuff added ,
funny how your experience varies from dr purps but both claim to be toking opiated weed ,

it doesnt sound like yours was done in the early water as dr purps claims his was ,
i find it unusual those stories dont match , even the "high" sounds different , it would have me thinking they are different things all together ...

i also vomited once on the brown thai sticks , but it was my first time smoking a bong , so as i have mentioned before , such strong herb and 4 bongs in a row on a 14 yr old kid , its going to have quite an affect ...

the golden stuff we got that wasnt tied to a stick was better than the brown stuff , even stronger ....



were these oil laden sticks you got more expensive than the typical green ones u got ??



but even they had a strong almost overpowering stone, not like the typical bright tropical sativa highs


have you ever toked any thai grown in thailand or laos since to see what sort of high and how strong it is regardless of anything possibly added ??

Opiated sticks were $40, regular sticks were $20.
Not sure about water, or how they were made, don't know, just a kid at the time, but everyone was calling it "opiated". I only got them for a summer and part of a school year, the green sticks were greenish brown and dry.
The brown sticks were wet, like if you handled them your hands would get messy. I remember it took a little effort to get it going in a bowl, once it was going it burned longer. Mostly we smoked the regular sticks. I remember one time the bag on the opiated stick had brown tarry residue bag was finished, so my friend took a rolling paper and collected tar on the bag with paper and then smoked the paper in his pipe.

All the Thai we smoked was the strongest weed we had ever smoked at the time and it was not the happy up sativa kind of high. It was very strong and even the non opiated was intense long lasting and would still make you crash hard many hours after you smoked it.

 

[Donald Mallard]

do you think its possible it wasnt opium , but resin ,

and it was the fact the high was so much stronger than normal herb ,
and quite different ,

making folks assume it had been adulterated ,


particularly as some no doubt grew the seed that sometimes was in the sticks and it was nothing like the product it had came from ,


i know we did, at the time i lived in the cold southern part of australia ,
and of course the thai didnt finish properly and was very green ,
and not that great really due to immaturity ,



i got a wondering and also moved to the tropics and toked the weed here ,

then my question was answered , ( the latitude i live is the same as one of the places that was well renowned for growing thai stick weed , Udonthani in the north east )

one needed a tropical climate to get the best from the seed/plants and secondly the curing process was important to the end product ...

here we regularly see cannabis that is so sticky even when dry u can press your finger on it and pick it up like that ,
that intense sun really makes a huge difference ...

 

[acespicoli]

BIG MYTH
Might have been laced with a little agent orange


Just a drying method or way to cure moldy pot kinda like the art of making black tea

 

[Dr. Purpur]

do you think its possible it wasnt opium , but resin ,

and it was the fact the high was so much stronger than normal herb ,
and quite different ,

making folks assume it had been adulterated ,


particularly as some no doubt grew the seed that sometimes was in the sticks and it was nothing like the product it had came from ,


i know we did, at the time i lived in the cold southern part of australia ,
and of course the thai didnt finish properly and was very green ,
and not that great really due to immaturity ,



i got a wondering and also moved to the tropics and toked the weed here ,

then my question was answered , ( the latitude i live is the same as one of the places that was well renowned for growing thai stick weed , Udonthani in the north east )

one needed a tropical climate to get the best from the seed/plants and secondly the curing process was important to the end product ...

here we regularly see cannabis that is so sticky even when dry u can press your finger on it and pick it up like that ,
that intense sun really makes a huge difference ...

Well Santa Cruz is not tropical. Remember the Haze Brothers? That was pure sativa. It grew fine here.

I heard a pretty wild story recently, that the Haze Brothers was actually Sacred seeds. And that Sacred seeds was started pre prohibition, like in the 1920s. They had a massive collection of seeds going way back

I have also been talking to the guy who designed the Original Haze poster, and printed it up for them. It was 45 years ago, and he said it was actually not a poster. He said it was a label for the hand made wooden boxes they packed the Haze into. He kept 25 posters, but gave most of them away over the years. He lived on California st. in Santa Cruz across the street from R. Leach (Haze Bro). I was going to try and score a label from him. He said his were in immaculate condition. The picture Im refering to is my avatar.

I just thought of something. Maybe he knows exactly what went into the cross

 

[Donald Mallard]

ask sam though dr about the finishing times on it ,
was touch and go i bet even at santa cruz ,

and if i recall he used green houses ,
some haze didnt finish till wayy late ..



anyhow where i lived the weather , climate was no so kind and furhter into the cold zone than santa cruz ,, i didnt mention where ,
but im a bit surprised to see you wanting to pull me up on it even though i didnt go into details that much or mention the latitude , are you questioning that because i dont believe your opiated stick fantasy ?? hehe ..

,
however sam would agree haze would do a lot better in a tropical climate , hence him wanting to go to jamaica to grow it ... otherwise he could go to santa cruz right??



sure it grew fine in santa cruz , but not as well as if it were grown in the tropics as i was a pure sativa and they do better there , no question about it ,,

once again if you are not sure i am fully aware or exaggerating your more than welcome to ask sam , he would agree with me ...



maybe you could bring that up in the haze thread ,, this is not it ...

 

[troutman]

Santa Cruz is too built up now to grow a lot of plants and the price of real estate must be mental too.

Much easier to find a more Southern location where land is cheaper.

 

[musigny23]

I've lived in Santa Cruz for 40 years. I've grown long flowering tropicals on the west side of town many times. I've never had one go beyond December 1st. Either they finish with dry weather or else rain storms during November beat them up and despite being highly mold resistant, botrytis breaks out and there's a lot of losses.

The "mediterranean" climate means mild winter but by November average temps are low, day length and sun strength are just enough to keep them going but maturation slows to a crawl. So they do grow "fine" but actual tropical conditions would be much better during flowering.

 

[Stocktont]

Stocktont, seeing you're Thai or currently residing there. What's your opinion on Opiumnated/Opiated Thai Sticks. Just your personal thoughts.

Hey @Cvh I don't really have an opinion about the 1970s as I can't know what was here or what came to other places. I was born at the end of the 70s so I wouldn't have a clue. I just want to make that clear so no one thinks that I am attacking them for not believing in certain stories. I haven't seen any weed wrapped around sticks since I first came here (the first time, now I live here but I have known this culture for about 20 years). I have seen weed wrapped with string but it has always been what is commonly called “bricks”. I have seen red, blue, yellow and white strings but it was more so before. These days it seems as most of the commercial pressed weed comes just pressed but of course I have not been everywhere and I haven't seen everything. These days heroin or opium is not at all as common as it sounds like it was once a long time ago and I think one of the reasons would be the “war on drugs” which has hit these regions pretty hard. These days the number one commodity when it comes to illegal drugs would be Yaa-baa, ice, meth which are all names for methamphetamine. I think this is due to the fact that one only need the chinese to ship the chemicals needed to produce it and then one can set up a meth-lab which is much easier to both hide and move if necessary for security reasons. Fields of plants are much harder to hide and impossible to move.


My concerns with most of the old stories of opium laced weed is that I have tried to smoke weed and hash together with opium and it's not a good idea. The second problem is with the “early water” theory as I can't see any of the by-products being able to produce an opium high, which is what is being reported and stated about these laced sticks. But that doesn't mean that I think or say that it didn't happen. I have been very curious to how it happened as I want to know. Most of the stories – to me – doesn't add up logically.


I am not familiar enough to have any kind of expert opinion on the region people mostly talk about and especially not in the 70s. But that doesn't mean that the illogical statements on sticks dipped in this or that rings more true to me. I think the process for making heroin was pretty much the same back in those days as it is today and that would still leave me questioning how and what they used to dip or lace the weed with anything that would give an opium effect.


Even if one allows for the thought of something along the lines of “early water” a kind of water with some sort of opium alkaloid still active (though the processes giving a by-product with water are extraction and filtering which would not leave the active ingredients in the by-product but in the opium and later the heroin). If we imagine that, would it be a good idea to soak dried flowers in any kind of water? Would something, that have to be water soluble, also then mix with the cannabis so it could burn well enough to give a different kind of effect? So far I haven't seen anyone giving an explanation that satisfy my doubts.


As to “would the thais do it” who knows? Would they say they did when they didn't? Much more believable in present days at least. I have had people here trying to sell me buds that obviously was normal south east asian weed but they said it was “skunk” as they thought I would be more likely to buy it if it was. This doesn't “prove” that there were no thai sticks being treated with something though. But I still want to know how they did it. It's like a drug fiend puzzle to me and I want to know the answer if it was so.


There is another kind of drug still being used around at least some parts of the country that is mixing the juice of the khratom leaf with a cough medicine containing morphine then topped up with coca cola. It's called “Namtom”. Nam is water in thai and Tom is for khratom so it's basically named khratom-water. The khratom leaf is a widely used and very mild (in that form) drug that is still illegal but it's kind of engrained into the culture at least in the more southern parts, I don't know if it is the same in the north east regions to be honest. This Namtom has one pretty special side-effect which is that one perceive the weather to be less hot which is why I think a lot of people working in the sun, like on the beach selling things or in the fields farming things, are using it. Chewing the leafs would be a mild form of it more like coffee while the Namtom is pretty strong if you drink enough of it. It first gives a kind of stimulating effect and if you've been drinking beer for a few hours and have .5 liter of it then you won't feel as drunk (though you are). If you keep drinking a lot of it and then stop the effect will turn after a while to a more sedative kind. I think this has a lot to do with the very sweet and pink cough medicine used with the morphine which kind of lingers longer than the slightly uplifting effects from the khratom leafs. I have had only the juice of the leafs which is a white-ish slow flowing substance and it's quite potent. It feels a bit like smoking really good thai as you can get a bit of anxiety and some side-effects similar to those of stimulant drugs (restless feet etc) but most people don't drink the juice pure as it is very bitter. The cough medicine and the coca cola makes it into a brownish fruity tasting ice tea kind of thing.

 

[Stocktont]

i found that also , the smoke seemed to enhance everything and immerse you into the local vibe ,


it was the same with the jamaican weed we smoked when we went there , its hard to beat toking the local stuff where it is grown ..



thats what we always used weed for when we were younger ,
to enhance what we were already doing ,
we would get high , then go to the beach ,

the local water hole , etc ,

i think that is the joy of energetic sativa highs vs indica which might have you staying home instead ....

I agree fully. I like to try the local stuff even if it isn't always the best weed I ever had or the strongest I ever smoked it has character. Like wine people differentiates between different regions and even vineyards, when you are a cannabis aficionado it is enjoyable to widen your pallet and try many, many different things. The best way to really try a variety of course is to try it where it belongs, where it has been growing for generations upon generations. Mix it with the people, the culture and the food and fruits in its natural habitant so to speak. I think I don't have to tell you guys that chili peppers, mango, pineapples and savory local food goes very well with the thai weed. Especially enjoyed sweating in the heat and having a few glasses of Chang beer with ice in it as the locals drink it. Smoking it in bai-jaaks would also be a very stealthy way of smoking it as most of the local male population that smokes tobacco (their local kind grown here) smokes that in something called bai-jaak which is leafs of a special palm tree (bai = leaf, jaak =name of this special palm tree) using it as a kind of rolling paper which has no glue so they sit and smoke it like a stoner would smoke a joint constantly spinning that bai-jaak in their mouth and holding it like some stoners hold joints with the thumb and the index-finger.