What is hash and why is it making a comeback?

It was easy to buy hash in Europe in the 80s – especially in Amsterdam.

Go to one of the Bulldog Cafe’s coffee shops in the heart of the city, where there was a sandwich board with a marijuana leaf painted on it in front of the house, ask at the counter, and generally there was a man serving hashish in another room sold.

Photo by Cappi Thompson / Getty Images

Finger hash, made by scraping the residue off the hands of people who handle many of the sticky bud resin glands, was very popular, as was Afghan black hash, blond Lebanese hash, Moroccan hash – the seller usually had some sort of menu printed for you Buyers read.

In those days, according to anonymous sources speaking to The Fresh Toast, hash was almost the only marijuana product available to American soldiers in Germany.

Hashish has a long history. It was the original marijuana concentrate that first appeared in Persia at 9 a.m.th Century. historian say the invading Mongols are partly responsible for their westward expansion in the 13thth Century. Sultans saw it as a nasty drug, one of which went so far as to have itTeeth of “hash eaters” extracted to control consumption. It finally spread to Europe in the early 1920sth Century.

RELATED: I went to a swab bar for the first time and this happened

Nowadays, hash use is increasing in the US, also because the manufacturing process has been updated, global interest in cannabis is greater, and there is a kind of “old school” baby boomer desire to try the world’s first cannabis concentrate with THC levels in between 10% and 40% and higher.

Hash is relatively easy to make, andnew extraction techniques The use of dry ice and CO2, introduced in the late 1980s, helped make it more available in the US

There are three general techniques for creating hash. Cannabis can be soaked in alcohol or a solvent, where the active ingredient is dissolved from the trichomes of the cannabis plant. Once it has evaporated, it leaves the hash product (a similar process is used to make hash oil). Or cannabis can be filtered in a fine mesh, which allows the trichomes to pass through. Or you can soak the cannabis plant in ice water while filtering, which makes the trichomes harder and easier to separate from the plant (so-called bubble hash).

RELATED: How Sativa Became Cannabis’ Energy Queen

As the international market continues to develop, hash has grown in popularity with all consumers, according to John Kagia, Chief Knowledge Officer of New Frontier Data. “The international consumer is prepared for this,” he said during a presentation at the New York CanEx 2020 Investment Summit. He told The Fresh Toast that hashish use still accounts for about half of all cannabis use in England.

Photo courtesy of the National Library of the Netherlands

Extracts, including hash, are now claiming a larger market share in the United States.Figures from Washington State show that hash is still on the radar of seasoned cannabis users, accounting for 6% of concentrate sales, with wax / slivers / resin accounting for 55% of concentrate sales and being the fastest growing line of products.

RELATED: Can Marijuana Concentrates Go Bad?

The trend of more concentrate sales, including hash, is set to continue, according to astudy published in the International Journal of Drug Policy: “N.Since owning extraction machines does not pose a risk of arrest, there is no reason to discard the THC contained in leaves and other parts of plants alongside flowers. Since most of the plant’s weight is in leaves rather than flowers, a significant proportion of the cannabinoids are found in parts of the plant that were not so easily brought to market before legalization. “