--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Marek, > > Did a little googling of the issue. > > Well, yeah, of course, there would be a market for "good stuff," > but the masses (read: poor people) would be home growing their > own far far more often than say, "bathtub gin" was made in the > 20's -- it being so much harder to set up a distillery or brewery.
I'll respond here because this issue came up around the dinner table here the other night, among people who seemed to know what's what. In Spain, it is legal for everyone to grow up to three marijuana plants. Seeds and growing equipment is sold legally; there is even a store here in Sitges. The result? Almost no one does it. Why? Because it's a stone *bitch* to try to grow the stuff. From what these guys said, it's not like throwing some seeds in the ground and sprinkling a little water on them from time to time. One fellow estimated that his plants cost him 5-10 hours of care per week, for *months* until they got big enough to harvest. All of this when they could just buy some, of prob- ably better quality, anytime they wanted. The same thing was true in the Netherlands. There was no market for "home grown," because the cultivated stuff was SO much better -- the product of literally decades of genetic design and cross-breeding. Hell, in Amsterdam every year they have the "Cannabis Cup," where people who consider themselves experts on the stuff came from all over the world to try out the different strains and vote on which is best, and for which qualities (such as "stoneful" or "psychedelic"). I'm not up on these things myself, but I'm gonna have to side with Marek here. Very few people would actually go to all the trouble to do "home-grown," especially when the stuff they could get at a reas- onable price over the counter would be so much better. Based on my experiments with the evil weed in Amsterdam a few years ago, I would have to say that the stuff they're selling there -- the result of decades of "horticulture nerds" messing with it -- is to the pot we used to smoke in the Sixties as a good 120-proof rum is to Near Beer. You couldn't smoke a whole joint of this stuff if your life depended on it. Watching tourists who obviously hadn't tried smoking grass in a few years was a form of entertainment -- people would make bets as to whether they'd fall off their bar stools after two puffs or three. The bottom line seems to be that modern-day gene- improved grass is 40 to 100 times more potent than its Sixties counterparts. And from what these guys were telling me over dinner the other night, you just aren't gonna get that kinda "bang for your bong" by growing it yourself in the back yard. Just my two centimes...
