This past summer, as the US military exited Afghanistan, and the country has fallen back into a transitional phase. Afghanistan first became a nation just over 100 years ago in 1919, but one thing that has always transcended the country’s rocky political history is its legendary hash scene. Despite the Mujahideen, Taliban or communists, Afghanistan’s hash industry has transcended the people and policies that have made life for Afghan hash producers difficult over the past 50 years. The flood of hash that once hit Europe and America following the first major hash haul in 1967 has long since been forced out of practice, but the stories of this prime time of hauling hash across multiple country’s borders remain fascinating tales of a different time. High Times obtained an exclusive interview with Ray, who recounted his trips through Europe and Asia and the challenges he and his companions encountered on their journey.

The first hash haul is said to have occurred one year before things really hit the gas on the “Hippie Trail,” where thousands of westerners traveled east through Afghanistan on their way to find enlightenment in India. But for many, their trek would make a stop in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. There they would start their quest to stock up on as much hash as possible before heading back west to wherever they called home; be it Germany, Amsterdam or southern California.

Much of what we know about the smuggling aspects of the trail come directly from one of the first groups to make it happen—The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which included members from southern California. Brotherhood member Ron Bevan is considered to be the first to run an operation out of Kabul in 1967, although there were many groups doing it at the time.

Among these other groups, there was a young man named Ray. High Times sat down with Ray to talk about his past hash smuggling experiences, as we discussed the fallout from the US exit from Afghanistan, wondering what it could mean for a hash scene that has already been devastated for decades.

Hop In—We’re Going Smuggling

The days before Ray’s first trip to Afghanistan were filled with proper hippie business. “We went to southern Oregon in the late ’60s and for whatever reason out of pure synchronicity a bunch of us from northern California and southern California all ended up in this one house in southern Oregon,” Ray told High Times.

The group decided to take things to the next level and looked to start a commune. They spent some time hunting for a property, but after some hiccups with the search, they regrouped in California in 1968. A lot of the people that originally tossed that idea around remain friends to this day after originally finding each other all those years ago.

Part of that group included some friends who had already been smuggling hash from Afghanistan a year or two before that, and they had just brought back a load. In those days, Ray and his friends were staying in the High Sierras—the perfect place to unload some hash.

Most people associate the “Hippie Trail” with the image of a classic Volkswagen bus and a Hanomag Camper that rolled up to their spot in the same hills that was also very popular with other hash smugglers, such as Darrell. “He came, we unloaded it there, and it took a while. And after he got what he thought was the load amount he goes, ‘Okay, you guys can have the rest.’ And so we picked away at it because it was in the framework,” Ray said, “We had to use all kinds of tools we implement to dig it all out but I think eventually we got like another 10 pounds.”

This would be the first time Ray mentioned the man that he eventually partnered with to make the travel east. “So you know we are quite thrilled to make a connection with him. This is Long Beach, brother, I can give you his name because he’s no longer with us. Well, he had many names, but we knew him as Darrell,” Ray noted with a laugh.

Before connecting with Ray, Darrell had already made two or three trips. He was always a driver, and for good reason. In this critical role, he was the main person who drove from Holland to Kabul and back, through every border. He didn’t even need a map when he was on his runs.

Eventually Darrell shared his next plan with Ray: “Here’s what I want to do next time because I’m gonna have another Honomag, but also I’m going to buy a really nice motorhome,” Darrell told Ray at the time.

The motorhome was called a Revcon. It was the top-of-the-line in 1968 when it was designed. It had an aerodynamic aluminum body, and the 26 rails that ran the length of its frame were a hash smuggler’s dream.

“Very cool, very modern, front wheel drive. And he goes ‘I’m gonna buy this and we’re gonna, this is the vehicle we’re gonna make special rails that go inside the rails and we’ll have little hooks to pull it out,”’ Ray said of Darrell’s original plan.

Ray and Darrell had some friends that were engineers who helped them with building the rails. Eventually they would drive the Revcon across the country from California to New York, shipping it on to Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Darrell asked Ray to tag along for the full run to Afghanistan. “I go, ‘Sure, I’ll go slide and sit shotgun,”’ Ray replied. “It was like the coolest ride I ever took. But we were vegetarian at the time, so we were doing a lot of soups, avocados and carrot juice. We had it all decked out with the Norwalk Press, which is a real good juicing machine. We totally kept our eating habits intact.” Their eating habits would eventually earn them the nickname “The Carrot Juice Boys.”

The group prepped for their journey from Rotterdam after picking up the Revcon. They would make their way through Germany and Austria, then travel through Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Iran before finally reaching the Afghan Border.

That first trip would end up taking a few months, after Ray and Darrell got caught up in eastern Turkey. The Revcon’s front wheel drive engine featured torsion bars in the front, which didn’t pair well with the traffic or potholes they encountered on their journey. They lost control of the Revcon for a second, but were able to come to a stop in the center median. “Eastern Turkey is definitely the sticks, very isolated and very desolate,” Ray said of the breakdown.

When you break down out there, it’s common to surround your vehicle with rocks. They did so before hitchhiking to the closest town. They brought mechanics back to the Revcon, knowing they wouldn’t be able to replace the bar, but could rig something to get the Revcon back to civilization.

They hobbled into Tehran, Iran and messaged home for the part they needed. It wasn’t a fast process. “So we were in Tehran for about a good month, repairing the vehicle, but everything got straightened down,” Ray said, “So we rolled into Afghanistan, probably in late summer of 1970.”

Of Science and Borders

The mission was to obtain a couple hundred pounds of hash and five gallons of hash oil. While other groups had brought hash loads back for about three years before this trip, to the best of The Carrot Juice Boys’ knowledge, they were the first people ever to bring a flash evaporator to Afghanistan. Much of the Revcon was loaded with Everclear for their grand chemistry project.

If the idea of driving across the middle east with a chemistry set seemed weird, the opulence of the Revcon stole everyone’s attention at each border crossing, simplifying getting its contents across various borders in both directions. “I mean, they’ve seen the ‘Hippie Trail’ in the VW Vans, the Honomags, but they’ve never seen anything of this magnitude in this amazing really cool motorhome,” Ray noted on the border crossings. “And of course once we got into Persia we decked it out with Persian carpets and runners and it was looking really cool.”

They were very much playing the part of rich Californians, but they would still be pulled from the line at every border. “The head custom guy would come out and just wanted to go inside and look at it and say ‘oh very nice,”’ Ray said, “It’s just amazing.”

One time, a border agent pulled out their chemistry set and pulled out a beaker. He asked Darrell and the pair what it was. “Glass,” they replied. The border guard looked at it again, nodded in agreement with their take, and put it back in the box.

Iran had some of the toughest border restrictions, but once you entered the country, the group found that it was amongst the most welcoming as they attempted to Westernize before the Shah fell in 1979. Ray emphasized that it was one of the nicest places he’s ever been to, as they spent the month waiting for car parts. “They just want to make sure you’re [not] smuggling weapons or anything, doing nefarious stuff, but all the people there were so nice,” Ray noted of Tehran. “They just were so hospitable and helped us [with] whatever. If we’d go looking for the embassy, [residents] would take us in their car, take us to their home, feed us and then take us to the embassy.”

But with a repaired Revcon, things got a bit rougher as they approached the Afghanistan border. Every hotel featured signs that warned a prison sentence of 10 years in prison for a gram of hash, and life in prison for a kilo. “They try and put the fear in you, but we got some good hash in Turkey,” Ray said with a laugh.

After getting into Afghanistan, the group headed straight for Kabul. They stayed in a fancy neighborhood fitting of rich Californians. From there, they would head to The Solan Hotel, a hotspot for hash enthusiasts and general tourists heading in both directions on the trail.

One of Ray’s favorite things about The Solan Hotel was a space attached to the courtyard where you could park your van and camp near a little park attached to the hotel. There was always an ongoing rotation of Europeans and a few Americans, and it was always a good time.

The locals did their best to keep the hippies and smugglers happy, too. “Afghanis just loved us because we had money and we were very careful about religion,” Ray said. “We were very aware of how they are and how not to trespass or do anything [that] goes counter to them. There’s just some things so you don’t mess with. You don’t eat during the day during Ramadan and walk around chewing food.”

But Ray argued that besides that kind of thing, the religion of Islam was based in hospitality. Over the course of three trips that, in total, took about a year to complete, Ray picked up some language skills. One of the things he noticed immediately was how caring and personal everything was. He noted that a lot of the conversation focused on how the other person was feeling.

Back in their Kabul neighborhood, they rented out a two-story mansion and set up the hash lab. They would do a lot of the extraction work offsite and then bring the crude material back to the flash evaporator in the bathroom to get all the alcohol out. It would take them a couple of months to get the five gallons of hash oil they were shooting for.

Unloading the Goods

High Times asked Ray how much hash they needed to make the five gallons. Ray estimated that about 200 kilos were concentrated into the oil. He also noted the unpressed hash made for much better oil, then they hid the rest to stuff in the specialized frames of the Revcon. “The rest we had pressed up and put into the containers, the square tubes, it actually ended up making the hash look like a Hershey bar. We sold most of that in Amsterdam and I’m sure to this day, there are a lot of people there who call it ‘screw hole hash,’” Ray said.

The hash received this name when they put five to seven of the bars together and put a screw through the stack, just to tighten it up before they tossed it down the tube designed to fit into the Revcon’s internal storage system. “It was a precise measurement that we had all the patties pressed,” Ray noted on the precision used to fill each tube with as much product as possible.

As for the oil, that came out pretty great, too. The flash evaporator kept the oil at a reasonable temperature as it sweat off the Everclear used in production. “I mean, it was a black oil. But because of the flash evaporator we didn’t have to heat it in a high temperature, it was in a vacuum, so you got the real essence of really, really good hash,” Ray said. “I don’t know if you’ve had really, really good hash but it’s very floral and very sweet.”

Just like today, in order to make the best oil possible, they had to get their hands on the best material possible. Ray described the process that took them around the country from their upscale Kabul hash lab and base camp. The first connection they ever made was in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

“We used to go to Kandahar, but that was a tough place to be,” Ray noted on the trip. “Kandahar was like going back 1,000 years. I was like ‘Oh my God. That was an ancient town.’ And you couldn’t help but get dysentery just hanging out there for any amount of time. But Kabul was more modern.” In addition to the more modern vibe in Kabul, you could basically get whatever you needed. And in reality, it wasn’t that competitive with other smugglers in town because there was just so much hash to go around.

When it was time to return, the Revcon would leave Afghanistan without Ray. They hired a German woman to play the role of a fancy lady with a fancy motorhome. “We paid her like $10,000 or something. And she was great! She had like a fur coat. I mean, she’d look the part of being wealthy,” Ray said. She was the perfect accessory for a driver who had already completed this trip five times before. The key was the balance of looking like a regular person. Not being an asshole, but also not being too nice, in the hopes of getting waved through borders smoothly.

Ray and Darrell made it to Holland with no problems. The Revcon worked like a charm before being unloaded on a small farm outside Amsterdam. Most of the load would be sold locally.

“But here’s a luggage story for you,” Ray laughed. While the hash moved in Europe, they decided to bring a bunch of the oil back to America. At the time, Ray estimated that the oil was selling for about $10 a milliliter, so a whole liter was worth roughly $10,000 bucks. “We went to a liquor store in Amsterdam and bought Kahlua. Then we’d melt the little seal and stretch it and pull it over the bottle, undo the cap and pour out all the Kahlua and then poured in the hash oil. Then we heated the seal back up and you know back the cap and so it looked sealed, and we’d take two bottles,” Ray said. “So, we go to the airport and we’d go to the duty free and buy another bottle of Kahlua and we traded out the bottle we bought at duty-free. So, we just carried it right across check-in.”

Ray emphasized not to forget the exchange rate. That $10,000 bottle in 1970 would be worth over $70,000 today. He can’t recall how many bottles made it back, the whole five gallons would be worth $1.2 million today.

Adapting the Experience

On Ray’s two trips to Afghanistan, he already had the lay of the land. He flew into Kabul and would buy the hash ahead of time to limit the time spent in the country compared to the marathon road trip and hash oil production of his inaugural adventure.

Ray’s first trip lasted so long he actually overstayed his visa. When he returned for the second run the customs people at the airport noticed it on his passport and gave him a shorter amount of time. After learning his lesson, he got a new passport for the third run. It did the trick, and it was clear sailing at customs. “So, I’d go ahead of time and get there and order up and make sure everything’s ready,” Ray said, “So when the vehicle came through it wasn’t just there, it was like it was going across. It wasn’t there longer than a week or two, which is about the average tourist time somebody might spend there.”

The later runs wouldn’t feature the Revcon. The team moved on to four-wheel drive Suburbans with special compartments in the gas tank that could hold over 100 pounds of gas. The only problem with it was you had to stop a lot more to fuel up, but the trucks did a lot better on the roads than a motorhome.

“But it was pretty safe because to get to it you’d have to take out the whole gas tank and cut into it,” Ray said, “And that was the last time that we did it. We actually hired a professional race driver, who was a dear friend, and he did a good job.”

The gang had a mission of wider psychedelic enlightenment between trips. As they made the runs through the early 1970s, a lot of the resources went into furthering that mission. The freedom Ray and his peers were in search of came with the smuggling and they wanted to make sure to pay it forward. What would start as personal projects for the group would eventually end up in the hands of nonprofits down the line in the form of an unfinished boat. “So the majority of the money that we ever made went on that boat, eventually when the Russians started coming in and put in the puppet government and everything we said, ‘okay, that’s done. We’re not going back there again,”’ Ray said.

Expanding Lore of the First Smuggler

Three years prior to Ray’s first run, Ronnie Bevan of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love would make the first major smuggling run out of Afghanistan. He released the first autobiography of a hash smuggler entitled Brotherhood Hashish: The Story of Ronnie Bevan in 2018.

Many people speak of the “Hippie Trail” as intertwined tales of the many tourists that passed through and a handful of preeminent smugglers like him. High Times asked Bevan to weigh in on that idea. “One thing was there was more than just the two,” Bevan quickly rebutted. “You could get on a bus in London and end up in Kathmandu and there are photos of those people going in 1967 or 1968. The girls have bouffant hairdos and they’re in tight skirts. And then you see him a year later in Kathmandu, and we’re in the hippie clothes and their hair is all down.”

Bevan found that was really the basic motivation of the of the European travelers. Thousands of Europeans made that trip, but very few Americans did, because of the overseas aspect. “We didn’t have the buses. There just weren’t that many. I know, all of the guys that were in Afghanistan smuggling because I was there through several years, and there just weren’t that many,” Bevan said.

Bevan explained that a lot of people in London, or wherever they went from, by the time they got to Nepal all of a sudden they were into the metaphysical side of everything and taking psychedelics. But not everyone. Some people were there for the opposite of self-help. “There also was another large group of people that just did drugs,” Bevan explained, “You could buy heroin, cocaine, you could buy either from the pharmacy in Afghanistan. And consequently, we saw a lot of druggie type people just hanging out. So that’s just another dimension to what you’re talking about.”

Technically, many date the “Hippie Trail” to beginning in 1968, one year after Bevan’s first run. Bevan went on to explain how those increased crowds impacted business. “In the early days nobody got busted for anything, it wasn’t until 1971 that somebody busted [in] one of the vans,” Bevan said.

By 1973, Bevan and his friends had a warrant poster, and he was on the run. That same year Afghanistan’s King Zahir Shah made hash illegal following a $47 million dollar payment from the US government. “Our people had to move into Pakistan to do their work, and it was pretty much destroyed after that. And then it faltered and then a lot of people got busted and especially in those Volkswagens. I think about eight of them, and from that point on, none of them made it they got every one of them but when the Russians came [in] 1979 it was over for sure. That it’s, been over since then.”

A recent article in the South China Morning Post spoke with a cannabis farmer and hash producer outside of Kandahar named Ghulam Ali. Ali noted he hasn’t had any problems since the most recent transition of power, despite concerns that the Taliban would crack down a lot more than the coalition-backed government that fell last summer. “We don’t hear a lot over there. But I think the Taliban is pretty much leaving everything alone,” Bevan replied after reading Ali’s story. “I think what they’re doing is they’re trying to get in there economically.”

It’s also important to remember that hash and Afghanistan have a much longer history than the Taliban does with the nation. “And I think the Taliban probably see that and realize that the people are going to be much happier and much easier to deal with if they let them have their culture,” Bevan argued.

This article appears in the January 2022 issue of High Times. Subscribe here.

The post From The Vault: The Tale of the Hippie Trail (2022) first appeared on High Times.

The post From The Vault: The Tale of the Hippie Trail (2022) appeared first on Paradise Found.

It’s 7/10.

Flip it and you get OIL. Simple as that.

Nothing too fancy. Just stoners with rigs and a love for the herb. A number turned sideways, a ritual passed hand to hand.

Long before 710 was a holiday, it was a whisper in online forums. Now it’s something else entirely: a day for the people who never stopped torching.

At High Times, we didn’t just watch this happen. We chronicled it. Pushed it. Got our fingers sticky with it. From the first whispers of BHO to glass tech that looked like it came from another galaxy, we were there.

Today, we look back, not out of nostalgia, but out of respect. Because this history still bubbles. And it still burns.

From the Vault: Covers That Hit Like a Dab

You know these.

Maybe they’re under your bed with a ring of reclaim on the corner. Maybe you ripped one apart to make a rolling tray. Doesn’t matter; they’re part of the culture now.

Every cover on that list came from a time when concentrates were still shaping their voice. And we helped put it on the loudspeaker.

Stories That Made It Real

“All Hail 7/10” – Mary Jane Gibson (2014)

The one that gave the holiday its headline. Witty, weird, and full of lore: Taco Bell stats, freeway signs, and a tip of the hat to Schapelle Corby.

Read it →

“Happy 710! Tidbits and Trivia” (2023)

A quick cruise through the history and meaning of 710. Ancient hash, modern diamonds, angel numbers. Dab day with depth.

Read it →

“Dabbling in Dabs” – Benjamin M. Adams (2023)

A full-spectrum dive. Rosin first surfaced on cannabis forums in the mid-2000s. The science behind shatter. The 710 Cup. Concentrate culture, unraveled.

Read it →

“Generation Dab” – Bobby Black (2013)

Straight from the Cups, when booths were stacked with butane tanks and rigs lit like lighters.

Read it →

“Vaporizing THC Oil” – Dr. Lunglife (1989)

Before “dab” was even a word. This relic shows how far we’ve come, from Bic pens and dimmer switches to high-end rosin presses.

Read it →

“9 Dab Videos You Need to See” (2017)

Fails, flexes, grandma with a gram. A time capsule of chaos. Dab culture caught in pixels.

Read it →

So Why Does 7/10 Still Matter?

Because nobody handed it to us.

It wasn’t a marketing stunt or a wellness campaign. It started in someone’s garage. In a forum post. In a back-of-the-sesh whisper.

Built by extract artists with burned knuckles and cracked lips. By stoners who cared about flavor. About feeling. About refining the plant into gold.

710 is for the ones who stuck around. The ones still here for it.

Lead image by Chewberto420

The post Decades of Dabs: 710 in High Times History first appeared on High Times.

The post Decades of Dabs: 710 in High Times History appeared first on Paradise Found.

By Dr. Lunglife

Why Vaporize THC Oil?

Chemical analysis has shown that a cigarette made of raw marijuana contains at least as much “tar” as an equal-sized cigarette made of tobacco. Although medical studies have not shown a connection to date, this fact does suggest that lung diseases such as cancer, emphysema, and bronchitis are possible consequences of heavy marijuana smoking just as they are for tobacco smoking. The frequency of use and the amount smoked are both important when considering lung damage. Fortunately, pot smokers generally smoke much less than tobacco smokers. If one uses high-grade marijuana such as sinsemilla, manicured buds, or fine-screen shake in moderation, lung damage is not likely, as only small amounts are needed to obtain a high. If you have access to high-grade smoke, this article may not be useful, especially if you use a water pipe. However, if you decide to grow your own in the woods, the quality may not be as good. Extracting this essential oil from cannabis will concentrate mediocre-grade marijuana into a powerful liquid. Several irritating and smelly ingredients are removed from this hashish or THC oil. It also takes up much less space, which may be important if secrecy is necessary.

This article suggests a method for decreasing lung damage by inhaling the essential oil of cannabis after vaporizing it. Vaporization means the boiling off of the THC oil, using heat, but not fire. The intense heat of fire promotes many chemical reactions with oxygen, which destroys some of the THC and creates new chemical substances. Some of these firecreated chemicals may be hazardous. By vaporizing the essential oil, some danger is avoided, that of inhaling tar, burnt cellulose, carbon monoxide and combustion products into the lungs. Although the process of vaporization does still produce heat, the vaporized oil is at the boiling temperature for the oil rather than at the much higher temperature of flame.

Method A: using aluminum foil, candle, and a tube

An easy way to vaporize THC oil is by placing a drop on a piece of aluminum foil, heating this over a candle, and inhaling the vaporized oil through a tube such as a straw. A tube that works especially well is from a clear plastic Bic pen. The tube is an improvement over the nose in getting over the rising air full of the vapor, which rapidly condenses into tiny droplets of oil. The tube also helps to control the temperature of the vaporized oil before it enters your lungs, by catching it an inch or so above the foil after it has cooled some. Hold your tongue near the mouth end of the tube, as a way to further cool the vaporized oil. Your tongue should be protected against the heat by wetting it often with saliva.

Method B: using a high intensity light, dimmer, and tube

The materials for this electrical oil vaporizer are easy to obtain, and not difficult to make. The most expensive item is a light-dimmer which includes a power outlet. If you are handy, you can easily construct a box to include a dimmer and an outlet at a cost of around $8. The type of dimmer that pushes on or off, and rotates for power level is the best, for you can keep the best power setting ready to go. The second major item is a small high-intensity reading light, which was recently found on sale for $8 at a local department store. It features a 12 volt incandescent bulb. Hidden in the base of high-intensity lights is a transformer that converts 120 volt house current to a safe 12 volts. A 12 volt bulb is not only safer, but also has a compact filament ideal for the purpose. The only other items would be a toothpick or wooden cuticle stick for applying oil, and the pen tube mentioned above.

To use an electric vaporizer, a 12 volt auto bulb (#1156) is broken in such a way that the filament remains intact. A safe way to do this is to wrap the bulb in a kleenex, and then hit the bulb sharply with pliers so that it breaks. Some remaining pieces of glass will have to be removed with pliers. Orient the light shade sideways to catch excess drips of oil. The THC oil is then dabbed onto the filament, and the filament is heated just enough to vaporize the oil, but not enough to glow. Be prepared to dab oil on a glowing part, in order to protect the filament from air and make it last longer. The rising vapor is sucked in through the tube. Slow deep breaths will maximize efficiency. Turn off the heat before your lungs fill, to avoid wasting oil. It is convenient to use a glass syringe to hold a supply of oil. At first the filament cannot hold much oil, but after some time a dark crust forms, which helps hold oil. This crusty stuff has a higher vaporizing temperature than the desired THC, and is worth keeping out of the lungs. After many uses, the filament is surrounded by a thick ball that is able to hold a full drop of oil. Even with care, a filament will eventually burn out after a few months of use. But until then, one lungful is enough for an enjoyable high.

Method C: The Compact “High Tech” Vaporizer

To make a more sophisticated vaporizer, all the necessary parts are readily available and can be put into one small box. The following list is for the oil vaporizer illustrated here, but you can of course be inventive regarding design and material. The first three parts may be purchased at Radio Shack:

(1) an experimenter’s box 7 3/4″ L X 4 3/8″ W X 2 3/8″ D, black plastic case with an aluminum top, cat. no. 270-232 $2.99;

(2) a push on/off rotary dimmer, cat. no. 61-2699A $6.95;

(3) a small power transformer 120 VAC to 12 VAC 450 mA, cat. no. 2731365 $3.99.

Items that can be purchased at an automotive supply store such as Track Auto include:

(4) an auto turn signal/back-up light bulb #1156, two for $2.84;

(5) a simple single-filament bulb socket, such as for a Ford/Chrysler ’71-76 cars, which costs $1.99.

The remaining supplies include:

(6) a standard 2-wire electrical power cord;

(7) an electrical “nipple” for use in a lighting canopy kit, which is a 3/8″ o.d. tube threaded on the outside, and two matching nuts;

(8) two feet of rubber or plastic tubing and;

(9) a drinking glass, or to be fancy a 3″ glass display dome. The total cost is under $25. Tools needed include an electric drill and various bits; several electrical connectors of the twist type; needle-nose pliers; small nut and bolt pairs; and a screwdriver.

To build the vaporizer, first remove the plastic rotor from the light dimmer, determine the size hole necessary for its shaft, and measure the location for the hole on the metal lid of the box. Drill that hole, insert the light dimmer, and use a pencil to mark the location for the small nuts and bolts which will hold the dimmer in place. Then place the transformer close to the dimmer and drill holes for its bolts. The light socket needs a hole that is tight, so you may need to use a file to finish its hole. The design illustrated uses an 11/16″ hole. Near the bulb socket will be a hole to attach the suction tube. A method that works well is to push a 3/8″ rubber tube over a threaded electrical nipple, which goes through the hole and is held in place with nuts above and below the metal plate. A hole is also drilled in the plastic case for the power cord and a larger hole for the suction tube. Connect the wiring as shown, with the house current going to the transformer inputs, after the hot line also goes through the light dimmer. One line from the 12 volt transformer output goes to the lead from the light socket, and the other is wrapped around one of the bolts in order to use the metal top of the box as the return circuit. Tighten the bolts and screws, and it is ready to go except for the bulb. Prepare the 12 volt bulb the same way as with method B, but because the bulb will now be aimed vertically, a little epoxy glue, nearly filling the base, will make it easier to retrieve oil that will drip. Do not accidentally glue the bulb to the socket.

While the bulb is being conditioned, the high-tech vaporizer is used the same way as the high intensity light model, but after the filament can hold enough oil, an overturned glass can hold the vaporized oil until thick enough to inhale in a short breath.

How To Extract THC Oil

Extracting THC oil is not difficult.

It does require a concern about safety, as all the solvents listed are flammable. The steps necessary to obtain “hashish oil” or the essential oil of cannabis, may be found in two informative books. The first is a book entitled Cannabis Alchemy: The Art of Modem Hashmaking by David Hoye, first printed in 1973 by the HIGH TIMES/Level Press. Another book which describes the same procedures is Marijuana Potency by Michael Starks, 1977, And/Or Press, Berkeley. These books are available from book dealers who advertise in HIGH TIMES. They contain information to help one extract and purify the essential oil of cannabis, making it quite potent. Consult these or similar books for details.

The process essentially involves leaching the THC-containing oil from marijuana in a manner similar to percolating coffee. However, instead of water, the solvent is denatured alcohol, which is evaporated prior to consumption. Denatured alcohol is a common solvent and fuel found in most hardware stores. It is 95% ethyl and 5% methyl alcohol. Other alcohols can be used, but this is the cheapest and most commonly available.

The extraction can be done safely in a pressure cooker, over an electric heating element. Keep the heat very low as alcohol boils much more easily than water. No fire or sparks can be tolerated, and there must be good ventilation. Have a fire extinguisher handy, water will not extinguish an alcohol fire. The first step involves powdering your marijuana and placing it in a pressure cooker and covering it with denatured alcohol. Boil it for one hour, drain and save the alcohol, and boil the marijuana one more hour with fresh alcohol. The leached marijuana is thrown out, and the alcohol is boiled off to leave the first stage oil, which is green. I suggest saving the alcohol for further use by running the alcohol steam through a condensing coil leading down to another pressure cooker, which is kept cold in an ice bucket. When the alcohol is nearly gone from the oil, finish the removal in a Pyrex double boiler. The top pot contains the oil, and fits into the lower pot which contains water. The boiling water prevents the oil from getting too hot, but is still hotter than the boiling point of the remaining alcohol. The green THC oil from this alcohol extraction can be vaporized and inhaled at this time, or it can be isomerized and further purified if desired.

The oil contains THC and also similar but less desirable molecules called cannabidiol and cannabinol. Isomerization changes cannabidiol into tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and the THC to the most active isomer, delta-9-THC. To isomerize your oil, first weigh it, then dissolve it in 10 times its weight of denatured alcohol. Add one drop of strong sulphuric acid (auto battery acid) for each gram of oil. Wear goggles and gloves as concentrated sulphuric acid causes burns. Have bicarbonate of soda handy to neutralize spills.

Boil this mixture for two hours, adding more alcohol as needed to replace the amount lost to evaporation. To reduce alcohol evaporation and the danger of fire, you may cover the pot with a large overturned metal lid, filled with ice. This cool surface will condense the evaporated alcohol, and allow it to drip back.

Further purification is done by mixing the isomerized oil and alcohol mixture with an equal amount of water. Add one gram of sodium bicarbonate for each drop of sulphuric acid. Place this in a smallnecked glass bottle. Add more water so the fluid level is near the bottle top, where it narrows. Then add a small amount of a non-polar solvent. Shake the bottle gently, and remove the solvent and THC oil layer by sucking it out with a baster or an eyedropper. The final step is to heat (electrically only) the result in a double boiler over water to remove the non-polar solvent. Suitable nonpolar solvents include petroleum ether, ligroin, ethyl ether, benzene, xylene, toluene, chloroform, methylene chloride and carbon tetrachloride. All of these except the last three are highly flammable and lighter than water. Good ventilation is essential. It is also important when the solvent is nearly gone to add a drop or two of water and keep heating until the water has evaporated, to be sure that the lower boiling point solvent is totally evaporated. At this point you have a highly concentrated oil, with all toxins removed, which contains a high proportion of THC. For more detailed purification and isomerization procedures read the books. Dr. Lunglife says, “Safety first!”

The author, known to us only as Dr. Lunglife, never told us his real name. He did tell us that he used to live in New England, where he had fun sneaking into the woods and growing his own pot. After years of mediocre crops he finally enjoyed a bumper crop on his hidden 10’ x 12’ plot (odd shaped for camouflage). The seven pounds dry weight he harvested was boiled in alcohol to extract the oil; and the crude oil was further concentrated, isomerized and purified using the methods in the books listed. The oil he derived from this one crop boiled down to six ounces, and has lasted him for seven years, with use nearly every evening and weekend. He reports that vaporizing THC is not only efficient but has protected his lungs. He wants to stress that this article was written, not to encourage illegal activity, but to inform those who are currently smoking marijuana about advances in technology.

This article appears in the May 1989 issue of High Times. Subscribe here.

The post From The Vault: Vaporizing THC Oil: An Alternative to Smoking Marijuana (1989) first appeared on High Times.

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A sharp tongue of blue flame licks the titanium as a plump glob of wax awaits above, then drips from the tip of the dabber and plops onto the domeless nail’s fading crimson glow, where it’s instantaneously liquefied and vaporized. A sudden burst of smoke is drawn through tiny holes in the nail’s head and into our model’s eager lungs. It’s a ritual that’s repeated time after time at booth after booth within the Prop. 215 area of our Los Angeles Medical Cannabis Cup. There’s nary a seed company, dispensary or retailer in attendance that doesn’t have a dab station set up or an extract entered into the competition—38 solvent-based concentrates in all, nearly maxing out the category and all but eclipsing the nine water-hash entries. Every glass company at the expo has rigs on display, and nearly every clothing company some T-shirt with an oil-based slogan or design. This is the state of the modern cannabis community. This is the dab life.

To many in this up-and-coming generation of young stoners, smoking “flowers” (as weed is now referred to) is fast becoming passé—a quaint custom practiced by hippies, lightweights and the socio-geographically disadvantaged. For hardcore oilheads, “treebasing” has raised their THC tolerance to the point where a joint just doesn’t cut it—they want a quicker, longer and stronger high than mere marijuana can provide. As word of this new way of getting stoned continues to spread and the demand for BHO grows, the market begins to respond: One-hitters are replaced by vapor pens, butane is bought in bulk, and sales of crème brûlée torches skyrocket. Apparently, even major retailers are beginning to get wise.

“I was in Bed Bath & Beyond last week, and they had torches, turkey basters and Pyrex dishes all on display next to each other,” swears Hitman Glass founder Dougie Fresh. “Isn’t that crazy? Either they have some kind of inventory software telling them what items people buy together, or somebody working there knows what’s up!”

But blow torches and butane aren’t the only things in short supply these days.

“Trim is so hard to come by … it’s the most valuable thing right now,” a representative from Cheeba Chews tells me. “We can’t even get trim to make our edibles.”

“Forget trim,” one breeder says. “People are ripping whole growrooms down and just blasting them.”

That’s right: In some circles, pot plants are now regarded as nothing but raw material to be transformed into a variety of waxes, oils and shatters—concentrates that are more potent and profitable, and easier to conceal and consume. As the focus of pot nerds everywhere slowly shifts from botany to chemistry, so shifts the spotlight from growers to the modern-day alchemists known as extract artists, who can transform a pile of leftover leaf into taffy-esque, translucent gold.

The unfortunate slang term that’s arisen for this process is, as mentioned above, blasting—unfortunate because, though it refers to “blasting” the essential oils out of the herb with butane gas, it’s also eerily appropriate in describing the explosive accidents that occur when the process isn’t done safely. But accidents like those are almost unheard of among the pros, who prefer the less dramatic terms “running” or “processing” flowers. These gurus of goo take every precaution, carefully controlling each variable, tweaking temperatures and monitoring pressures to ensure that their final product is exactly what they intended and suitable for consumption by the patients they serve. For them, quality is key, and it begins with the raw material.

“We use what our clients give us, which is typically trim for cost-effectiveness,” says Nikka T, a consummate concentrate maker from Denver. “But we prefer fresh-frozen buds, which we’ve been getting more often recently.”

Frozen buds? That’s right—apparently freezing the weed before processing it prevents contaminates from being extracted by the butane, enabling the savvy concentrate maker to extract more cannabinoids and terpenes and less fats and waxes, as well as less moisture and chlorophyll. In an effort to get the cleanest concentrates possible, many extract artists also “wash” the extract in a secondary solvent (typically alcohol) and then freeze it—a process called winterization. This not only removes any final traces of butane, but also solidifies undesirable components (bio-waste such as lipids, fats and waxes) that are then filtered out before evaporation, thus creating a clearer concentrate known as glass, shatter or snap.

“This is in everybody’s wax,” says Jerett, the cherubic extraction expert from West Coast Cure with the McDabber’s hatpin, as he compares a wad of ugly goop to the amber glass he pulled it from. He drops it onto the nail of the Big Lebowski torch tube on the table in front of us, and an acrid smoke pours forth. “That’s what you’re smoking when you smoke wax,” he adds.

While eliminating these elements technically makes the concentrate purer, some believe that it also eliminates textures, aromas and flavors (via terpenes) that many people find desirable.

“Purity isn’t everything,” says Dan de Sailles of Denver’s Top Shelf Extracts. He has a point—moonshine is purer than Cognac, but which would you rather drink? “Besides, if you’re smoking flowers, you’re already ingesting all of those fats and waxes anyway,” he continues. “So smoking a wax or budder is no more harmful to you than smoking a joint.”

Often, a concentrate’s interesting texture is part of its appeal. For example, the Alien OG “Raw” pictured in “Contact High” on pg. 15: This fluffy, off-white extract, whose consistency resembles Funyuns or cheese puffs, was brewed up using an undisclosed technique by an extract artist who takes his name from that most hated of all Star Wars characters, Jar Jar Binks. If handled, this “Heisenberg hash” quickly disintegrates into a sparkly sand; when heated, its aeration is released and it shrivels like a Shrinky Dink into a tiny worm of wax. Then there’s sha-budder, a full, winterized shatter that’s been placed on low heat, allowing it over time to become budder-like again. Generally speaking, a concentrate’s consistency is just a result of how much moisture it contains. Which is why, when you leave certain extracts out in the air for a while, they begin to goo up—a process known as auto-buddering. Basically, by manipulating the extract in different ways (temperature, moisture, pressure, agitation), the extract artist can produce a variety of textures to appeal to all palates and preferences.

As of yet, there’s still no solid scientific evidence that BHO itself—if made properly—is dangerous to ingest, even if it does contain trace amounts of residual butane. If made improperly, however—using plants containing pesticides or mold, or with inferior-quality butane—there may be legitimate health concerns. Hopefully, as more cannabis labs begin to test for contaminants and solvents (something that Seattle’s Northwest Botanical Analysis, for example, has started doing), these concerns may be addressed by buying from reputable sources.

Other possible health issues that have been raised, such as metal-fume fever (from inhaling trace amounts of metal that may flake off the nail) or cannabinoid hyperemesis (a syndrome characterized by symptoms of nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain), will likely remain unsubstantiated until real clinical studies can be done. In the meantime, to minimize these potential risks, we recommend always seasoning the nail (heating it until glowing red, then cooling it off in water) to burn away any possible impurities before use.

Frankly, the greatest likelihood of injury we’ve encountered so far seems to be from passing out and falling over after doing a dab. Make no mistake—this stuff is potent, and even seasoned stoners have been known to get a bit dizzy after a decent-sized glob. For this reason, we recommend dabbing in a seated position whenever possible or, if you’re in line for a dab at an event, asking the person behind you to be your spotter. You hear that, guys? Be ready to perform a “dab grab” in case the person in front of you faints!

Seriously, though—while the health risks of ingesting BHO may be somewhat exaggerated, the risks involved in making it cannot be overemphasized.

For every master blaster, there are likely dozens of idiots out there who think they can make their own wax with a can of cheap lighter fluid and a piece of PVC pipe, and end up blowing up some hotel room instead—or, worse, their parents’ house. We’ve said it before, and we’ll continue to say it: Blasting should never be done indoors, and never near a flame or any electronic appliance or device that could cause a spark (refrigerators, cell phones, etc.).

Think it won’t happen to you? Think again: Last November, a medical marijuana patient in Portland, OR, was severely burned and blew out a wall of his apartment while attempting to make BHO. In January 2013, a young man in a San Diego hotel sustained life-threatening burns after he caused an explosion that was described by other guests as “like an earthquake.” Two similar incidents happened in February (in Lakewood, CO, and West Hollywood), and another three in March: in Forest Grove, OR; Petaluma, CA; and Edmund, OK (where, owing to the state’s House Bill 1798, which makes it a felony to perform any type of THC extraction and was signed into law in April 2011, the poor perpetrator could now face life in prison). Sadly, these instances have become far too frequent—so much so, in fact, that in the February 7 edition of their Infogram newsletter, FEMA included a section entitled “Hash Oil Explosions Increasing Across U.S.” In it, they instruct first responders and law enforcement on what to look for to distinguish BHO blasts from bomb-making or terrorist activity.

Unfortunately, it’s stories like these that are introducing BHO to the mainstream media—and as one might expect, the results haven’t been good. On March 11, an NBC News affiliate in Grand Junction, CO, ran a feature about the “potent and potentially toxic new form of marijuana” called dabbing. Instead of interviewing experts on the topic—such as one of the many professional extract artists or medical marijuana doctors that have appeared on our dab panels—the producers instead chose to interview a high school girl and the obligatory reformed “pot addict” who claimed that, after smoking marijuana for the first time at age 13, he got “hooked” and proceeded to waste the next 18 years of his life. (You know, unlike everyone else in the world who smokes some weed, gets a snack and then manages to go on with their life.) The report also claimed that dabbing could result in overdoses and increased cases of schizophrenia, which it called a “known potential side effect of marijuana.” Talk about bullshit … as usual, network news prefers to drum up ratings with halftruths and scare tactics aimed at paranoid parents rather than presenting an objective, scientific examination of the issue.

Nevertheless, with news coverage like that, it’s easy to see why pro-pot activists fear that the dab phenomenon—with its seeming “hard drug” overtones—could throw a roadblock in front of the otherwise overwhelming prolegalization wave sweeping the nation. And let’s face it: The PR problem is bound to get worse before it gets better. But if there’s one thing we should’ve learned from the DARE and “Just Say No” campaigns of the 1980s, it’s that scare tactics and misinformation don’t help keep kids off drugs—if anything, they end up doing the opposite. Which means the best formula for ensuring the safety of all would-be dabbers is the same as it is for plain old pot: open dialogue, an honest examination of the facts, establishing quality controls on the product and an age limit on its sale—and all of these aims are better served by legalization and regulation than by prohibition and propaganda.

History teaches us that once a new technology or paradigm arrives, there’s no turning back. When rock’n’roll hit the scene, it was condemned as dangerous and corrupting—and today, it’s as American as apple pie. Dabbing isn’t a fad—it’s a paradigm shift, and rejecting it won’t make it go away. Attempts to stop a new generation of cannabis enthusiasts from dabbing will ultimately prove as futile as trying to stop them from tweeting or texting. Ultimately, all we can do is make sure they have access to the most accurate information and the best-quality concentrates at their disposal so that when they’re old enough, if they choose to dab, they can do so safely and responsibly.

Read the full issue here.

The post From The Vault: Generation Dab (2013) first appeared on High Times.

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Let’s watch First Cut Farms turn loose dry sift into tight little temple balls using the old-world method made famous by Frenchy Cannoli. The whole process is built around heat and pressure and a real feel for resin. It starts with a glass bottle filled with boiling water and a pile of golden dry sift […]

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With HolyWater, Wooksauce, and Punch Extracts.

The post Leafly Buzz: World’s top hash for Oil Day 2023 appeared first on Leafly.

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This past summer, as the US military exited Afghanistan, and the country has fallen back into a transitional phase. Afghanistan first became a nation just over 100 years ago in 1919, but one thing that has always transcended the country’s rocky political history is its legendary hash scene. Despite the Mujahideen, Taliban or communists, Afghanistan’s hash industry has transcended the people and policies that have made life for Afghan hash producers difficult over the past 50 years. The flood of hash that once hit Europe and America following the first major hash haul in 1967 has long since been forced out of practice, but the stories of this prime time of hauling hash across multiple country’s borders remain fascinating tales of a different time. High Times obtained an exclusive interview with Ray, who recounted his trips through Europe and Asia and the challenges he and his companions encountered on their journey.

The first hash haul is said to have occurred one year before things really hit the gas on the “Hippie Trail,” where thousands of westerners traveled east through Afghanistan on their way to find enlightenment in India. But for many, their trek would make a stop in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. There they would start their quest to stock up on as much hash as possible before heading back west to wherever they called home; be it Germany, Amsterdam or southern California.

Much of what we know about the smuggling aspects of the trail come directly from one of the first groups to make it happen—The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which included members from southern California. Brotherhood member Ron Bevan is considered to be the first to run an operation out of Kabul in 1967, although there were many groups doing it at the time.

Among these other groups, there was a young man named Ray. High Times sat down with Ray to talk about his past hash smuggling experiences, as we discussed the fallout from the US exit from Afghanistan, wondering what it could mean for a hash scene that has already been devastated for decades.

Hop In—We’re Going Smuggling

The days before Ray’s first trip to Afghanistan were filled with proper hippie business. “We went to southern Oregon in the late ’60s and for whatever reason out of pure synchronicity a bunch of us from northern California and southern California all ended up in this one house in southern Oregon,” Ray told High Times.

The group decided to take things to the next level and looked to start a commune. They spent some time hunting for a property, but after some hiccups with the search, they regrouped in California in 1968. A lot of the people that originally tossed that idea around remain friends to this day after originally finding each other all those years ago.

Part of that group included some friends who had already been smuggling hash from Afghanistan a year or two before that, and they had just brought back a load. In those days, Ray and his friends were staying in the High Sierras—the perfect place to unload some hash.

Most people associate the “Hippie Trail” with the image of a classic Volkswagen bus and a Hanomag Camper that rolled up to their spot in the same hills that was also very popular with other hash smugglers, such as Darrell. “He came, we unloaded it there, and it took a while. And after he got what he thought was the load amount he goes, ‘Okay, you guys can have the rest.’ And so we picked away at it because it was in the framework,” Ray said, “We had to use all kinds of tools we implement to dig it all out but I think eventually we got like another 10 pounds.”

This would be the first time Ray mentioned the man that he eventually partnered with to make the travel east. “So you know we are quite thrilled to make a connection with him. This is Long Beach, brother, I can give you his name because he’s no longer with us. Well, he had many names, but we knew him as Darrell,” Ray noted with a laugh.

Before connecting with Ray, Darrell had already made two or three trips. He was always a driver, and for good reason. In this critical role, he was the main person who drove from Holland to Kabul and back, through every border. He didn’t even need a map when he was on his runs.

Eventually Darrell shared his next plan with Ray: “Here’s what I want to do next time because I’m gonna have another Honomag, but also I’m going to buy a really nice motorhome,” Darrell told Ray at the time.

The motorhome was called a Revcon. It was the top-of-the-line in 1968 when it was designed. It had an aerodynamic aluminum body, and the 26 rails that ran the length of its frame were a hash smuggler’s dream.

“Very cool, very modern, front wheel drive. And he goes ‘I’m gonna buy this and we’re gonna, this is the vehicle we’re gonna make special rails that go inside the rails and we’ll have little hooks to pull it out,”’ Ray said of Darrell’s original plan.

Ray and Darrell had some friends that were engineers who helped them with building the rails. Eventually they would drive the Revcon across the country from California to New York, shipping it on to Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Darrell asked Ray to tag along for the full run to Afghanistan. “I go, ‘Sure, I’ll go slide and sit shotgun,”’ Ray replied. “It was like the coolest ride I ever took. But we were vegetarian at the time, so we were doing a lot of soups, avocados and carrot juice. We had it all decked out with the Norwalk Press, which is a real good juicing machine. We totally kept our eating habits intact.” Their eating habits would eventually earn them the nickname “The Carrot Juice Boys.”

The group prepped for their journey from Rotterdam after picking up the Revcon. They would make their way through Germany and Austria, then travel through Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Iran before finally reaching the Afghan Border.

That first trip would end up taking a few months, after Ray and Darrell got caught up in eastern Turkey. The Revcon’s front wheel drive engine featured torsion bars in the front, which didn’t pair well with the traffic or potholes they encountered on their journey. They lost control of the Revcon for a second, but were able to come to a stop in the center median. “Eastern Turkey is definitely the sticks, very isolated and very desolate,” Ray said of the breakdown.

When you break down out there, it’s common to surround your vehicle with rocks. They did so before hitchhiking to the closest town. They brought mechanics back to the Revcon, knowing they wouldn’t be able to replace the bar, but could rig something to get the Revcon back to civilization.

They hobbled into Tehran, Iran and messaged home for the part they needed. It wasn’t a fast process. “So we were in Tehran for about a good month, repairing the vehicle, but everything got straightened down,” Ray said, “So we rolled into Afghanistan, probably in late summer of 1970.”

Of Science and Borders

The mission was to obtain a couple hundred pounds of hash and five gallons of hash oil. While other groups had brought hash loads back for about three years before this trip, to the best of The Carrot Juice Boys’ knowledge, they were the first people ever to bring a flash evaporator to Afghanistan. Much of the Revcon was loaded with Everclear for their grand chemistry project.

If the idea of driving across the middle east with a chemistry set seemed weird, the opulence of the Revcon stole everyone’s attention at each border crossing, simplifying getting its contents across various borders in both directions. “I mean, they’ve seen the ‘Hippie Trail’ in the VW Vans, the Honomags, but they’ve never seen anything of this magnitude in this amazing really cool motorhome,” Ray noted on the border crossings. “And of course once we got into Persia we decked it out with Persian carpets and runners and it was looking really cool.”

They were very much playing the part of rich Californians, but they would still be pulled from the line at every border. “The head custom guy would come out and just wanted to go inside and look at it and say ‘oh very nice,”’ Ray said, “It’s just amazing.”

One time, a border agent pulled out their chemistry set and pulled out a beaker. He asked Darrell and the pair what it was. “Glass,” they replied. The border guard looked at it again, nodded in agreement with their take, and put it back in the box.

Iran had some of the toughest border restrictions, but once you entered the country, the group found that it was amongst the most welcoming as they attempted to Westernize before the Shah fell in 1979. Ray emphasized that it was one of the nicest places he’s ever been to, as they spent the month waiting for car parts. “They just want to make sure you’re [not] smuggling weapons or anything, doing nefarious stuff, but all the people there were so nice,” Ray noted of Tehran. “They just were so hospitable and helped us [with] whatever. If we’d go looking for the embassy, [residents] would take us in their car, take us to their home, feed us and then take us to the embassy.”

But with a repaired Revcon, things got a bit rougher as they approached the Afghanistan border. Every hotel featured signs that warned a prison sentence of 10 years in prison for a gram of hash, and life in prison for a kilo. “They try and put the fear in you, but we got some good hash in Turkey,” Ray said with a laugh.

After getting into Afghanistan, the group headed straight for Kabul. They stayed in a fancy neighborhood fitting of rich Californians. From there, they would head to The Solan Hotel, a hotspot for hash enthusiasts and general tourists heading in both directions on the trail.

One of Ray’s favorite things about The Solan Hotel was a space attached to the courtyard where you could park your van and camp near a little park attached to the hotel. There was always an ongoing rotation of Europeans and a few Americans, and it was always a good time.

The locals did their best to keep the hippies and smugglers happy, too. “Afghanis just loved us because we had money and we were very careful about religion,” Ray said. “We were very aware of how they are and how not to trespass or do anything [that] goes counter to them. There’s just some things so you don’t mess with. You don’t eat during the day during Ramadan and walk around chewing food.”

But Ray argued that besides that kind of thing, the religion of Islam was based in hospitality. Over the course of three trips that, in total, took about a year to complete, Ray picked up some language skills. One of the things he noticed immediately was how caring and personal everything was. He noted that a lot of the conversation focused on how the other person was feeling.

Back in their Kabul neighborhood, they rented out a two-story mansion and set up the hash lab. They would do a lot of the extraction work offsite and then bring the crude material back to the flash evaporator in the bathroom to get all the alcohol out. It would take them a couple of months to get the five gallons of hash oil they were shooting for.

Unloading the Goods

High Times asked Ray how much hash they needed to make the five gallons. Ray estimated that about 200 kilos were concentrated into the oil. He also noted the unpressed hash made for much better oil, then they hid the rest to stuff in the specialized frames of the Revcon. “The rest we had pressed up and put into the containers, the square tubes, it actually ended up making the hash look like a Hershey bar. We sold most of that in Amsterdam and I’m sure to this day, there are a lot of people there who call it ‘screw hole hash,’” Ray said.

The hash received this name when they put five to seven of the bars together and put a screw through the stack, just to tighten it up before they tossed it down the tube designed to fit into the Revcon’s internal storage system. “It was a precise measurement that we had all the patties pressed,” Ray noted on the precision used to fill each tube with as much product as possible.

As for the oil, that came out pretty great, too. The flash evaporator kept the oil at a reasonable temperature as it sweat off the Everclear used in production. “I mean, it was a black oil. But because of the flash evaporator we didn’t have to heat it in a high temperature, it was in a vacuum, so you got the real essence of really, really good hash,” Ray said. “I don’t know if you’ve had really, really good hash but it’s very floral and very sweet.”

Just like today, in order to make the best oil possible, they had to get their hands on the best material possible. Ray described the process that took them around the country from their upscale Kabul hash lab and base camp. The first connection they ever made was in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

“We used to go to Kandahar, but that was a tough place to be,” Ray noted on the trip. “Kandahar was like going back 1,000 years. I was like ‘Oh my God. That was an ancient town.’ And you couldn’t help but get dysentery just hanging out there for any amount of time. But Kabul was more modern.” In addition to the more modern vibe in Kabul, you could basically get whatever you needed. And in reality, it wasn’t that competitive with other smugglers in town because there was just so much hash to go around.

When it was time to return, the Revcon would leave Afghanistan without Ray. They hired a German woman to play the role of a fancy lady with a fancy motorhome. “We paid her like $10,000 or something. And she was great! She had like a fur coat. I mean, she’d look the part of being wealthy,” Ray said. She was the perfect accessory for a driver who had already completed this trip five times before. The key was the balance of looking like a regular person. Not being an asshole, but also not being too nice, in the hopes of getting waved through borders smoothly.

Ray and Darrell made it to Holland with no problems. The Revcon worked like a charm before being unloaded on a small farm outside Amsterdam. Most of the load would be sold locally.

“But here’s a luggage story for you,” Ray laughed. While the hash moved in Europe, they decided to bring a bunch of the oil back to America. At the time, Ray estimated that the oil was selling for about $10 a milliliter, so a whole liter was worth roughly $10,000 bucks. “We went to a liquor store in Amsterdam and bought Kahlua. Then we’d melt the little seal and stretch it and pull it over the bottle, undo the cap and pour out all the Kahlua and then poured in the hash oil. Then we heated the seal back up and you know back the cap and so it looked sealed, and we’d take two bottles,” Ray said. “So, we go to the airport and we’d go to the duty free and buy another bottle of Kahlua and we traded out the bottle we bought at duty-free. So, we just carried it right across check-in.”

Ray emphasized not to forget the exchange rate. That $10,000 bottle in 1970 would be worth over $70,000 today. He can’t recall how many bottles made it back, the whole five gallons would be worth $1.2 million today.

Adapting the Experience

On Ray’s two trips to Afghanistan, he already had the lay of the land. He flew into Kabul and would buy the hash ahead of time to limit the time spent in the country compared to the marathon road trip and hash oil production of his inaugural adventure.

Ray’s first trip lasted so long he actually overstayed his visa. When he returned for the second run the customs people at the airport noticed it on his passport and gave him a shorter amount of time. After learning his lesson, he got a new passport for the third run. It did the trick, and it was clear sailing at customs. “So, I’d go ahead of time and get there and order up and make sure everything’s ready,” Ray said, “So when the vehicle came through it wasn’t just there, it was like it was going across. It wasn’t there longer than a week or two, which is about the average tourist time somebody might spend there.”

The later runs wouldn’t feature the Revcon. The team moved on to four-wheel drive Suburbans with special compartments in the gas tank that could hold over 100 pounds of gas. The only problem with it was you had to stop a lot more to fuel up, but the trucks did a lot better on the roads than a motorhome.

“But it was pretty safe because to get to it you’d have to take out the whole gas tank and cut into it,” Ray said, “And that was the last time that we did it. We actually hired a professional race driver, who was a dear friend, and he did a good job.”

The gang had a mission of wider psychedelic enlightenment between trips. As they made the runs through the early 1970s, a lot of the resources went into furthering that mission. The freedom Ray and his peers were in search of came with the smuggling and they wanted to make sure to pay it forward. What would start as personal projects for the group would eventually end up in the hands of nonprofits down the line in the form of an unfinished boat. “So the majority of the money that we ever made went on that boat, eventually when the Russians started coming in and put in the puppet government and everything we said, ‘okay, that’s done. We’re not going back there again,”’ Ray said.

Expanding Lore of the First Smuggler

Three years prior to Ray’s first run, Ronnie Bevan of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love would make the first major smuggling run out of Afghanistan. He released the first autobiography of a hash smuggler entitled Brotherhood Hashish: The Story of Ronnie Bevan in 2018.

Many people speak of the “Hippie Trail” as intertwined tales of the many tourists that passed through and a handful of preeminent smugglers like him. High Times asked Bevan to weigh in on that idea. “One thing was there was more than just the two,” Bevan quickly rebutted. “You could get on a bus in London and end up in Kathmandu and there are photos of those people going in 1967 or 1968. The girls have bouffant hairdos and they’re in tight skirts. And then you see him a year later in Kathmandu, and we’re in the hippie clothes and their hair is all down.”

Bevan found that was really the basic motivation of the of the European travelers. Thousands of Europeans made that trip, but very few Americans did, because of the overseas aspect. “We didn’t have the buses. There just weren’t that many. I know, all of the guys that were in Afghanistan smuggling because I was there through several years, and there just weren’t that many,” Bevan said.

Bevan explained that a lot of people in London, or wherever they went from, by the time they got to Nepal all of a sudden they were into the metaphysical side of everything and taking psychedelics. But not everyone. Some people were there for the opposite of self-help. “There also was another large group of people that just did drugs,” Bevan explained, “You could buy heroin, cocaine, you could buy either from the pharmacy in Afghanistan. And consequently, we saw a lot of druggie type people just hanging out. So that’s just another dimension to what you’re talking about.”

Technically, many date the “Hippie Trail” to beginning in 1968, one year after Bevan’s first run. Bevan went on to explain how those increased crowds impacted business. “In the early days nobody got busted for anything, it wasn’t until 1971 that somebody busted [in] one of the vans,” Bevan said.

By 1973, Bevan and his friends had a warrant poster, and he was on the run. That same year Afghanistan’s King Zahir Shah made hash illegal following a $47 million dollar payment from the US government. “Our people had to move into Pakistan to do their work, and it was pretty much destroyed after that. And then it faltered and then a lot of people got busted and especially in those Volkswagens. I think about eight of them, and from that point on, none of them made it they got every one of them but when the Russians came [in] 1979 it was over for sure. That it’s, been over since then.”

A recent article in the South China Morning Post spoke with a cannabis farmer and hash producer outside of Kandahar named Ghulam Ali. Ali noted he hasn’t had any problems since the most recent transition of power, despite concerns that the Taliban would crack down a lot more than the coalition-backed government that fell last summer. “We don’t hear a lot over there. But I think the Taliban is pretty much leaving everything alone,” Bevan replied after reading Ali’s story. “I think what they’re doing is they’re trying to get in there economically.”

It’s also important to remember that hash and Afghanistan have a much longer history than the Taliban does with the nation. “And I think the Taliban probably see that and realize that the people are going to be much happier and much easier to deal with if they let them have their culture,” Bevan argued.

This article appears in the January 2022 issue of High Times. Subscribe here.

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