So you've just bought your dank Girl Scout Cookies, OG Kush, Blue Dream or Gelato bud from a dispensary, a farmer or a dealer, and you want to indulge... but chances are you've got something completely different, which was sold under household name for one reason only: IF SOMETHING'S HOT, THEN THAT'S WHAT GETS SOLD!

It really started with legendary Skunk #1, that hybrids became popular in the West. Before that – in the 60's & 70's – everything was imported from Thailand, Colombia, Panama, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Morocco, Mexico, Jamaica, you name it.

Strain names were simple back then. Their place of origin was the most important thing, followed by colour or similar, visual characteristics. So there was Panama Red (bud had a reddish hue and came from Panama), Colombian Gold (bud came from Colombia and had a golden colour) or Vietnam Black (bud came from Vietnam and was black).

It was as straightforward as it gets, but when the prohibition raised its ugly tail again in the 80s, heads suddenly faced the hazard of inhaling Paraquat and long jail time, while smuggling grass became simultaneously less attractive as Cesna pilots were switching to blow, which brought higher revenue per pound (simple as that really).

However, this was a temporary bummer, that quickly swelled into a new industry of homegrown sensimilla, which thrived in remote hills and valleys of NorCal, where most of SF heads moved in the late 60's to trip naked on acid, practise yoga, run after deer with a crossbow, and live in teepees.

But without hard cash this fairytale lifestyle was hard to sustain, so they took to growing herb, which they needed to supply themselves, and swiftly turned into a commodity, that people were constantly after.

This is really when hybrids like Skunk #1 showed their potential, and cutting sativas with Afghani became a thing. New varieties matured more quickly and produced more weight, so they could be sold at a bigger profit. And once Humboldt became bud basket of America, branding followed with famous names like Humboldt Skunk aka. Road Kill Skunk, Romulan, Orange Bud and other ones.

In the meantime Cali varieties made way to Netherlands via Sam The Skunkman and Ed Rosenthal, who brought their seeds with them as personal cultivation, and sales in the country of tulip got effectively depenalised, so there was more wiggle room for clandestine breeding as well.

Consequently, Skunk #1 became a staple of Dutch start-ups, and was bred heavily to an Afghani strain called Northern Lights #5, that came originally from Seattle area. This mix produced a whole line of indica-dominant strains such as Super Skunk, Shiva Skunk, Early Skunk, Early Pearl or Misty, that had a powerful effect on the smoker.

On the other hand Skunk #1 was also bred to Original Haze line dubbed Neville's Haze from now on, and it created a lot of high quality sativa-dominat skunk/haze hybrids still circulating among old timers.

But once it became obvious, that there was shitloads of money to be made on the burgeoning seed market, branding wars started with new seed banks popping like mushrooms after rain, and claiming exclusive rights to genetics, that weren't theirs in the first place... and this is really how greed started pushing authenticity aside!

Soon the only way to distinguish yourself from the competition was to tweak your strain names to give them hair-raising appeal without actually doing any breeding work. And cause the market kept existing in the shadows, the issue of rights or ownership of cannabis genetics totally spun out of control, and eventually became irrelevant.

This smoke and mirrors bullshit peaked in the mid 90's when known Aussie breeder Shantibaba developed a world-renowned hybrid White Widow working under umbrella of Greenhouse Seeds owned by Aryan Roskam, who later pushed him out and took the rights to his strain... which was rebranded as Black Widow once Shantibaba opened a new shop together with Howard Marks.

This is really when executives of Dutch seed banks started comprehending the potential of branding in cannabis world... and everybody went right on it by offering an „original White Widow” seed line to growers, who had little understanding of how the hybrid came about in the first place.

Today you can hardly find any seed bank, which DOESN'T HAVE WHITE WIDOW IN STOCK.. and apparently everybody has the original one. Well, go smoke one and figure, but I can give you a clue. To have the original line in F1 you need your original P1 stock, and there's only person in its possession!

This is obviously upsetting as fuck. You spend years looking for this special male plant, then you breed it with equally great female, and in the end all the bastards of this world are stealing your work claiming it was theirs or they got it from the creator, but what they've really done is nothing... they've just copied the name and used it for whatever shitty product they were selling.

The thing is everybody does it! And this slippery fuckin' practise is widespread on the other side of the pond now, where it runs rampant among the clone sellers, who rename anything just to make a buck. This leads to hoarded clones like GG #4 fetching as much as $30.000, which is ridiculous as you don't even know what you're buying.

However, the real problem lies within dispensaries' or pot shops' walls, which rename any bud they get with an eyeball-popping name just to push it off the shelves. And we know it's true, cause that's the exact conclusion coming from DNA sequencing bolstered by Phylos, who found 8 different groups of Blue Dream sold in legal states... that's become such a hot commodity, that everybody peddles it if they have it or not!

Another example is Girl Scout Cookies, which Cookie Family claims was born by crossing Durban Poison to OG Kush. Well, the thing is it definitely has an OG in it, but the other half comes from DJ Short's Blueberry as Phylos clearly shows.

And while we're spinning the OG wheel it's worth mentioning, that in the late 90's there was only one OG Kush in California, that was brought from Florida. In fact, the earliest existing cut, that has flown to the surface, is actually called Flo-Rida, and is directly linked to all legit OG cuts in existence... which fly by hundreds now.

But as the need to churn out more and more OG became a viable option for growers to make money, it also spread far and wide taking the most fantastic names... as if everybody had a different strain, although we know very well that there are no more than 5 original cuts around, all containing the same DNA, and the rest is marketing, self-promotion, gossip, half-truth or plain lie.

This also led to breeding these cuts to cuts of other respected strains like Blueberry, Sensi Star, Granddaddy Purple or OG itself, and those got some quite fancy names in the process, to get their own hype train rolling. And once hype around a cut starts springing up, nobody tarries in the doorway, but jumps right in by putting whatever they can on the market under a new name.

This is what got dubbed „flavour of the month” breeding by growers and breeders, who treat their mission seriously, and would like to see this business grow in respectability by focusing on producing stable hybrids, that don't have to be sieved for this one cut, cause there are 25 different genotypes in it.

But hype market has also another big flaw. It completely disregards the needs of the patients, who are in SERIOUS need of their medicine every day. And that means they ought to have access to the strain, that works for them whenever they need it, which means it should be identified with 100% accuracy by the dispensary, cause otherwise the whole thing is a circus, that's not worth the price of admission.

Photo credits (from the top):

1.) Blue Dream from Wonderland Nursery
2.) Sacred Seeds Skunk #1 in the 80's via ICMAG
3.) Girl Scout Cookies from Top Hat Organics
4.) Girl Scout genetic profile via The Phylos Galaxy
5.) OG Kush cuts via The Phylos Galaxy

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