Hashish

Hashish is understood as the resin obtained from the plant parts of the female hemp plant and pressed into blocks. Hashish, hash for short, is also often referred to as piece, shit, dope, edges, or corners.

Definition of Terms

One often uses Hashish (or hash), marijuana, cannabis, and other terms wrongly synonymously. You can distinguish the definition as follows:

Hashish
Hashish, or hash for short, is a cannabis product and consists of pressed resin from processed plant parts. It is the resin of the female cannabis plant and has a higher potency than marijuana.

Marijuana
One knows the dried flowers of the female hemp (cannabis) plant as marijuana.

Cannabis
Cannabis is the Latin term for the hemp plant. In connection with intoxicants, colloquial speech often refers to marijuana or hashish, although these are processed cannabis products.

Hemp
The Latin word for hemp is cannabis. You can roughly divide it into ordinary or natural hemp. The plant is one of the oldest ornamental and crop plants on earth.

Weed
Weed, in most cases, means marijuana. German-speaking countries also use this term.

Grass
Marijuana is also sometimes referred to as weed; it is one of the most common colloquial terms and the German brother of “weed.”

Sinsemilla
Some call the female, unpollinated flower “sinsemilla,” which comes from Spanish and loosely translated means “without seeds.” You get it by separating the female and male plants as early as possible.

Substance

Hashish is a soft brown wax formed when one extracts the wax from the female cannabis plant. Not to be confused with marijuana, which is termed as such when one uses whole resinous dried flower clusters. One can obtain resin from the so-called trichomes (THC-containing glandular hairs of the flowers of female hemp plants). The inflorescences of the female plant are particularly important for the production of hashish, as these contain the majority of resin glands with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) compared to the other parts of the plant. The psychoactive effect is attributed to the active ingredient THC. It is insoluble in water and burns without leaving any residue on the platinum sheet. The resin dissolves in acetone, ethyl acetate, ethanol, ether, chloroform, benzene, and gasoline.

Over 480 different ingredients, including more than 110 cannabinoids and over 140 terpene derivatives, have been identified in the hemp plant. You can roughly divide the ingredients of the cannabis resin into cannabinoid and non-cannabinoid substances. Non-cannabinoid components include flavonoids, spiroindans, sterols, and alkaloids. Up to 80% of the resin is cannabinoids, of which the THC content can be up to 30%.

Consumption

Hashish is an intoxicant and a medicine. One can inhale using a joint, bong, small pipe, or a vaporizer. It is heated, crushed, and often mixed with tobacco or Knaster to make it burn easier. The hash is usually integrated into foods such as space cookies, brownies, or space cakes and eaten.

Pure hash, i.e., resin, is more potent than dried herb compared to marijuana. If one takes hash orally, for example, in biscuits, the effects will be more powerful and longer lasting but will come later. When smoking, the effect occurs after a few minutes; when consumed orally, it takes about an hour to feel the effects (depending on how full the stomach is). Because of this, it is easier to overdose than with inhalation. Typical symptoms are tachycardia and panic.

Hashish strains

Not only do the different hashish varieties, plants, and batches influence the active ingredient content, but also the initial quality (is it the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. screening) and any extenders used are influencing it. Commonly used extenders include gum, damiana (a plant from the saffron mallow genus), henna, wax, sand, or animal fat. Hash comes in a wide variety of strains, consistencies, and colors.

The color often gives information about where the hash came from. On the one hand, because of the different types of cannabis used and on the other hand, because of the various production methods. The three most important types of hashish are the following:

  • Moroccan Hashish
  • Black Afghan
  • Red Lebanese

Moroccan Hash: The Central European market often imports light to dark brown-green hash from Morocco (formerly known as “Green Turk.” After harvesting and drying, one sieves it several passes. In this way, it creates different grades of quality.

Black Afghan: If hash is black, the origin is often Afghanistan, India, Nepal, or other Central or South Asian countries. Light-colored resin is kneaded and compressed, causing the resin glands to burst open; the black color then appears.

Red Lebanese: If the hashish is red, they say the production was in Lebanon. The cannabis plants are left in the field for the resin glands to fully mature and turn golden yellow to reddish. After cutting, one taps the plants into boxes. Mature resin glands break off, and one can press them into pucks.

Production countries

In 2010, the United Nations Action on Drugs and Crime found in a study that Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium and the most significant revenue producer of hashish. The UNODC study indicates that they produce 145 kilograms of cannabis resin or hashish per hectare.

The largest cannabis-growing country is Morocco, which produces 40 kilograms per hectare. British hash is 60-70% Moroccan (in 2003) and is grown on 250,000 hectares. One estimates annual hashish exports of around 3,000 tons. The rest of the hash available in Europe either comes from other countries or the growth is in Europe.

Processing

Sieves with a defined mesh size that produce hashish are common in Morocco and Europe. The parts of the plant that contain the most resin (and therefore high THC levels) are the so-called trichomes. These sieves separate the delicate components from the remaining parts of the plant as part of the production process. Standard manufacturing equipment includes:

  • Bubble Bag (Ice-O-Lator)
  • Hand hash maker
  • Pollinator

The powder obtained by dry sieving is called “skuff.” An enormously high active ingredient content is obtained by sieving marijuana in ice water with the bubble bag; however, this yields a lower yield than dry sieving.

Hash oil

An oily extract with a primarily high THC content is hash oil (THC oil). The consideration is that it’s the most potent of all cannabis products because of its very high active ingredient content. The THC content is mostly between 15 and 20%, but often even reaches 60 to 70%. Like hashish, you create it from the resin of the inflorescences of the female hemp plant (cannabis). One uses hash oil both as an intoxicant and as a medicine.

It is important to distinguish hash oil from hemp and essential hemp oil. One obtains hemp oil from the seeds of industrial hemp. Contrary to the assumption that hash oil is natural, it does not consist of fat but of resin extract. Don’t confuse it with the non-intoxicating hemp oil (natural, fatty cooking oil) from the hemp plant.

Toxicity

To date, there has been no known fatal overdose in humans from consuming tetrahydrocannabinol. Statistics from the German Federal Criminal Police Office show that although THC is the most commonly used illicit substance, cannabis is not on the list as a drug-related cause of death. There is, therefore, no direct danger to life from cannabis consumption.

However, excessive consumption can have unpleasant effects.

Effects of overdose

  • Nausea and vomiting
  • Panic, fear, paranoia
  • Affected motor skills and concentration

Here you get to the main article Cannabis; you can find its areas of application, effects, legal situation, etc.

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