After I became a brand ambassador for the European seed company Blimburn earlier this year, I got comments asking why I wasn’t representing OG American breeders instead. My answer is that our cannabis community has never been about drawing lines in the sand or limiting innovation to a single country. It has always thrived on global exchange, collaboration, and the free movement of genetics, knowledge, and culture.
In the 1970s, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was one of the most powerful and conscious forces in legacy cannabis. They smuggled weed and hash from Mexico, Afghanistan, Nepal and other countries into the U.S., creating a supply chain that fueled the underground market. The Brotherhood and other smugglers didn’t just import cannabis; they collected and distributed seeds, introducing new breeding possibilities that would shape the future of cultivation. These possibilities were then developed by the first generation of North American breeders. Among them was the iconic, recently passed and widely mourned David Watson, who later became known as Skunk Man Sam. Watson and his wife Diana had traveled the globe as a young couple, collecting cannabis genetics far and wide. Back in California, Watson stabilized and distributed Skunk #1, one of the first true hybrids, setting the stage for modern breeding.
As the U.S. government escalated its War on Drugs in the 1980s, Watson and other foreign breeders found sanctuary in the Netherlands, where coffee shops openly sold cannabis, and seed production and distribution existed in a legal gray area. Cultivation of cannabis was not legal, but since seeds themselves did not contain THC, they could be legally sold. This legal ambiguity allowed breeders like Neville Schoenmaker and Skunk Man Sam to team up with Dutch coffeeshop owners to launch the first commercial seed banks. For the first time …
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Author: Steve Deangelo / High Times
