I just wanted to point out that the DEA has determined that somewhere around 95% of the cannabis in the US is grown right here. So the term "mexican weed" is really only a propaganda trick, much like when they started calling cannabis "marijuana". In fact, most of the drugs in the US don't come from Mexico despite what the media reports. But that's the war on drugs for you.
"Mari-juana" is just the Mexican term for drug cannabis. Mexico has a long history of recreational mari-juana use, its right on our Southern border, and as slang, the name stuck. There is nothing more sinister to it than that, I don't think. The term, obviously, pre-dates the DEA, which has only been in existence since the 1970s Nixon administration.
On the first part of this, again, the se-ed this plant was grown from is over 10 years old and came from nasty-looking compressed brick bought in the NY metro area circa 2000. Domestically produced weed is virtually never bricked; for the simple reasons that it completely ruins its market value.
The only reason weed is bricked is to to facilitate smuggling across the US southern border, and its the hallmark of smuggled in cartel distributed weed. Even the weed grown for domestic use in Mexico isn't bricked. I've never heard of Canadian grown "beaster" being bricked, either. So almost by definition, the se-ed I grew HAD to be from weed smuggled in from Mexico. Of course the nature of the domestic market has changed in the last 10+ years, especially with the advent of medical marijuana, but I think this particular plant was a sort of "time capsule", of Mexican commercial grown pot, if you will.
On the DEA, bluntly, I'm not sure what to make of the statistic you quote. Do you have a citation? According to the US Dept of Justice (of which the DEA is a branch) they simply do not know how much weed is smoked in the USA nor have a definitive idea of its source of origin. See here:
U.S. Department of Justices 2010
National Drug Threat Assessment
,
No reliable estimates are available regarding the amount of domestically cultivated or
processed marijuana. The amount of marijuana available in the United Statesinclud-
ing marijuana produced both domestically and internationallyis unknown. Moreover,
estimates as to the extent of domestic cannabis cultivation are not feasible because of sig-
nificant variability in or nonexistence of data regarding the number of cannabis plants not
eradicated during eradication seasons, cannabis eradication effectiveness, and plant-yield
estimates. (NDIC, 2010, Drug Availability in the United States: Marijuana Availability,
fn. 16
If you're talking about LOCAL markets, sure in CA or CO, almost all of the marijuana there is locally produced. But there are plenty of parts of the country (eg Texas, etc) where that's simply not true. Despite the advent of medical MJ, the Mexican cartels ARE still exporting domestically produced cannabis into the USA, though of late some of them have taken to growing it IN the USA.
According to the RAND foundation (which is an independent non-governmental think tank), as of 2010 somewhere between 40-67% of cannabis consumed in the US is still imported from Mexico. If you care to read more, see here on page 11; they go into quite a bit of detail on how they come up with this number, and about the probable margins for error. They've used multiple sources of data for their estimates, including the DEA, but also others:
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP325.pdf
That number may have changed somewhat in the last three years, but I don't think its been a "night and day" shift to the point where 90% of the weed traffic in from Mexico has suddenly stopped.
On other drugs, of course methamphetamines are produced domestically in quantity, and so are prescription drugs diverted for illegal use (ie oxycontin, etc).
But there is simply no large scale opium poppy cultivation in the USA, nor is it even possible to grow significant quantities of coca leaf in the USA; the plant requires very specific temperature and humidity ranges. In practice, virtually all heroin and cocaine *MUST* be smuggled in; there is no other way for it to get here in any commercially relevant quantity.
While some of it probably is coming in through Canada or via other non-border crossing entry (ie boat, plane, submarine, etc), a lot of it is still coming in across the Mexican border. Which isn't to say that all or even most of these drugs are made *IN* Mexico, just that they pass THROUGH on their way into the USA.
Anyway, I was going to say that my first grow was from brick seeds. I was blown away at the quality and quantity of the buds, but then I thought about it... Just because you treat a fruit or flower like shit before or after you pick it doesn't mean the seeds have lost any of their genetic qualities. It's no different with cannabis. I think if you would have used better soil, nutrients and lights you could have had a much higher quality product. I might even go so far as to say that if you had done that, then proceeded to tell us that it was some big name genetics, we wouldn't have known any better either looking at it or smoking it.
If, when you say "you", you're talking about my grow of this in particular, I did use good lights, soil, and nutes; the same as any other grow. I'm not exactly new to this, and in fact, I grew another more conventional commercial hybrid plant right next to the one depicted here. Maybe I could have had better training to increase yields a bit, but apart from controlling temps a bit better, I really don't think I could have done anything to improve the quality of these buds, certainly not soil or nutes.
Not that it speaks to the actual quality of the smoke, but IMO the buds themselves were pretty nice looking, and a bit different than the kushes everyone seems to like. They were light to medium green and full of bright orange hairs. As you say, I'm also sure that if I made up some BS story and/or called them "Michoacan haze" or some other such name, people would rave about it.
