Thai stick

It didn’t matter if you had a tumor the size of a football – if you were holding a Thai Stick, you were going to jail.

When US soldiers arrived in the 1960s on "rest and recreation" breaks from fighting in the Vietnam War they discovered Thai stick, locally made from cured marijuana buds wrapped in leaves around a bamboo stick, like a fat cigar.

Thailand has a long tradition of growing the plant, particularly in the fertile northeast, home to the famously potent Thai Stick, a strain relished by American GIs stationed in Asia.

The strain would later be smuggled into the U.S. in the 1970s by various surfers, hippies and military veterans, according to the 2015 book by Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter called “Thai Stick.”

The country is known for its Thai Stick variety, which is named after the way its potent flowers are dried and tied into sticks and is the origin of many strains now grown overseas.