For all the Old Timers this is some GOOD READING

Around 1985, some cannabis breeders from the United States fled for a country with more amenable drug policies– the Netherlands. At the time, indoor cultivation of cannabis was just starting to take off in the Netherlands, and the fusion of American breeding stock and Dutch agricultural practice sparked a revolution in cannabis breeding and production.

Today, Dutch ‘seed banks’ sell the product of this breeding over the Internet, in competition with a growing number of rivals, notably those based in Canada.

One of these U.S. breeders was David Selezny, now traveling as David Watson, AKA “Sam the Skunkman”. Another important US entity that joined Watson/Selezny, at least in part, was Robert Connell Clarke – a renowned cannabisbotany researcher and author.

Here’s where things get interesting!
According to Joe Pietri, author of King of Nepal The Ice Wars edition, Watson/Selezny had been busted for growing in Santa Cruz California in March of 1985 and resurfaced in Amsterdam. In his baggage was the research from the
Sacred Seed Collective, a seed bank originally started in the 1940’s, and 250,000 cannabis seeds. Ed Rosenthal, who was the cultivation editor for High Times at that time, introduced Sam Selezny as David Watson to everyone who was anyone at the time on the Dutch scene. Shortly thereafter Watson/Selezny started Cultivators Choice, one of Amsterdam’s early seedbanks.

Surviving members of the Sacred Seed Collective still question how Watson
managed to pull this off? Pietri puts it more directly, “Was Watson/Selezny working undercover to bring Sacred Seed collective down?”

Either way, after Watson’s arrival in Amsterdam strange things began occurring – not the least of which was
Neiderweit went from crap to chronic with the introduction of the Sacred Seed Collective’s genetics. THC levels vastly increased within a short timeframe after Watson/Selezny introduced Skunk #1 - a 75% sativa (Acapulco Gold + Columbian Gold) + 25% indica (Afghani) hybrid with the potency of sativa and the growing vigor and early finishing times of an indica.
So profound was Skunk #1’s effect on the market that today “Skunk” has become a generic term in the UK and Europe for describing super potent pot. Breeders today regard Skunk #1 as the benchmark of reliable performance and as a rock-solid genotype that has influenced a hundred modern hybrids. Growth and flowering are mostlyIndica in appearance (dark green, short and squat with dense heavy flower clusters), with Skunk #1 gaining a little more height than a pure Indica when blooming.

Keep in mind that these were also the years in which the indoor growing culture was on the rise. A super potent, mostly sativa strain with a high THC to low CBD ratio, which was perfect for indoor growing shouldn’t be underestimated. The perfect strain for indoor growing was now widely available to growers around the globe.
Skunk was about to go meteoric! And frankly, its legacy would become insane (pardon the pun!).

The next interesting thing that occurred was Watson’s/Selezny’s influence in creating the Cannabis Cup.
In an article written by High Times editor Steven Hager in 2004, he recounts:

“I first visited the Netherlands in 1987 to write an article on the founder of Holland’s first cannabis seed company.
Titled “The King of Cannabis,” the article described how an Australian named Nevil (Schoenmaker) established a mail order company in Holland. He lived in a mansion filled with grow rooms that I dubbed “Cannabis Castle.” While working on the article, I met the founders of Cultivators Choice, an almost defunct American cannabis-seed
company. They told me about the spectacular California harvest festivals of the ‘70s. That’s where I got the idea of holding a cannabis harvest festival in Amsterdam.”

According to Pietri what actually happened was Hager had been appointed as editor of High Times in 1987. In the same year Hager went to Amsterdam to interview Neville Shoenmaker of the Seed Bank. While there he meets Watson/Selezny who relates stories to him about harvest festivals in Santa Cruz and suggests having a Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam as a yearly event. As Watson/Selezny expands on the concept Hager is taken in.” From this point on everything stated by either Watson/Selezny or his partner Robert Connell Clarke is taken as fact,
Remember Rosenthal is cultivation editor, and Clarke used to write under R. Connoisseur at High Times as well.”
Hager being wet behind the ears was enthralled. Coincidently, Operation Green Merchant was conceived of in the same year. This allowed the DEA to infiltrate the
ascending cannabis scene – both locally and abroad. Obviously, one of their key targets outside of the U.S. was Holland due to its liberal cannabis laws and its source as a port of origin for illegal shipments of seeds across U.S.
boarders.

In 1988 the first Cannabis Cup was held and surprise, surprise, Watson/ Selezny takes first prize for Skunk #1. In the following year Neville Schoenmaker’s Early Pearl/Skunk #1 x Northern Lights #5/Haze from Seed Bank took first prize and the year after that Schoenmaker’s Northern Lights #5 took first prize.

The impact of the breeding, marketing and distribution efforts of Neville Schoenmaker on the cannabis world
cannot be stressed enough; he wasn’t labeled the original ‘King of Cannabis’ without justification. During the 1980’s, Neville Shoenmaker, a dual Australian and Dutch citizen, allegedly traveled to the Netherlands to obtain treatment for a drug addiction, because at the time, the Dutch were renowned for their addiction treatment
facilities. While there, he slowly started the first Dutch marijuana mail order seed bank, and over the course of time became very successful, ultimately becoming a legend in the marijuana breeding community for his efforts to introduce, market, breed and distribute some of the most high profile varieties of cannabis of our time.
His home, dubbed the ‘Cannabis Castle’ was a breeder’s laboratory where Neville worked on lines of cannabis for years while filling mail order requests from cultivators all over the world.

Enter Green Merchant -the DEA’s ill-fated, albeit, comprehensive attempt to destroy pot magazines and hydroponics and indoor marijuana growing industries.
Hager later writes of Schoenmaker, “Unfortunately, a few weeks later the DEA launched an operation designed to shut down the Seed Bank and High Times."
Peter Gorman, a former High Times journalist writes, “the main targets of ‘Operation Green Merchant’ according to his Justice Department sources were Neville of ‘The Seed Bank’, High Times magazine and Sensimilla Tips, a now
defunct cannabis culture magazine due to ‘Operation Green Merchant.’
Steven Hager later wrote of Schoenmaker that, “The Dutch government refused to extradite Neville, who was forced into hiding to prevent a DEA kidnapping” and that he was “eventually nabbed while visiting his family in Australia…”
Schoenmaker, was arrested in Australia in July of 1990, several weeks after winning his second cannabis cup.
Extradition proceedings were launched to transport Schoenmaker to Federal court in New Orleans, where he would face charges of violating the Controlled Substances Act. The 44-count indictment alleged that Schoenmaker, “in concert with at least five other persons,” knowingly distributed, through the US Postal Service, a total of 1,921 seeds to DEA agents and marijuana growers in the New Orleans area from 1985 to 1990. The indictment also alleged that Schoenmaker “did knowingly…manufacture (grow) more than 1,000 marijuana plants, a Schedule 1
drug controlled substance.”

Shoenmaker’s lawyer noted on his court records that the police had dossier on Schoenmaker as well as everyone who was anyone on the Dutch scene, and that they were compiled by an undercover operative working in the Dutch scene.
That undercover, according to Joe Pietri, was David Watson/Sam Selezny.
Bummer for the US Feds, the Australians dropped the ball and Shoenmaker was never extradited from Australia to the U.S. He held both a Dutch and Australian passport and after making bail fled Australia on his Dutch passport, leaving authorities red-faced and angry. Shoenmaker than went into hiding, albeit allegedly operating behind the scenes as a partner and breeder for Sensi Seeds, a company responsible for many famous genetics and winner of numerous cannabis cup awards. He later publically surfaced in the early 21st century and now works with
ShantiBaba (a fellow Australian compatriot who appeared on the Dutch scene in the early nineties) and Howard Marks – the legendary drug runner - at Mr Nice Seeds.
The next interesting thing then happens. Watson/Selezny creates HortaPharm B.V with Robert C Clarke in 1994 and in 1997 they are issued a cannabis research license ahead of legitimate Universities and PhD’s due to the strong endorsement by the DEA, instead of extraditing him back to Santa Cruz for a grow bust in 1985?
To this day HortaPharm B.V is one of two companies allowed to import cannabis product into the US, and the only supplier licensed by the DEA to supply seeds of predictable quality for research.
I mean, it’s all starting to sound somewhat like a conspiracy theory right? Could this be? The DEA starting a seed company in Amsterdam, placing a deep undercover into the Dutch scene, creating a cannabis cup which would bring all the leading cannabis cultivators and breeders from around the world straight to them on a yearly basis.

Take this one step further. Were the DEA directly responsible for changing the THC/CBD profile of cannabis on a global scale? Did law enforcement inadvertently increase the potency of marijuana or were they far more directly
involved?