The Outlaw Botanists Who Designed the Marijuana We Smoke Today

If you are a habitual marijuana smoker, you may have enjoyed plants that are the progeny of the first 13 seeds from which much of the cannabis smoked today stems. Perhaps you have smoked some Sour Diesel, without knowing that it was the “granddaughter” of Chemdog 91. Both this and other seeds one day fell into the hands of an 18 year old. Although he didn’t plan on getting into the cannabis cultivation world, he realised the value of what he had: it was the most flavourful variety he had ever tried. Consequently, he didn't hesitate to become a breeder and experiment with it. 

Today that teenager is 42, and he goes by Chemdog, just like his strain. Thousands of patients assuage the effects of certain diseases from it and many cannabis companies benefit from selling its by-products nowadays. However, for all these years, Chemdog has had to live as a renegade from the law and, of course, without profiting from the cultivation of his plant. Now, to make matters even worse, he is having legal problems. 

At the young age of 14 DJ Short discovered that marijuana was effective against depression and insomnia. This spurred him to become the breeder DJ Short we know today and to spend 40 years cultivating marijuana and experimenting with it. From that experimentation, classic strains like Bluberry, Flo and Blue Moonshine have derived. 

But cultivation has not always been performed the same way. When in the 1970s the US government began work to detect marijuana from the air, many of the original growers had to start cultivating indoors. Unfortunately, these original breeders were considered criminals (and still are today), while others arriving later, have benefited from a business that was never profitable for marijuana's pioneers.