Exploring Hashish and Marijuana: A Comprehensive Guide to Their Individual Traits

If you’ve traveled outside of the United States and looked for weed, chances are you’ve run into some hashish, or hash. Hash is most common outside of the United States, particularly in the Middle East and Europe, where the flower we’re used to in the US can be expensive and hard to come by. It is a concentrated form of marijuana whose history goes back centuries. Though the use of cannabis in the form of hashish goes back thousands of years and its spiritual and medicinal use has been documented in antiquity, the word hashish, which translates literally into “grass” in Arabic, is first referenced in a pamphlet accusing militant rebels in Egypt of being “hashish” eaters called “hashishin”. Interestingly, the English word “Assassins” comes from this nickname. Historically, hash was eaten directly, and was only smoked in a pipe or bong after the introduction of tobacco in the 1500s. But what is hash? How exactly is it made? And how does it differ from plain old marijuana?

Hash is a highly concentrated form of compressed marijuana resin, similar to what we would expect to find in vape cartridges or edibles. It’s made not by simply trimming the budding flowers of the marijuana plant, but by gathering the plant’s trichomes, which are the parts of the plant that contain THC and other chemicals that give weed its psychoactive effects. These are then melted, compressed, and formed into various shapes – usually brown blocks that are easy to distribute, making it look almost like chocolate. 

A common misconception is that hash gets you “higher” than weed. This is true in that the process of collecting and manufacturing hash makes it a particularly concentrated product, but you wouldn’t consume hash in the same quantities as you consume weed. Because it is not a dry herb the way that weed is, it doesn’t burn the same way, and can be difficult to simply roll it into a joint and smoke it. It’s also very sticky and more difficult to handle, making rolling a purely hash joint difficult. Gram for gram, hash is more potent than weed, which also means it's more expensive. So, smoking the same quantity of hash might get you higher than weed, but if you’re using it regularly, you would probably use pretty small quantities unless you’re regularly smoking an eighth in one sitting. Most users just create a mixture of melted hash and tobacco, which is rolled into a joint and smoked as a cigarette, similar to a spliff. 

But the high you get from smoking hash can be different from the one you get smoking weed. While weed mostly contains THC, hash contains THC and significant amounts of CBD and cannabinol, or CBN. Because of this, hash gives its user a more subtle and more sedative effect, making it similar to the intense body high users receive from smoking indica-heavy marijuana.

Hashish has a long history in much of the world, and is still the most common way of consuming cannabis in most of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Next time you’re traveling and want to try something different, maybe give it a try. But as always, be cautious when traveling in unfamiliar contexts and keep local laws and contexts in mind.