Once upon a time in a far away land, the locals found that if they took some camel crap added a pinch of strychnine and baked it in the sun in a hashish mold until it was a golden brown, it looked almost like the real thing. Adding a bit of black shoe polish helped it acquire a mild hashish scent.
So they put it one the market and low and behold because of the very low price it became a runaway best seller found in all the best drug emporiums in Europe.
As the profits mounted, the markets in the US opened up and there too it became a run away best seller, particularly in the New York-New Jersey area circa 1975 when the yellowish variety became widely available.
How can a person tell if you have the real thing? The real thing has no bits of straw mixed in.
I remember that crap from the 70s.
They called it black hash. $8/gram. Nasty stuff. Couldn’t give that crap away. Same as paraquat pot.
Those are examples of intelligence agencies trying a bottom up approach to destabilize the illicit market.
They preferred people buy their drugs from the pharmacist, and had significant federal resources dedicated. Still do.
Killing addicts through their own behaviour is not technically murder. And it sends a clear message.