Hi Hempy,
A few things, I have admired Nevil since I first read about him in the 80’s in High Times and I feel like I portrayed that admiration in the article I wrote about him after he passed away.
One of the elements I admired most about him was that he was not some pathetic ex junkie who used his addiction as a sympathy pillow, he was so matter-of-fact about it being shit and he was not looking for sympathy from anybody, even himself it seemed. As a child who grew up with bikers and had my cousin die from a heroin overdose, I could really appreciate Nevil’s flat out realism about what he had struggled with and how openly he talked about it.
When I first arrived in Amsterdam and visited the castle it was in November of 1994, which was after Nevil was living there. The first night that I saw Nevil he did not get my name because I was with Jack and others and Nevil and I were not formally introduced. It was the night that they were debuting the variety “Jack Herer”, Nevil was staying out of the way, but he wanted to say hi to Jack.
When I stayed at the castle in the spring and summer of 1996, it was with Alan Dronkers and Nevil was not there and I never said that he was.
Also in the year of 1996 (I lived in Amsterdam from Nov 1995 till Dec 1996), I had spoken to Nevil multiple times on the phone after we ran into each other somewhere in Amsterdam (I was at the time the editor-in-chief of the english edition of HIGHLIFE), it may have been around the time that Nevil was starting to work with Arjan and Scotty, because that’s when I think he gave me his phone number and we made plans to hang out which we did one night, Nevil and I played chess and smoked Haze (he brought me a bud and let me keep the seed that I found in it) and it was really cool night.
I’ll never forget sitting there smoking and playing chess with him when I found the seed, and I expressed, “I hope it’s a girl!”, and he smiled and said, “No, hope it’s a boy, that way you can breed it with all of your best girls.” I held onto that one seed like it was a piece of gold and smuggled it home with me and it did turnout to be a boy, but the feds destroyed it in my 97 bust.
I did not reach out to Nevil while I was being prosecuted because I thought it would be disrespectful. I actually did not reach out to a lot of my friends because I did not want to compromise anybody with the heat that was on me. I knew I was going to prison because I wasn’t cooperating and I was cool with it. When I got out of prison, I was calling everybody again and I got Nevil’s number from Soma and paid my respects. We had a totally cool conversation and that was that.
I will also admit that I had a bit of hero worship at first when I met Nevil. As a student of martial arts I have always been taught to respect my elders and that respect continues into my entire life.
But over time, the stories that I was told by the Dronkers, and Nevil about Haze and its origin just didn’t pan out. I spent over a year with old Ed Holloway who turned 80 years old in 1996, and had his own view on how the Holland seed scene formed from his experience working with Wernard in the late 70’s and early 80’s, before Nevil even started the Seed Bank.
For those who are reading this and don’t know, old Ed and Wernard were the guys who first sent someone over to California to buy Skunk #1 seeds from Sam because Sam’s Skunk #1 seeds were already legendary.
Please see Wernard talk about their history in the years before Nevil’s started the seed bank:
http://www.olded.nl/Old%20Ed%20geschiedenis.html
What became apparent to me is how very important Sam’s seeds were in the success of the Holland seed banks:
"And then there was Skunk
The green Team now maintained gardens with plants all over the country. In 1984 the Green team had achieved a turnover of several hundred kilos per year and it was time to expand. We sent a ticket to two promising Americans, Ed Rosenthal, the famous writer of the ancient cannabis bible, and a man named Sam the Skunkman. This Sam promised such huge yields and benefits with the new strain of Skunk he developed that we called him the miracle man. That year we grew Skunk for the first time in a greenhouse like the picture below.
When I had to sell that Skunk, the weed was literally pulled from our hands. Consumers were wildly enthusiastic about the beautiful red buds and fell in love with Nederwiet. Sam was absolutely right! It’s kind made it possible to grow indoors in the greenhouse and under artificial light."
Or let me quote Nevil directly from Michka’s book:
" NEVIL SCHOENMAKER INTERVIEWED BY MICHKA ON JANUARY 6, 2018
How did you first get interested in Haze?
In the mid-eighties, maybe 1985, I bought half of [David] Watson’s seed collection off him when I went to see him in Amsterdam. He had stuff I didn’t have. I paid quite a lot of money for them. They were very old seeds, from the late sixties."
And this is where the Nevil/Haze story starts to fall apart for me. I got the same 1969 IBL Original Haze seeds from Sam and Sam told me flat out that he had been keeping them as an IBL since he first got them from his neighbor “G”. Sam also told me that inbreeding them did not make them better, but outcrossing them with other plants created amazing F1 hybrids.
I also asked Sam about Nevil buying half of his catalog and he pointed out that Nevil bought half of the varieties he had available. Nevil did not buy half of everything Sam had, because Sam had a freaking shit load of seeds. There’s no question that Nevil purchased the varieties from Sam in 1984 that went directly into the catalog such as, Skunk #1, Afghan #1, Hindu Kush, Durban Poison and others.
I also do not believe that Nevil got Haze in 1985 or it would have shown up in his catalog long before 1988. In fact, the word “Haze” is not at all mentioned in Nevil’s catalog until 1988.
It’s not hard to wonder why, it’s because he didn’t have the genetics. Because do you really think that Nevil would have sat on the Haze seeds for 3 years and not made F2 seeds available as he did with other varieties?
And to say that he did and that crossing together original Haze seeds made hay, is freaking ridiculous to all of us.
I was told by Sam that at the time he was only selling seeds by the kilo and not a lot of people wanted long flowering tropical varieties such as Haze, because they were trying to make plants that would grow indoors and in greenhouses that would flower fast and make money. I don’t have a hard time believing that considering it’s been the consensus in the community for decades.
I was also told by Sam that he had given Nevil two male plants sometime when Rob got to Amsterdam, which puts it in 1987, because I know that Rob arrived in Amsterdam in early 1987. If you look it up in old Seed Bank catalogs, in 1988 Haze finally made an appearance in Nevil’s catalog, as a NL crossed with a Haze male.
After Nevil got busted, he outwardly claimed that Sam was a DEA agent and said a lot of really negative things about Sam that were absolutely not true. The main reason I wrote the story about Nevil was to tell the story of Operation Green Merchant.
I received the Nevil court documents because somebody on Instagram was arguing Nevil’s old lie that Sam was the guy who turned Nevil in. I was arguing that Sam did not turn in Nevil and the guy I was arguing with fancied himself an attorney and went to pacer.gov and downloaded all of Nevil’s court papers. In a very gentleman manner, he came back to me and told me that I was right, and that Sam had nothing to do with Nevil’s case at all. The guy who turned in Nevil was a guy named “Raymond Anthony Cogo” who worked for Nevil sending seeds. I asked him how he could be so sure and he emailed me over the two indictments and the record of affidavits from the rat/snitch Cogo and the officers on the case.
If you do not have the two indictments and the affidavits, I will attach them here. I have been getting hate messages from Cogo ever since I wrote the article, but as a journalist, I take that as a compliment. My greatest tribute to Nevil and Sam is telling the truth. As Nevil did not deserve what happened to him and clearly Coco is to blame.
And in the same respect, Sam did not deserve the character assassination that Nevil attempted.
Old Ed who was not a former drug addict and whose word I trusted, had a very different story about Sam and how highly he thought of him, his work and the great donation Sam’s genetics made to making Amsterdam a cannabis destination.
I started working with Jack Herer 1994 and I became a student of truth over bullshit a long time ago.
It annoys me that when I arrived in Amsterdam that I got bullshitted by some of my Dutch friends who were trying to take credit for other people’s work. It is the same thing going on in the industry today, that was going on in the industry in A’dam in 1994.
So I have no problem telling the truth about Nevil, but not if it is at the sake of lying about Sam or his accomplishments, and I do not have any respect for people that try to assassinate the character of others by making false accusations.
Sam was an acid eating hippie and not a heroin addict and as someone who grew up around bikers and hippies, I know the personality distinction all too well.
Sam hitchhiked across the hippie trail with his girlfriend in 1970, from London to Morocco, Morocco to Germany and then from Germany all the way to India through Afghanistan, and Pakistan and the Hindu Kush mountains collecting seeds the whole time. They then proceeded to live in India for over a year.
Sam arrived back in California in the early 70’s, settled in Santa Cruz and became a legend for breeding Skunk #1 long before Nevil even picked up a Mel Frank book. Sam was growing Haze as an IBL and outcrossing with it since the early 70’s and still holds those genetics to this day. I would not have Original Haze that was bred in 1969 and kept as an IBL, if it wasn’t for Sam and his ability to keep his shit together. In fact, Sam is so well grounded that he and his girlfriend from the Hippie Trail, are celebrating their 51st anniversary together this April.
In my opinion, the BS stories of the greatness of the Dutch seed merchants need to stop, I respect the work that Nevil did and his creations were great, but a lot of the people who came after him (Sensi) have done nothing but dilute the genetics and many of us know that. History is laying itself out (such as Nevil’s court papers becoming public) and only a few people are still telling the tales that turned out to be lies.
I am taking the time to write this because I think that Sam deserves a huge apology from a lot of people who created their opinion of him through lies initiated by Nevil, before Nevil even knew who turned him in.
After the court paperwork came out and it showed that Cogo was the rat bastard, I didn’t remember seeing a retraction from Nevil apologizing for the character assassination against Sam.
In fact I wonder at what point Nevil knew that Sam had nothing to do with him getting busted, but still proceeded to lie about Sam, regardless of the truth.
As somebody who grew up around a heroin addict, who later OD’ed, you don’t have to tell me about their problem to tell the truth.
I give credit to those who had the courage to collect genetics, stand up against the drug war and disseminate genetics. Guys like Sam, Rob Clarke, Wernard, Old Ed, and Nevil who came on the scene after all of them, deserved to be revered.
As I wrote in The Legacy of a Legend:
“I see Nevil as a great artist, much like Pablo Picasso did not invent the red and the blue and the green, but it is his combination of those colors that we all appreciate, and very similar is the art of breeding plants. Nevil took these primary plants, Northern Lights and Haze and did not just cross them and call it a day, Nevil numbered every male and female and tested the crosses to determine which of the two plants had the best hybridization.”
Attached is the affidavit from the real snitch in Nevil’s case.
Note that pages 40 to 47 are redacted because they contained some of the names and addresses of Nevil’s customers and the people who Cogo turned in. Even though these are public court papers and those people have already been busted and done time, had their dogs shot, property stolen and lives turned upside down over growing flowers: I feel that it is disrespectful to post what was once private information here.
The one question I have after reading the affidavit from Cogo, and if anybody can provide this answer I would appreciate it, is what year did Nevil find out that Cogo and NOT Sam was the snitch?
Also please keep in mind that the government kept Cogo’s involvement a secret for many years, according to his affidavit he clearly started cooperating with the government in 1989, yet they did not take his sworn affidavit until January 1994, because no doubt, they were using Cogo the whole time and Nevil would not have known what really was happening.
1994 Affidavit of Anthony Ray Cogo Nevil Snitch.pdf (2.9 MB)
Looking forward to checking out authentic genetics original haze soon.
… 40 Koolaid Characters