Shit a brick! University study finds heavy contamination rate among hashish sold on Madrid streets / / image source: HighTimes.com
A Spanish university has found that 93% of street-bought hash in Madrid contains E. coli, the bacterium found in the intestines of humans and animals, and usually excreted in faeces. These sickly findings put an all new spin on the expression, “That’s some good shit.”
The study, conducted by the Universidad Alfonso X el Sabio y la Complutense and published in the May 2019 editionof Forensic Science International, collected 90 different hashish samples from street vendors in Madrid. Investigating the contamination rates of two different varieties of cannabis resin – ingots, which are larger, denser bricks; and acorns, smaller pieces that can be easily digested and excreted, ideal for smuggling – researchers found that 93% of acorns were contaminated with E. coli, while 29.4% of ingots were found to contain this bacterium.
Manuel Pérez Moreno, a co-author of the study, claimed that 40% of the acorns he collected for testing also contained the smell of faeces. In a recent interview with Spanish newspaper El País, Pérez Moreno outlined the methods by which smugglers bring the hashish to Spain from Morocco, swallowing them with yoghurt to neutralise their stomach acids. “When they get to Spain, they take a laxative and expel the bellotas [acorns],” he explains. “And then they’re put on sale.”
Hashish, made from the resin of cannabis plants, is often packaged in bricks or other hard-pressed formations. While harvesting weed for personal consumption remains legal in Spain, possession of the drug with the intent of sale is not legal. With massive pushes towards legalisation of cannabis seen all over North America, and many regions of continental Europe, could Spain follow suit with its own legislative regulation of weed in the future?
Until then, don’t buy any hash off the street in Madrid. That stuff is (literally) shit.
But if this has sufficiently disgusted you to the point of never wanting to touch another ounce of weed, don’t despair. Marijuana can reportedly prevent you from tumbling into harder, more addictive drug habits, so don’t write it off just yet. Check out our article here for more info.
