When I used to deal drugs, before police and prison put paid to my profession, I was always amazed by the assortment of words used by my customers to refer to the same sticky substance. I might have only been selling one product - weed (with the odd bit of pollen and resin thrown in, which is essentially weed with added dirt) - but there were a hundred different names for it. Remember the drugs education classes you used to have to sit through in secondary school (or primary school if you hailed from Torry)? They used to make you learn some of the ‘street’ names for hash, so that in the event of some shady stranger approaching you outside the school gates and offering you a ‘spliff’, you would know that he was referring to a rolled cigarette containing cannabis. You would also know that if you were to inhale said spliff, a good time would be had by all, probably culminating in you accepting a lift from the stranger to pick up some more of the good shit from his dealer. In reality of course, those drugs awareness seminars were useless, for hash - like all illegal drugs - has so many different names that you could take a PHD on the subject and yet struggle to cram them all in to your final thesis . I always thought it would make for an interesting blog to list the miscellaneous terms I’ve heard stoners use to refer to hash. While I was actively selling the stuff didn’t seem like the best time to announce my insalubrious profession in my weblog however. (OK, so I’ve admitted to far more incriminating things in my blog, but let’s not go there.) But now that I am a model citizen once again - in looks and occasionally in conduct - I am able to publish without being damned. For no particular reason, I present to you a list that is of no particular use to you whatsoever - 42 names for hash. If I’ve missed any out and you‘re feeling pedantic, add them in a comment at the end of this blog.

Bar
Bifta
Black
Block
Broon
Brown
Bud
Chronic
Dairty
Dope
Draw
Dirt
Dirty
Dirty res
Ganja
Hash
Herb
Good Stuff
Green
Leaf
Mary Jane
Poll
Pollen
Pot
Product
Res
Resin
Rocky
Schmee
Shit
Shizzle
Skunk
Smoke
Snifter
Snifter McBifta
Soap
Soap bar
Soapy
Soapy joe
Stuff
Weed
Widow
Wood

It has occurred to me that I may unwittingly be providing undercover cops - who still call joints reefers and pay 30 for scores of res - with all the information they need to infiltrate the rough and tumble world that the rest of us operate in on a daily basis. But in actual fact, the above list merely shows that anything and everything can be, has been and will be used to describe the wondrous substance that is cannabis/weed (that’s cannabis resin/herbal cannabis to you coppers). So if the clueless CID ever intercept my text messages and note my request for ‘10 key of wood to be picked u fae the don’, maybe I am ordering ten kilos of hash, to be collected from the River Don. Or maybe I’m simply ordering 10 kilos of timber from an Aberdeen supporter. Although given my previous, I’d stake out the littoral location just in case, boys, if I were you. The leopard never changes its spots, right?