The Hash Queen

THE BORDER OF Afghanistan and Pakistan, 1968. A young Dutch woman and her child sit at the desk of a customs official, chatting casually while sipping tea and eating cookies. A large bag rests between the woman’s knees. Meanwhile, machine-gun-toting soldiers are searching the bus she was on for contraband, focusing on the few Europeans who have just crossed the Khyber Pass. The search finishes, the official carries the woman’s bag to the bus for her, and the child waves goodbye. The bag contains 12 kilos of top-quality Afghan hash. The bag’s owner is Mila Jansen, a.k.a. the Hash Queen.

The remote steppes of Kazakhstan, 2002. In the company of several police escorts/guides, a group of foreigners drive a jeep into a field of wild marijuana and a middle-aged woman hauls equipment onto the ground strewn with trampled pot plants. The acres of self-sown bud stretch as far as the eye can see. Buckets of ice brought from the distant town are dumped into a barrel lined with cloth bags and the woman and her companions take turns vigorously stirring. Local police and Russian researchers are all equally charmed by the woman and the result of her efforts—only Mila Jansen, who by now has become an intrepid world-traveling hash expert, would go to such extremes in the name of hashmaking.

Mila is not known for being a smuggler, or a research scientist, but her relationship with, while cheered by throngs of fans chanting her name. In this era of female empowerment, her book is being heralded as an invaluable contribution to cannabis stor. recognized her as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Cannabis last year, and soon after she was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award. How did this woman distinguish herself as an entrepreneur in a male-dominated industry and become one of the world’s foremost experts on hashmaking?