Meet Frenchy Cannoli, Hash Activist and Educator

We’ve had the pleasure of hearing Madame Cannoli talk about Frenchy Cannoli, who was her husband, hash activist, teacher, educator, and a huge contributor to the cannabis community.

Who is Frenchy?

Frenchy used to make rosin, but his main focus was hashish. He started out in northern India in 1980, he would go to the Himalayan mountains where there was a high concentration of cannabis plants. He would make “charas” by rubbing the trichomes between his palms until they began to stick and form “fingers” that you can smoke directly. He did that for eight seasons.
He made friends with Afghanistan refugees with whom he practiced some dry seeding. He also worked in Morocco, where he started smoking.

He came to California in the 80s, when hashish wasn’t well-known thanks to the FDA’s involvement in cannabis pipelines.
Frenchy would go to conferences and show people how to smoke hashish, so much so that he was known for his hookah, quasar, and shisha attachment that allowed everyone to smoke hash together.
In California, Frenchy and Madame Cannoli had a manufacturing facility in Oakland, although California’s legislation made expansion a really difficult task.

During the pandemic, he focused on his educational legacy instead of production, even working on a film called Frenchy Dreams of Hashish with the documentary filmmaker Jake Remington, and he wrote a book called the History of Cannabis Concentrates, which is yet to be released.

Where will the documentary air?

It’s already been shown three times in California and will be screened in New York in Seattle and Manhattan. Also, it will be at the Grow Up conference on Sunday, the 11th of September in Canada. It’ll be in Chicago later on September 23rd at the ChiTown Drive-in.

How long is the documentary?
It’s 90 minutes long. That’s about the standard length for a documentary.

Final notes

Frenchy also taught a class on hash-making called the Lost Art of Hash Making, with his apprentice, Laura Bell.
When I (Madame Cannoli) and Laura plan to pick up these classes. Just like Frenchy did, we’ll teach people to process about 350g of flower and get about 10-15% return. If you do this twice a day, you make around 90g. A 500g washer can do 54 pounds of hash at a time.

Madame Cannolie joins the stream below to discuss the project they were working on before his passing. Learn more about Frenchy and everything he was training and teaching.  If you want to see more articles chck out how to clean your glass pipes.