Mila Jansen

Mila Jansen is one of the most singular and respected figures in the history of global cannabis. Born in Liverpool in 1944 and moving to Amsterdam as a child, she has traversed six decades of cannabis culture as an actress, witness and innovator, accumulating a track record that few men in the industry can match.

Amsterdam in the 60s: the beginnings

In 1965, at the age of 21, Mila opened the Kink 22 fashion boutique in Amsterdam, which quickly became a meeting point for the local counter-culture. In November 1967, the space was transformed into a tea-house, an informal forerunner of coffeeshops, where people shared, without selling, what was brought in from Turkey, Lebanon or Afghanistan by travelers passing through.

Fourteen in India: initiation to hash

When the tea-house attracts the attention of the police, Mila leaves for India with her daughter. She stayed for fourteen years. In the Himalayan valleys, she learns the ancestral technique of charas, Mila's first job was to harvest the fresh resin from the cannabis plants by hand. This stay was a profound initiation into the hash-making traditions of South Asia, which Mila absorbed and then passed on to the Western world.

The return to Amsterdam and the invention of the Pollinator

Back in Amsterdam in the late 1980s, Mila realized that European hash was of poor quality. She first started growing it, then looked for a solution to separate the trichomes from the rest of the plant more efficiently than existing manual methods.

Her inspiration came from a tumble dryer: if centrifugal force separates clothes from dirt, why not use it to separate resin crystals from flowers? In 1994, she presented the Pollinator® at the High Times Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, the world's first machine to mechanically separate cannabis trichomes. The audience was stunned. Jack Herer and Soma are in the audience.

The Hash Queen and her inventions

Building on the success of the Pollinator, Mila developed the Ice-O-Lator®, filter bags for trichome separation using iced water, and the Bubblelator, a machine dedicated to water hash extraction. These three innovations are now industry standards for solvent-free extracts, used from artisanal workshops in Amsterdam to the laboratories of the biggest American concentrate brands.

In 1997, she opened the Pollinator Shop in Amsterdam, which became a place of pilgrimage for hash enthusiasts the world over. High Times Magazine awards her a Lifetime Achievement Award and ranks her among the 100 most influential people in the cannabis industry.

A pioneering woman in a man's world

In a largely male sector, Mila never faced competition from others: her product was so different that it created its own market. She has published her autobiography, How I Became the Hash Queen, which retraces half a century of adventures between Amsterdam, India, Afghanistan and the Himalayan peaks. Now in her eightieth year, she continues to smoke her daily hash and take part in major international cannabis events.