Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America, by Bruce Barcott
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Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America, by Bruce Barcott
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The legalization of marijuana is the next great reversal of history. Perhaps the most demonized substance in America, scientifically known as Cannabis sativa, simply a very fast growing herb, thrived underground as the nation's most popular illegal drug. Now the tide has shifted: In 1996 California passed the nation's first medical marijuana law, which allowed patients to grow it and use it with a doctor's permission. By 2010, twenty states and the District of Columbia had adopted medical pot laws. In 2012 Colorado and Washington state passed ballot measures legalizing marijuana for adults age 21 and older. The magnitude of the change in America's relationship to marijuana can't be measured in only economic or social terms: There are deeper shifts going on here - cultural realignments, social adjustments, and financial adjustments. The place of marijuana in our lives is being rethought, reconsidered, and recalibrated. Four decades after Richard Nixon declared a War on Drugs, that long campaign has reached a point of exhaustion and failure. The era of its winding down as arrived. "Weed the People" will take readers a half-step into the future. The issues surrounding the legalization of pot vary from the trivial to the profound. There are new questions of social etiquette: Is one expected to offer a neighborly toke? If so, how? Is it cool to bring cannabis to a Super Bowl party? Yea or nay on the zoning permit for a marijuana shop two doors down from the Safeway? Plus, there are the inevitable conversations between parents and children over exactly what this adult experiment with marijuana means for them.
Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America, by Bruce Barcott - Amazon Sales Rank: #172162 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-13
- Released on: 2015-10-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.00" w x 5.75" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 336 pages
Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America, by Bruce Barcott Review Journalist Barcott (The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird, 2008, etc.) goes on a long, strange trip to document the changing fortunes of Big Dope.Fortunes is the operative word: There's plenty of money to be made in the marijuana business, and there are countless variations that can be found in the industry trade shows the author pops in on at various points in this engaging book. As he observes, it was the days of Richard Nixon that saw both a sharp upswing in prosecution for drug offenses and a loosening on the edges of various hemp-related crimes. Even in places such as North Carolina, not everyone bought Nixon's call for the death penalty for dealers, and several states "passed laws that made the possession of small amounts of pot legal or, at worst, a minor infraction." The pattern holds today: In Barcott's two case studies of Washington state and Colorado, possession and use of pot are legal, and the federal-state divide looms very wide-even as the public perception of marijuana is radically changing, such that in 2013, 58 percent of the respondents to a Gallup poll favored legalization. No stranger to on-the-ground research, the author secured a medical marijuana card, and he takes readers on a grand tour of dispensaries, potions, tinctures" and his own blown mind: "When you absorb more than 40 years of messages about the horrors of marijuana, walking into a dispensary where it's all on display, without shame or fear, can be an utterly disorienting experience." Yet, silly title aside, Barcott's book is entirely earnest. As the author notes, the feared explosion in crime has not happened in those test-case states, but its opposite has, while instances of racially based injustice and needless prosecutorial expenses have fallen dramatically. Will the rest of the country follow suit? To judge by Barcott's useful book, you'd do well not to bet against it. Kirkus Reviews"""Weed the People..".did provide an engaging look at the flux we are undergoing today." Bellingham Herald/Bookmonger""In engaging, well-reported vignettes, Barcott undergoes with the reader a kind of parallel self-education... By the end of his persuasive and surprisingly inspirational account, Barcott is again an occasional smoker who can separate his bourgeois habit from the unwashed hordes at Hempfest." Seattle Weekly"
About the Author Bruce Barcott, a former Guggenheim Fellow in nonfiction, is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Rolling Stone, National Geographic, the Atlantic Monthly, Outside magazine, and many other publications. The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, his critically praised true story of a woman fighting a global corporation and a corrupt government to save the world's most beautiful bird, was reviewed on the front cover the New York Times Book Review, and has been adopted as a "One Book" choice by a number of cities and colleges across the United States. His previous book, The Measure of a Mountain, earned the Washington State Governor's Award. He lives on an island near Seattle with his wife, the memoirist Claire Dederer, and their two children.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful. America Is Going To (Legalized) Pot By Kevin L. Nenstiel Like it or not, the era of legalized weed is upon us. Four states and DC have passed recreational marijuana laws by popular referendum, while medical marijuana is legal in so many states, I can't find an accurate up-to-date count. Some people like this, some hate it, and I still struggle. Regardless of your position, though, the changing climate is real. Seattle-area journalist Bruce Barcott decided the time was right to investigate what that means.Barcott admits initially having dim opinions about legalized marijuana. Despite college experimentation, his opinion of pot, and pot smokers, was largely based on ONDCP leaflets, DARE seminars, and Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No." Then Washington Initiative 502 crossed his electoral view. Unlike Colorado's "pot is safer than liquor" bill, Washington's referendum turned on issues of justice. Ham-handed enforcement of federal and state drug laws unfairly targeted Hispanics, African Americans, and white trash, with Orwellian consequences.Like many fair-minded citizens before him, Barcott realized he didn't know enough. Not just enough facts, but enough people. He confesses thinking medical marijuana was for "just late-stage cancer patients or pain-faking stoners." When he actually met the well-scrubbed lawyers pushing Initiative 502, the nerdy entrepreneurs spearheading commercial pot, or the remarkably ordinary people using--professional dancers with aching joints, AIDS sufferers, decorated soldiers with PTSD nightmares--he found a very different, more nuanced story.It wouldn't be unfair to compare Barcott's narrative to Homer's Odyssey. We could compare his discovery of cannabis creams (that don't induce highs) for his aching joints to Circe's island, or Colorado's Cannabis Cup 2014 to the Lotus Eaters. But more than metaphors, what matters is that Barcott traveled a world that, amid changing laws and ethics, is hardly recognizable, even to anyone who visited Denver just five years ago. The people drive Barcott's journey.People like Tripp Keber, a Colorado entrepreneur who hopes to become America's first marijuana billionaire. Unable, by Federal law, to store pot proceeds in chartered banks, he instead invests his profits in increasingly sophisticated marketable products. His intricate plans, forward thought, and technological savvy make pot-peddling almost respectable. Tripp's transition from buying sketchy weed beneath sketchy kitchen tables, to spearheading massive marijuana trade shows, forms a thread weaving throughout the Colorado leg of Barcott's journey.People like Dennis Peron, Barcott's most memorable interview, despite only featuring in one chapter. Back in 1990, Peron's partner, like many Castro District homosexuals, required intensive AIDS drugs that caused vomiting, making keeping the drugs down impossible. Smoking weed bypassed the spewing, but procuring weed landed Peron in jail, so his allies managed to pass America's first medical marijuana referendum. Thus today's two great upheavals, same-sex marriage and legalized pot, emerged from the same chrysalis.People like Kevin Sabet, a leading voice defending status quo drug enforcement and advocating tough marijuana interventions. His lucrative nationwide speaking tours have made him legendary in anti-drug circles. Yet Barcott describes him lecturing a roomful of Seattle drug cops, who roll their eyes as Sabet rehashes anti-drug propaganda decades out of date. As Barcott writes: "When confronted with new evidence that challenged the beliefs of those in power, those in power dismissed the evidence."This book overlaps with Johann Hari's Chasing the Scream. They draw similar conclusions that most current anti-drug rhetoric is driven more by moral umbrage than scientific facts. They both pin responsibility for this hysteria first on founding drug enforcer Harry J. Anslinger, then on successor politicians scared of being called "soft." They agree that current knowledge, coupled with changing social attitudes, means the time has come to change America's approach to drugs, and drug patients.But these books aren't essentially interchangeable. Hari addresses the entire global Drug War, from Anslinger to today; Barcott focuses on America, pot, and mainly the present. Hari is synoptic; Barcott is specific. Hari strives, sometimes unsuccessfully, to maintain journalistic dispassion; Barcott jumps into the story, samples the product, and, Boswell-like, helps create the story by asking dangerous questions. Hari and Barcott aren't doing the same thing. Read both together to better understand the entire controversy.Society's changing drug standards are real, happening right now. History stands still for nobody. And whether you advocate more and broader legalization, or prefer strengthening today's drug laws and enforcing them rigorously, you need serious facts. Anybody who's smoked a doobie, seen they didn't turn maniacal, and thereafter stopped trusting propaganda, knows why the debate is turning. Rather than political camouflage, we need factual transparency. This debate will happen, and we mustn't get left behind.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful. Excellent look at the current cannabis situation in the US By Orion This book is a very interesting discussion of the current state of marijuana in the US. It starts with the history of prohibition, and then covers a wide range of topics including legislation, medical science, economics, cultural acceptance, and personal anecdotes. The author writes about the people who have influenced the culture like Nancy Regan and also ordinary people like producers, consumers, veterans, and patients. He did extensive research, tracking down obscure information from government agencies, and writing letters to people in jail. Obviously, a lot of work went into this book.Most of the book takes a positive view of progress towards legalization, with information about what's going on in Washington and Colorado. But Barcott also tries for a balanced view by talking about some very real problems associated with marijuana. Edibles are a problem. Marijuana should not be consumed by young people because it seems to have an unfortunate effect on developing brains. People with a tendency towards schizophrenia should definitely avoid cannabis because it may trigger psychotic episodes. The author interviewed a very interesting researcher on that last one -- read the book if you want to know more.The cannabis situation is changing rapidly, and no doubt this book will have a rather short shelf life. Two years from now the situation will have changed again, and it will be time for a new book. But if you want to know what is going on right now, for example if marijuana is coming to your community this year and you have concerns, then this is the book for you.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. I like how the author used knowledge rather than "fear" to ... By Patricia The title speaks for itself ... It's rare (for me), to come across a book relevant to Now , that links understanding to the past. Forward thinkers, this book is for you. This book presents more than just a history lesson; I like how the author used knowledge rather than "fear" to educate his children about Cannibis -- excellent read !!
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