Weed Land: Inside America's Marijuana Epicenter and How Pot Went Legit

by Peter Hecht

Early in the morning of September 5, 2002, camouflaged and heavily armed Drug Enforcement Administration agents descended on a terraced marijuana garden. The DEA raid on the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana, a sanctuary for severely ill patients who were using marijuana as medicine, is the riveting opening scene in Weed Land, an up-close journalistic narrative that chronicles a transformative epoch for marijuana in America.

From the 1996 passage of California’s Proposition 215, the nation’s first medical marijuana law, through law enforcement raids, clinical studies that revealed medical benefits for cannabis, and the emergence of a lucrative cannabis industry, Weed Land reveals the changing political, legal, economic, and social dynamics around pot. Peter Hecht, an award-winning journalist from The Sacramento Bee, offers an independent, meticulously reported account of the clashes and contradictions of a burgeoning California cannabis culture that stoked pot liberalization across the country.

Genres: Nonfiction, Drugs

262 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2014

Reviews

[Nicholas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peter Hecht gives great insight into the marijuana debate through this book. I found it to be a great way to become informed on the topic of medical marijuana. Although there is pro-marijuana bias scattered throughout the book Hecht does give accounts of both the positive and negative effects of marijuana in the United States. I did think that many of the stories and accounts told by Hecht became very repetitive. Overall I found this book to be very informative and a great source on the debate over marijuana.

[Mckinley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly about California, lots of cases and legal info. A chapter about Colorado.

[Bettie]

Description: Early in the morning of September 5, 2002, camouflaged and heavily armed Drug Enforcement Administration agents descended on a terraced marijuana garden. The DEA raid on the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana, a sanctuary for severely ill patients who were using marijuana as medicine, is the riveting opening scene in Weed Land, an up-close journalistic narrative that chronicles a transformative epoch for marijuana in America.

From the 1996 passage of California’s Proposition 215, the nation’s first medical marijuana law, through law enforcement raids, clinical studies that revealed medical benefits for cannabis, and the emergence of a lucrative cannabis industry,Weed Land reveals the changing political, legal, economic, and social dynamics around pot. Peter Hecht, an award-winning journalist from The Sacramento Bee, offers an independent, meticulously reported account of the clashes and contradictions of a burgeoning California cannabis culture that stoked pot liberalization across the country.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weed Land: Inside America's Marijuana Epicenter and How Pot Went Legit by Peter Hecht (University of California Press 2014)(363.450979). This is a journalistic look into the change in marijuana's fortunes in the eyes of mainstream America. My rating: 7/10, finished 9/22/2014.