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

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.

Author: Peter Hecht
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 04/07/2014
Pages: 264
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
Size: 9.10h x 5.96w x 0.65d
ISBN: 9780520275430

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 02/17/2014
Booklist 04/01/2014 pg. 6
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2014

About the Author
Peter Hecht is a senior writer for The Sacramento Bee. His reporting on the marijuana phenomenon was honored in the Best of the West journalism awards and earned an Excellence in Journalism prize from the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.