Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana—Medical, Recreational, and Scientific

In this exhaustive argument for the legalization of marijuana, framed as a history of the famous weed, Lee (Acid Dreams) asserts that the official U.S. response to marijuana cultivation, distribution, and use has long been wildly out of proportion to marijuana’s impact on its diverse users and on society at large. While countless people—disproportionately poor and of color—have been criminalized through prohibition enforcement during the rhetoric-laden War on Drugs, Lee notes that no death from marijuana overdose has ever been reported and that the ill effects of alcohol, nicotine, and prescription painkillers (all products of industries that contribute heavily to anti-marijuana efforts) vastly outweigh those of marijuana. Indeed, he basically eschews the concept of ill effects of marijuana, citing numerous studies that indicate a breathtaking range of medical benefits. Featuring a huge cast of activists, doctors, patients, distributors, decriers, judges, bureaucrats, and elected officials, Lee’s sprawling, not impartial, thoroughly documented survey comprises an untiring compendium of police harassment incidents, success stories of pot as palliative, and cases of governmental disregard for (or suppression of) scientific research.