Weed Land

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 <I>Weed Land,</I> an up-close journalistic narrative that chronicles a transformative epoch for marijuana in America.<BR /><BR /> 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, <I>Weed Land</I> reveals the changing political, legal, economic, and social dynamics around pot. Peter Hecht, an award-winning journalist from <I>The Sacramento Bee, </I>offers an independent, meticulously reported account of the clashes and contradictions of a burgeoning California cannabis culture that stoked pot liberalization across the country.