Weed Land

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

Moving from the passage of California's Proposition 215, the nation's first
medical marijuana law, through law enforcement raids and the emergence of
a lucrative cannabis industry, Weed Land reveals the changing
political, legal, economic, and social dynamics of pot. It offers an
independent, meticulously reported account of the clashes and
contradictions of a burgeoning California cannabis culture that stoked
pot liberalization elsewhere, leading to marijuana legalization votes
in Colorado and Washington.

Written by Peter Hecht, an award-winning journalist from The
Sacramento Bee, Weed Land takes readers into the laboratories of
researchers who challenged federal drug policy with clinical studies
revealing the medical benefits of cannabis. It also explores an exploding
marijuana marketplace that pitches compassionate healing with the pure joy
of pot. And it takes readers inside the law enforcement backlash ? and
unfolding consequences ? of a federal crackdown on America's largest
marijuana economy.