Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America
How earnest hippies, frightened parents, suffering patients, and other ordinary Americans went to war over marijuana
In the last twelve years, twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana. To many, continued progress seems certain. But pot was on a similar trajectory forty years ago, only to encounter a fierce backlash. In Grass Roots, historian Emily Dufton tells the remarkable story of marijuana's crooked path from acceptance to demonization and back again, and of the thousands of grassroots activists who made changing marijuana laws their life's work.
During the 1970s, pro-pot campaigners with roots in the counterculture secured the drug's decriminalization in a dozen states. Soon, though, concerned parents began to mobilize; finding a champion in Nancy Reagan, they transformed pot into a national scourge and helped to pave the way for an aggressive war on drugs. Chastened marijuana advocates retooled their message, promoting pot as a medical necessity and eventually declaring legalization a matter of racial justice. For the moment, these activists are succeeding--but marijuana's history suggests how swiftly another counterrevolution could unfold.
"A comprehensive history of marijuana legalization in America...Dufton puts years of dedicated research, interviews, and social scrutiny to impressive use...The author's astute, well-rounded report spotlights the virtual tug of war of the movement and pays close attention to each side's setbacks and advancements. She presents an engrossing, evenhanded timeline of the marijuana legalization revolution and its backlash...A lively, perceptive refresher course on the politics of pot."―Kirkus Reviews
"Dufton makes a potent argument that, 'more than any other legal or illegal substance, marijuana is a drug that makes people care.'"―Publishers Weekly
“A balanced, comprehensive, scrupulously researched, and vividly rendered narrative cultural and political history of marijuana in America. Emily Dufton’s passion for her subject matches the fervor of the pro- and anti-marijuana movements she chronicles. This book puts her well on the way to becoming one of the preeminent drug historians of her generation.”—Martin Torgoff, author of Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs and Can’t Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000
“Emily Dufton populates this brisk, three-act drama with a fascinating cast of marijuana activists and culture warriors, and reminds both sides that the long, see-saw struggle over America’s most symbolically potent drug is far from over.”—David T. Courtwright, author of Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America and Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World
“In Grass Roots, Emily Dufton traces the evolution of thinking and activism on marijuana over the past fifty years and provides important recommendations as we grapple with questions of decriminalization today. But even more than a compelling narrative history of marijuana in America, Dufton’s is the story of the power of social movements to transform society and of subsequent resistance to those transformations. No matter what side of the marijuana debate you’re on, Grass Roots will make you reflect on the meaning of democratic values and the role of government in our lives. A critical read.”—Elizabeth Hinton, author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America
"Emily Dufton has done an admirable job focusing on the activists, both pro- and anti-marijuana, who have helped steer the conversation, and in some cases, the legality of our favorite weed. And she ends with a cautionary note: if you don't defend your freedom, it can be whisked away by a reactionary regime intent on imposing their morality on the multitudes."―Larry "Ratso" Sloman, author of Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana
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