Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Everybody must getwell, hip to the history of hemp and all the hobgoblins that made it heinous. Thus the seeming intent of Fairness Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) founder Lee's (The Beast Reawakens, 1997, etc.) tome, a tale of "a remarkable plant that befriended our ancestors." If that sounds a little too inauspiciously H.R. Pufnstuf, the author counters the groove with a tough Texas cop, decidedly unhip with his "jingly spurs," who tells anyone who'll listen that the war on drugs is a sham and scam. Smoking a doobie isn't the worst thing a person could do, said cop avers, and Lee backs that thought up with social history aplenty, ranging from neolithic experiments down to the Kerouac-ian consumers of the Beat Era. (Of the bop jazz soundtrack of that time, the author writes, "[t]he music and the weed were fellow travelers, so to speak, joined at the juncture of hip.") A little righteous paranoia kicks in when Lee looks at the genesis of the Harrison Act, which taxed the production and distribution of opiates. Suffice it to say that the author attributes the anti-hemp tenor to some financial interests on the part of DuPont's "chief financial backer," Andrew Mellon, who aimed to block a "natural alternative" to nascent Big Pharma. There's no smoking gun there, but there's smoke aplenty in between thick, chunky blocks of scientific lore on such matters as the "discovery of the endocannabinoid system" and claims that cannabidiol, a major constituent of the plant, "lowers glucose levels, improves insulin sensitivity, and protects the health of diabetic patients' hearts"--and a good thing, too, for readers tempted to head down to Ben Jerry's for a double scoop of Cherry Garcia while taking a break from Lee's long, earnest and sometimes plaintive text. The author provides plenty of interesting material, but sometimes it's laid on a little too thick. Readers will understand very quickly that pot should be legal and that it's not the scourge that square politicos have made it out to be.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Marijuana, the author tells us, is by far the most popular illicit substance in the United States. Ten thousand tons of it are consumed each year by Americans of all classes and walks of life, and it's easy for people who use it to forget they're committing a crime. But should it be a crime? That's the main thrust of this well-reasoned, entertainingly written, and passionate examination of the social and culture war that surrounds the drug. Marijuana has always been a part of the world's art and culture; famous people who have used it (or are suspected to have used it) include Louis Armstrong, Shakespeare, Rimbaud, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Baudelaire, and Yeats; the first documented use of cannabis for medical purposes was in 2700 BCE; ancient Hindu texts say the herb was a gift from Shiva. So how did we wind up where we are today, with this ancient and fairly benign psychoactive herb being outlawed? It won't come as a surprise to most readers to learn it was political: a new (1906) federal law designed to combat charlatanism in the patent-medicine industry was soon twisted by self-promoting individuals (including William Randolph Hearst, who used his hatred of Mexicans to justify his vilification of marijuana) into something that it was not intended to be. But in the 1960s, Americans mostly younger Americans, spurred into action by Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and other icons began to fight back, and the movement to relegalize the drug was born and continues to this day. The book will probably anger those who believe marijuana should forever remain a controlled substance, but readers open to debate will find plenty of food for thought here.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist

Library Journal
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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. VERDICT Important but not succinct or objective, this work should nonetheless interest policymakers, researchers, legalization sympathizers, and the curious. [See Prepub Alert, 2/20/12.]-Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.