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"This is a beautifully written account from the front lines of a struggle between a federal drug war complex determined to keep demonizing marijuana and the growing movement of patients and doctors who have found marijuana to be a valuable medicine. Voters in California and many other states have strongly supported the patients. The moving stories in this book show why."
--Craig Reinarman, co-author of Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice
"Chapkis and Webb have done a masterful job in describing the intricacies of the drug debate and offer brilliant analysis on a complex and controversial subject. Both baby boomers and the current teenage population will find this book important and compelling reading."
--erry Williams, author of Crackhouse: Notes from the End of the Line
"Chapkis and Webb’s new book provides a human element to the history, pharmacology, psychology, and politics of medical marijuana in a way that no other work has. The book is as riveting as a detective novel, as informative as a textbook, and as moving as a romance. I loved reading it and sure wish I’d written it."
--Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D., Author of Understanding Marijuana Marijuana as medicine has been a politically charged topic in this country for more than three decades. Despite overwhelming public support and growing scientific evidence of its therapeutic effects (relief of the nausea caused by chemotherapy for cancer and AIDS, control over seizures or spasticity caused by epilepsy or MS, and relief from chronic and acute pain, to name a few), the drug remains illegal under federal law. In Dying to Get High, noted sociologists Wendy Chapkis and Richard J. Webb investigate one community of seriously-ill patients fighting the federal government for the right to use physician-recommended marijuana. Based in Santa Cruz, California, the Wo/MenÃÂs Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) is a unique patient-caregiver cooperative providing marijuana free of charge to mostly terminally ill members. For a brief period in 2004, it even operated the only legal non-governmental medical marijuana garden in the country, protected by the federal courts against the DEA. Using as their stage this fascinating profile of one remarkable organization, Chapkis and Webb tackle the broader, complex history of medical marijuana in America. Through compelling interviews with patients, public officials, law enforcement officers and physicians, Chapkis and Webb ask what distinguishes a legitimate patient from an illegitimate ÃÂpothead,ÃÂ ÃÂgoodÃÂ drugs from ÃÂbad,ÃÂ medicinal effects from ÃÂjust getting high.ÃÂ Dying to Get High combines abstract argument and the messier terrain of how people actually live, suffer and die, and offers a moving account of what is at stake in ongoing debates over the legalization of medical marijuana. |
Compassion and Courage 
Widely considered the "gold standard" of the medi-pot movement, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, a co-op that distributes free cannabis to seriously ill people, provides the central focus of this book.
The activist founders of WAMM, Mike and Valerie Corral, have tirelessly challenged the federal prohibition of cannabis as medicine. WAMM members are stricken with AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and other ailments, but lawmakers in Washington continue to insist that these patients are simply "potheads scamming the system." Against the backdrop of WAMM's struggles and successes, authors Wendy Chapkis and Richard J. Webb examine the history of cannabis and medicine in America, placing the current controversy in context.
Chapters examining scientific research and legal developments are packed with information, plus the book is interspersed with interviews of patients, caregivers, physicians, police and lawmakers that put a human perspective on the need for truly legal medicinal pot.
"Dying to Get High" addresses many important questions and contradictions in the Federal policy, effectively defusing government propaganda with common sense, scientific facts and the anecdotal evidence recorded by WAMM patients. Compassionate readers will be moved by the stories of suffering, and the book is so well-written and researched that even the most hard-hearted prohibitionist will be persuaded that the laws criminalizing the medicinal use of cannabis need to change.
September 16, 2008 | |
