Why Marijuana Should Be Legal

by Ed Rosenthal, Steve Kubby, S. Newhart (With)

Overview

Marijuana hit mainstream America over 30 years ago and has been accepted by a large segment of society ever since. Despite government efforts to isolate and eliminate its use, it is more popular now than ever. Why Marijuana Should Be Legal analyzes the effects of marijuana and marijuana laws on society. The book addresses the drug's industrial and medical applications, preserving our Constitutional rights, economic costs, health effects, and sociological aspects. New and updated information includes how state officials are acting against the legalization of marijuana and how U.S. marijuana laws are based on inaccurate and outdated information. In discussing such issues and many more, the book presents clear, documented evidence for all of its conclusions. Also included is an annotated list of organizations that lobby for change of marijuana laws. "Rosenthal and Kubby offer crisp, well-reasoned arguments for legalizing marijuana." -- Mike Tribby, Booklist "[A]n important contribution to the current national dialog on moves toward the decriminalization of this controversial drug." -- The Midwest Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781560254812
Publisher:	Running Press Book Publishers
Publication date:	04/02/2003
Edition description:	Subsequent
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x (d)

About the Author

Recognized throughout the world as the leading authority on marijuana, best-selling author ED ROSENTHAL has written and edited more than a dozen books about marijuana cultivation, social impact, and policy that have cumulatively sold over one million copies. His Ask Ed™ advice column has been in print for 19 years. For the last year, Ed has been the host of the "420 Report" radio show featured monthly on the Bay Area’s community radio station, KPFA 94.1 FM. He has also appeared as a guest on other radio shows and at lectures on marijuana throughout California and beyond. Throughout the last 25 years, Rosenthal has been an integral part of marijuana law reform movement, both socially and politically. A key member of the team that placed proposition 215 on the 1996 ballot in California, he continues to work locally and nationally toward a saner drug policy.

In 1998 STEVE KUBBY ran as the Libertarian California gubernatorial candidate and received over 70,000 votes. Currently, Kubby produces video online content for clients, including Pot TV, where he produces a news show, which receives 500,00 hits a month and has been featured on MTV, Fox News, CBC and Tech TV.

Editorial Reviews

Far from being a crippling addictive lure, marijuana is actually "one of the most benign substances known to man," according to this fact-filled and impassioned pro-pot manifesto originally published in 1996. The authors, marijuana-law reform activists, detail weed's many medicinal uses in the treatment of diseases like AIDS, glaucoma and cancer, examine the wonders of industrial hemp, and tout legalized marijuana as a potential economic boon and a lucrative tax-cow. The real problem, they argue, is the criminalization of marijuana, which has wasted untold billions, trampled our Constitutional liberties and thrown millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens into jail even as it has fueled crime by taking marijuana out of the legal marketplace and putting it in the hands of criminal syndicates. They blame this policy of prohibition on an unholy alliance of panicky parents, pharmaceutical and liquor companies eager to maintain their monopoly on medicinal and mind-altering substances, and the law-enforcement and prison industries that thrive on the war against pot. The authors amass a wealth of statistics and carefully reasoned arguments to support their controversial view and conclude with a helpful list of marijuana-law reform organizations and a quixotic exhortation to tokers to take vigorous action on behalf of legalization. This book is a compelling challenge to the prohibitionist orthodoxy. (Jun.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly