The story is a lively and anecdotal factual account and a cautionary tale of the local and national events that shaped the destiny of late 1900's forest product and fishing industries in Mendocino County and the world we live in. Thus it is a must read for anyone who longs for development of sustainable communities, who would avoid the mistakes of the past, and who would be a partner in the ultimate triumph of conservation.

Early in the morning of September 5, 2002, camouflaged and heavily armed Drug Enforcement Administration agents descended on a terraced marijuana garden. The DEA raid on the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana, a sanctuary for severely ill patients who were using marijuana as medicine, is the riveting opening scene in Weed Land, an up-close journalistic narrative that chronicles a transformative epoch for marijuana in America. From the 1996 passage of California’s Proposition 215, the nation’s first medical marijuana law, through law enforcement raids, clinical studies that revealed medical benefits for cannabis, and the emergence of a lucrative cannabis industry, Weed Land reveals the changing political, legal, economic, and social dynamics around pot. Peter Hecht, an award-winning journalist from The Sacramento Bee, offers an independent, meticulously reported account of the clashes and contradictions of a burgeoning California cannabis culture that stoked pot liberalization across the country.

America’s drug laws have always exerted an unequal and unfair toll on Blacks and Latinos, who are arrested more often than Whites for the possession of illegal drugs and given harsher sentences. In this volume, contributors ask how would marijuana legalization affect communities of color? Is legalization of marijuana necessary to safeguard minority families from a lifetime of hardship and inequality? Who in minority communities favors legalization and why, and do these minority opinions differ from the opinions held by White Americans? This volume also includes analyses of the policy debate by a range of scholars addressing economic, health, and empowerment issues. Comparative lessons from other countries are also analyzed.

“Essentially an encyclopedia of pot, filled with such top 10 lists as ‘best stoner movies’ . . . plus a ‘pot-parazzi’ section with celebrities sneaking a toke.” —Billboard Do you know the difference between burning one and Burning Man? Does using the name Marley as an adjective make total sense to you? Do you chuckle to yourself when the clock strikes 4:20? Are you convinced that the movie Dazed and Confused deserved an Oscar? If you answered “Dude!” to any of these questions, then Pot Culture is the book you’ve been waiting for. For those in the know, it’s the stoner bible. For novices, it’s Pot 101. Either way, Pot Culture encapsulates the history, lifestyle, and language of a subculture that, with every generation, is constantly redefining itself. From exhaustive lists of stoner-friendly movies, music, and television shows to detailed explanations of various stoner tools to celebrity-authored how-tos and an A-Z compendium of slang words and terms, it’s the ultimate encyclopedia of pot. Written by former High Times editors Shirley Halperin (now a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly and a TV talking head) and Steve Bloom (publisher of CelebStoner.com), and featuring contributions by a host of celebrity stoners, including Melissa Etheridge, Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, Redman, Steve-O, and America’s Next Top Model’s Adrianne Curry, Pot Culture provides the answers to everything you ever wanted to know about pot but were too stoned to ask. “This is a fun book that every toker should get their sticky green fingers on. Clever and informative . . . Great book and a must-buy for all us loadies.” —Blogcritics

In the vein of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief and Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox, journalist Emily Brady journeys into a secretive subculture — built on marijuana. Outside the United States, the words ‘Humboldt County’ mean little. Inside the United States — the home of the war on drugs — those words might prompt a knowing grin. For many people, the name is infamous, and yet the place and its inhabitants have been nearly impenetrable. Until now. Humboldt is a narrative exploration of this insular community in northern California, which for nearly 40 years has existed primarily on the cultivation and sale of marijuana. It’s a place where business is done with thick wads of cash, and savings are buried in the backyard. In Humboldt County, marijuana supports everything from fire departments to schools. As legalisation looms, the community stands at a crossroads, and its inhabitants are deeply divided — some want to claim their rightful heritage as master growers and have their livelihood legitimised, while others want to continue reaping the inflated profits of the black market. Emily Brady spent a year living with the highly secretive residents of Humboldt County, and her cast of eccentric, intimately drawn characters take us into a fascinating alternate universe. It’s the story of a small town that became dependent on a forbidden plant, and of how everything is changing as marijuana goes mainstream.

Two award-winning journalists offer a “cogent, well-sourced and ambitious analysis of the slow decline of cannabis prohibition in the United States” (Kirkus Reviews). In November 2012, voters in Colorado and Washington passed landmark measures to legalize the production and sale of cannabis for social use—a first in the United States and the world. Once vilified as a “gateway drug,” cannabis is now legal for medical use in eighteen states and Washington, DC. Yet the federal government refuses to acknowledge these broader societal shifts. 49.5 percent of all drug-related arrests involve the sale, manufacture, or possession of cannabis. In the first book to explore the new landscape of cannabis in the United States, investigative journalists Alyson Martin and Nushin Rashidian demonstrate how recent cultural and legal developments tie into cannabis’s complex history and thorny politics. Reporting from nearly every state with a medical cannabis law, Martin and Rashidian interview patients, growers, doctors, entrepreneurs, politicians, activists, and regulators. A New Leaf moves from the federal cannabis farm at the University of Mississippi to the headquarters of the ACLU to Oregon’s World Famous Cannabis Café. The result is a lucid account of how cannabis legalization is changing the lives of millions of Americans and easing the burden of the “war on drugs” both domestically and internationally.

CNBC anchor Trish Regan takes you behind the scenes of America's thriving pot industry, to show readers things only drug dealers know about this secret world. Forget amber waves of grain. Today, it's marijuana plants that blanket the nation from sea to shining sea in homes, in backyards, and even in our national parks. In Joint Ventures, Trish Regan takes you behind the scenes to explore every aspect of this flourishing underground economy. Her focus is the so-called Emerald Triangle Northern California's Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties where many small-time, part-time marijuana growers contribute to a trade that generates roughly a billion dollars a year. A fascinating investigation into the inner workings of today's exploding American marijuana industry Based on extensive research and interviews by Trish Regan, whose Emmy nominated documentary Marijuana, Inc. attracted more viewers than any documentary in CNBC's history Regan examines all aspects of this new culture. She reveals how small time growers get their start, make (or lose) a fortune, struggle with violence, try to keep up with constantly changing laws and regulations all while walking an increasingly fine line with the Feds Regan reports on the current and potential impact of legalized marijuana on local economies, uncovers the link between marijuana and violent Mexican cartels, questions whether decriminalization would work on a national scale, as it has in Portugal since 2001 As the decriminalization and legalization debates gather steam, Joint Ventures arms you with the facts on both sides of the issue.

This volume "celebrates the beauty, the challenges, and the rewards of growing native plants at home". Organized by season, the author offers guidance on how to plan a garden with birds, plants, and insects in mind; how to shape it with trees and shrubs, paths and trails, ponds, and other features; and how to cultivate, maintain, and harvest seeds and food from a diverse array of native annuals and perennials. She demonstrates to gardeners in California how to boost native plant diversity while attracting wildlife and conserving water.

Reprint. Originally published: c2012. With a new afterword.

After eight months in his childhood home helping his mother through her bout with cancer, Matthew Frank and his wife were themselves desperate for comfort. They found sanctuary in the most unlikely place—amid a collection of outcasts and eccentrics on a plot of land miles outside their comfort zone: a “mostly medical” marijuana farm in California. Pot Farm details the strange, sublime, and sometimes dangerous goings-on at Weckman Farm, a place with hidden politics and social hierarchies, populated by recovering drug addicts, alternative healers, pseudo-hippie kids, and medical marijuana users looking to give back. There is also Lady Wanda, the massive, elusive, wealthy, and heavily armed businesswoman who owns the farm and runs it from beneath a housedress and a hat of peacock feathers. Frank explores the various roles that allow this industry to work—from field pickers to tractor drivers, cooks to yoga instructors, managers to snipers, illegal immigrants to legal revisionists, and the delivery crew to the hospice workers on the other end. His book also looks at the blurry legislation regulating the marijuana industry as well as the day-to-day logistics of running such an operation and all the relationships that brings into play. Through firsthand observations and experiences (some influenced by the farm’s cash crop), interviews, and research, Pot Farm exposes a thriving but unsung faction of contemporary American culture.