Greg Campbell, coauthor of the bestselling Flawless and Blood Diamonds, presents a compelling, close-up investigation of a hot-button topic: America’s schizophrenic attitude to the legalization of pot.
Campbell, a suburban father whose biggest vice is a cold beer, seems like the last person who would grow weed in his basement. But his attitude changed in 2009, when his home state of Colorado led the nation in mainstreaming medical marijuana. Watching with fascination as above-board and financially thriving dispensaries popped up everywhere, Campbell wondered, “Why not me?” Pot, Inc. chronicles Greg’s journey into DIY ganjapreneurialism, as he learns how to cultivate marijuana, examines America’s often unduly harsh laws, and unearths ignorance about pot’s centuries-old therapeutic value–ignorance the government is desperate to maintain. Along the way, he also gains a very personal insight into the drug’s medicinal value that shapes his opinion about legalization.
About Greg Campbell
GREG CAMPBELL is the author of Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History (a Denver Post, Globe & Mail, and Library Journal bestseller), Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World’s Most Precious Stones (the source material for the Leonardo DiCaprio movie of the same name), and The Road to Kosovo: A Balkan Diary. Campbell is also an award-winning journalist whose his writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal Magazine, The Economist, TheSan Francisco Times, Paris Match, and The Christian Science Monitor, among others. He lives in Fort Collins, CO.
Three books on illegal, or not, drugs
The Washington Post Book Review – May 16, 2012 (Excerpt)
Pot, Inc. (Sterling, $22.95), by Greg Campbell, author of “Blood Diamonds,” is a brisk, clear-headed survey of a complicated topic. That the author managed to write this evenhanded book while running a small (and arguably legal) grow operation in his Colorado home is a testament to his skill as a reporter. Campbell begins with the so-called “Obama Memo,” released by the Justice Department in late 2009. The memo signaled to many users and ganjapreneurs that marijuana would be tolerated by the federal government and therefore was on its way to some form of legalization. The confusion that followed paved the way for an expansion of medical marijuana use and raucous political debate from the city-council level on up. Campbell weaves in a fascinating history of the drug in the United States, including the legal and political story of how marijuana came to be classified as a Schedule I narcotic — more dangerous and less useful than Schedule II drugs such as cocaine and opium. Campbell is a friendly skeptic, largely convinced of pot’s benign nature, but he’s willing to subject the culture of idealists, dropouts, mercenaries and outright criminals that surround it to a healthy dose of sunshine. [Read the full article...]
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THE BLEEDING HILLS A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss
I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith. - 2 Timothy iv. 7
The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]
We are the only country that makes guns, including military-style assault weapons, available to anyone who wants to buy them. This is not freedom. It is a tyranny of death and destruction — a tyranny of which the National Rifle Association is proud. The Washington Post
THE BLEEDING HILLS
