Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine - Hardcover

Chapkis, Wendy; Webb, Richard J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814716660 ISBN 13: 9780814716663

Publisher: NYU Press, 2008

Synopsis

Dying to Get High with Susie Bright on Boing Boing!

Warring Wines; ’You Want to Fight?’; Nurse Mary Jane in Santa Cruz

High Times interviews the authors

Alternet excerpt of the book ("How Pot Became Demonized")

Discussion from the Santa Cruz Metro

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 sociologist 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/Men’s 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 pothead, good drugs from bad, medicinal effects from just getting high. 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.

About this title

About the Author:

Wendy Chapkis is Professor of Sociology and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, ME. She is the author of the award-winning book Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor and Beauty Secrets: Women and the Politics of Appearance.

Review:

"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."
-Terry Williams,author of Crackhouse: Notes from the End of the Line

"Offering nuance in the place of slogans, Dying to Get High tells an inspiring story of the tactics and philosophies of a little-understood health movement."

-Steven Epstein,author of Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research

“Criticizes the disconnect between public policy and practical knowledge of the lives of medical marijuana users.”-The Chronicle Review

"The authors offer a compelling take on the political and cultural debates that surround this issue."

-Portland Phoenix

"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

"Chapkis and Webb offer a well-written exposition of the polemics involved in the medical marijuana controversy. . . . Chapkis and Webb have skillfully intertwined abstract concepts with "real life" experiences that exemplify the costs and benefits of the medical marijuana drama."
-Choice

“An interesting and intelligent contribution to the contemporary history of drugs.”-Stephen Snelders,VU-University Medical Center, Amsterdam

"A thought provoking portrait of a Santa Cruz cannabis collective."
-The Chronicle of Higher Education

“Addresses many important questions and contradictions in government policy, effectively rebutting official propaganda with common sense, scientific facts and the anecdotal evidence recorded by WAMM patients... the book is so well-written and researched that even the most hard-hearted will be persuaded that the Fed’s policies against the medicinal use of cannabis need to change now.”-High Times

"Their book offers an important overview of a public policy matter that is certain to become more significant in the coming years."
-SocietyBooks of Note

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0814716660
• ISBN 13: 9780814716663
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272