Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine [Paperback]
Author: Wendy Chapkis | Language: English | ISBN: 0814716679 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Direct download links available Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine for everyone book with Mediafire Link Download Link
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.
- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: NYU Press; 1 edition (August 3, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0814716679
- ISBN-13: 978-0814716670
- Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #861,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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.By raisintoastie
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.
Stories from the battle against patients and their medicine. Heart-felt and real. George and I are in it, so it's one of our favorites! :) JeanBy Jean Hanamoto
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