Product Description

Marijuana is cultivated in nearly every region of the world, from the jungles of Laos to the arid hills of northern California. It's smoked and enjoyed for medicinal, spiritual, and recreational purposes by an estimated 200 million people worldwide. In Pot Planet, journalist Brian Preston sets out on a global ganja safari to explore strange new cannabis cultures, to seek out new growers, activists, and other reefer revolutionaries ... and to boldly get baked with each of them. Preston's journeys take him across every strata of pot cultivation and enjoyment. In the Canadian Kootenays he meets hemp farmers struggling to harvest their crop on the fringes of legitimacy. In Cambodia and Morocco he explores the final frontiers of Third World weed enthusiasts. In northern California he takes a clear-eyed look at the medicinal marijuana movement, seeing both its promises and its problems. In England, Switzerland, and Spain he observes grudging governments catching up to public tolerance. And at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam he joins in the raucous multiday tasting competition and celebration at the international summit of the best breeders, growers, and connoisseurs in the world. Part investigative travelogue, part cultural history, part polemic for the unfettered enjoyment of nature's most perfect and pleasing herb, Pot Planet is an unforgettable odyssey into the multifaceted world of hemp, full of wit, insight, and inspiration.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #398691 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-10
• Released on: 2002-04-10
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Amazon.com
It's called "weed" for a reason--marijuana grows practically anywhere, and it has infiltrated deeply into societies around the globe. In Pot Planet, journalist Brian Preston scores big, compiling reports from Thailand, Amsterdam, Australia, his home in Vancouver, B.C., and other hotbeds of the high life. Part travelogue, part buyer's guide, the book is largely experiential reporting--where Preston went, whom he met, how high he got--but never strays far from its strong anti-prohibition message. The rules concerning growing, sales, and use are different nearly everywhere he goes, but there are always rules, and by the end of his travels he finds his paranoia strongly taxed. Preston has a knack for describing the unique qualities of his surroundings, whether natural or cultural; temples in Nepal and muggings in London are as real for the reader as they were for the author. Interviews with growers of all scales, street consumers, and occasional users from Tangier to Kathmandu keep the reader thinking globally, while the closing "pot polemic" encourages Americans to act locally. While Pot Planet won't turn on those who aren't already interested in the herb, statistics suggest that such readers are in the minority. --Rob Lightner

Books in Canada
A few years ago RollingStone magazine asked Vancouver journalist Brian Preston to write a feature on the burgeoning pot-growing business of British Columbia. It was logical territory for Preston. Known to smoke more than a toke or two, Preston had made a specialty of writing articles about quirky religious movements, New Age retreats and counter culture lifestyles for magazines like Details, Playboy and Vogue. The idea of examining how pot is grown and consumed in British Columbia was of course infinitely expandable to the whole world. After all, wouldn't it be worthwhile taking a look at what was happening internationally with this seemingly innocuous drug? What is it about pot which still raises the ire of police and politicians most everywhere? How is it used and tied to religion and life-style in different places? In a wonderful stroke of luck, Grove Press asked Preston to circle the globe to find out. His report, Pot Planet: Adventures in Global Marijuana Culture had some initial intention to be comprehensive. Preston chose some rather obvious places like Nepal, Morocco and British Columbia. Oddly he stroked out some rather essential possibilities like Jamaica, Africa and Mexico, hitting other more tidy and certainly safer places, like Australia, England and Holland.
Preston's research strategy was simply to go to an area well-known for its pot or hashish and connect with the local culture by trying to buy some weed. In most places this was easy. In Australia with its well-known pot centre of Nimbin in northern New South Wales, all he had to do was arrive, follow some potheads home and collect an easy story. Likewise close to home in Vancouver he could just stop by a pot seed supplier called Spice of Life as a way of discovering the nature of different varieties and species with wonderful names like Shishkaberry, Sweet Skunk, Purple Hempstar and Bubbleberry. He went out into the British Columbia mountains to talk to farmers and it's obvious that he preferred mixing with folksy growers rather than unfriendly associates of biker gangs who ran operations nearby which mysteriously escaped the attention of the police. To want to find an easy-going context is natural for a journalist but it doesn't always provide the complete story. Like Hunter Thompson, he should have talked to the bikers as much as the agreeable guys with the shaggy hair and shapeless overalls.
Predictably Preston found out that marijuana use is incredibly varied from place to place. In Nepal the farmers rarely smoked it but fed it to their cows when they were sick to improve their appetite. In Laos the marijuana went into noodle soup for flavour and appetite enhancement. While in Britain he found a feel-good religion built up around pot, the Universal Church of the Holy and Sacred Herb, which endeavoured to return people to a state of consciousness man once knew in Paradise. Preston came across people everywhere who had no ideological commitment but needed pot to suppress pain or improve appetite to override the effects of cancer or AIDS. By the same token, Preston is eager to note and defend marijuana smoking for purely recreational reasons which can be forgotten in the earnestness to push it towards medicinal use.
Even in a book which set out with no high claim to moral seriousness, Preston acknowledges the need to clear away a raft of issues related to lobbying for legitimizing pot's medical use, reefer madness propaganda, police abuse, continued political unease most everywhere over marijuana use and the confusion about whether marijuana inevitably opens the door to harder drugs. Preston does address all of them but usually piecemeal within the context of a particular story. What seems to be simple was certainly never simple. While covering the apparent pothead Shangrila of Amsterdam, Preston has to note that Holland is not as liberal as it so often seems from afar. Officials merely turn a blind eye to personal use, yet increasingly harass and arrest growers. Yet compared with Holland, most places remain obdurately opposed to private consumption. In Canada,for instance, where marijuana is deemed acceptable if used for relieving discomfort caused by major medical problems, there is still official harassment for those who try to obtain it. There are Orwellian dimensions to harassment south of the border where the Drug Enforcement Agency destroys crops in the fields in California rather than bother with formal arrests which will never lead to convictions in court because the local culture is so pro-pot.
Sometimes bordering on gonzo-journalism, Preston's style can be ironic and funny. This helps in certain situations; in places like Morocco or Nepal he nearly forgets marijuana for the other enticements and dangers of the environment. Unfortunately he often forgets that he is writing a book rather than a series of knock-off pieces for a counter-culture tabloid. He sometimes lapses into the rather tired vernacular which Tom Wolfe imitated long ago in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Phrases like "dudes", "sick fucks" and "getting her shit together" abound and undermine the seriousness of his text.
In the end, Preston continues to be perplexed by the fact that a drug, proven innocuous even by comparison with liquor, is so badly maligned. But despite his sybaritic side, Preston admits that marijuana is no cure-all for social evils. He has seen a niece muddy her future with excessive dope-smoking. For many sick people, the use of marijuana is a necessity, a way of alleviating painful symptoms of illness. There is an urgent need for politicians to address this issue despite its contentiousness. For himself, it's a simple innocuous relaxant, better than liquor, softer than any number of drugs. The best of it should be there on liquor store shelves in bright foil packages.

John Ayre (Books in Canada)

From Publishers Weekly
For this adventurous travelogue, freelance journalist Preston (a contributor to Rolling Stone, Details and Vogue) literally smoked his way around the world, investigating marijuana culture in the U.S. and Europe as well as in places as far away as Nepal, Morocco, Australia and Southeast Asia. Although the idea of a journalist smoking himself across the globe might sound like the kind of lightweight assignment dreamed up at a High Times office party, the book, based mostly on Preston's extensive travels, is a marvelously entertaining, well-written and probing look at the world through marijuana, from the plant itself to the subculture of peoples who smoke it (an estimated 200 million worldwide), grow it, sell it and outlaw it. Throughout, Preston proves himself to be both an intrepid traveler and a fine storyteller. He effortlessly weaves tales humorous and harrowing, vividly rendering his environs and introducing readers to an array of fascinating characters, from growers in Vancouver to activists in London and a variety of guides and acquaintances in exotic locales. A copious researcher, he is equally at ease detailing plant science or the evolution of Amsterdam's drug policies. To his credit, Preston avoids introducing any sort of legalization polemic until a final, brief chapter, which is an unfortunate addition. His musings at the book's end only interfere with any conclusions readers themselves might be expected to draw. Still, for those who share an affinity with Preston's subject, this excellent book will be devoured like a tray of brownies.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.