The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis -- Its Role in Medicine, Politics, Science and Culture, edited by Julie Holland, MD (2010, Park Street Press, 545 pp., $19.95 PB)

Cannabis Policy: Moving Beyond Stalemate, by Robin Room, et al., 2010, Oxford University Press, 233 pp., $59.95 PB)

[image:1 align:left]The literature of marijuana is booming. Hundreds of new titles have appeared in recent years and more are coming this year in a bid to assuage the reading public's seemingly insatiable appetite for books about pot. Two of the better contributions from last year are The Pot Book and Cannabis Policy.

One is broad in scope while the other is narrowly focused, but both turn a sharp eye on their respective subject matters. For Dr. Julie Holland and more than 50 contributors to The Pot Book, the subject matter is damned near anything having anything to do with marijuana, while for Robin Room and his crew of academic collaborators, including the University of Maryland's Peter Reuter, Cannabis Policy is all about, well, changing the pot laws.

The Pot Book is a virtual Encylopedia Cannabinica, with contributions ranging from ancient history to cutting edge research. Stoner culture mavens will read about everything from primitive cannabis cults and ancient Chinese medicine to modern pot culture and politics, and they will be regaled by some of the country's leading experts on various aspects of the world of marijuana.

The politics of pot are discussed by the likes of the Drug Policy Alliance's Ethan Nadelmann, NORML's Allen St. Pierre, the ACLU Drug Policy Project's Graham Boyd, and former Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Bruce Mirken, among others. Tommy Chong adds a bit of comic relief about getting busted, although he finds it "not so funny."

But none of that is likely to be news to readers of the Chronicle. What is more exciting is to see contributions from people who have made their reputations outside the marijuana movement. Famed food writer Michael Pollan has a fascinating essay on "Gardener's Rights, Forgetting, and Co-Evolution," while natural medicine figure Dr. Andrew Weil contributes an interview on the clinical applications of cannabis.

A section on the risks of use and harm reduction is noteworthy for actually applying the concept of harm reduction to marijuana use and, one hopes, widening the awareness of harm reduction among readers who aren't wonks or activists. It, too, includes some of the foremost experts on various aspects of marijuana use, such as NORML's Paul Armentano on pot and driving and Professor Harry Levine on race and marijuana arrests.

Likewise, contributions on medical marijuana, pot cultivation, early and recent history, and cannabis culture feature cogent, well-informed writing. Novelist and essayist Douglass Rushkoff's "Cannabis: Stealth Goddess" was especially enjoyable, and an interview with philanthropist and Progressive Insurance founder Peter Lewis looks at a usually neglected part of the world of marijuana -- financing reform.

At more than 500 pages, The Pot Book has something for you if you have any interest in marijuana whatsoever. And even the most obsessive and knowledgeable stoners are going to find new nuggets of information.

[image:2 align:right]While The Pot Book touches on marijuana policy reform, Cannabis Policy is all about it. This is serious, staid, academic stuff, likely to be of interest to serious reformers and activists, but less so for your average pot smoker.

The academics behind Cannabis Policy review the literature on the relationship between marijuana prohibition enforcement policies and use levels and find little correlation, an important but too often overlooked finding. After all, if enforcing pot laws more harshly does not achieve the putative goal of prohibition -- reducing marijuana use -- then why do it?

They also examine alternative approaches to marijuana possession, including depenalization (still illegal, but with non-penal punishments), decriminalization (no criminal record), de facto legalization (the Netherlands), and de jure legalization (Alaska), and their implications, in terms of both policy and politics.

Most usefully, Cannabis Policy examines how far marijuana law reforms can be pushed and still remain within the bounds of the UN drug conventions and, more excitingly, how the conventions could be amended or undone to allow for a legal marijuana industry. The authors are not exactly sanguine about the prospects for undoing a half-century of global prohibition (the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs celebrated its 50^th birthday this month), but they have presented a road map for doing so.

The Pot Book illustrates the scope and breadth of marijuana's impact in the modern world, while Cannabis Policy looks at the nuts and bolts of policy making and the social science that should underpin it. Both are welcome contributions to the literature.