Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know(R) provides readers with a non-partisan primer covering everything from the risks and benefits of using marijuana to what is happening with marijuana laws around the world. This book serves as the price of admission for any serious discussion about marijuana legalization.

With the increase in states legalizing marijuana, understanding the debate about marijuana is more important than ever. Learn about the movement to legalize, the arguments on each side, and what it means for patients, state economies, and legal systems. Examine issues including the history of the movement toward legalization in the United States, efforts toward legalization around the globe, the risks/benefits of marijuana use, how it works in the body, safety regulations, economic impact of legalization, problems surrounding patchwork legalization across the nation, and the dark side of marijuana: addiction.

In 1996, California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana when voters passed Proposition 215, also known as the Compassionate Use Act. Since then, 24 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws legalizing marijuana in some form. Four states, including Alaska, Oregon, Colorado and Washington, have legalized marijuana for recreational use. Many states, including Arizona and Ohio, have marijuana proposals on an upcoming ballot or are considering legislation to allow for legalized cannabis use. Despite the rapid trend toward legalization, there are many people and groups that are opposed to the decriminalization of the drug. Since the actual medical benefits of marijuana are still unknown, as are long-term effects of recreational use, many in the medical community are opposed to legalizing it. Law enforcement and educators have also been vocal opponents of legalization efforts because of the potential increase in crime that may result. On the other hand, there are many others who are in full support with the push toward legalization. This includes well-known groups such as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and the Marijuana Policy Project. Businesses and entrepreneurs who are poised to make thousands, if not millions, from sales, are actively supporting the new laws. Those who now use marijuana, or those who want to but are deterred because of its legal status, are also in favor of changing the laws. Marijuana 360 examines the perception of marijuana legalization from the perspective of those who are directly involved some aspect of legal marijuana. The authors interview a variety of representatives from different constituent groups that have been affected by marijuana legalization. For example, the authors interview a variety of law enforcement officers from states that have legalized marijuana and from those states that are considering it, to get their impressions of the impact the law has made (or will make) in their area. Other constituent groups include medical professionals, educators, parents, lawmakers, business owners, drug users, corrections personnel, legal personnel, and others. Each chapter will focus on a different group and present that group’s perceptions and impressions of marijuana legalization. Marijuana 360 increases our understanding of what different professionals think about the legalization of marijuana. To help facilitate this, each chapter will begin with a general summary of major points to be, highlight major events or people who play a key role in that topic, provide data and summary information on relevant topics, when appropriate, and provide resources for those who want to seek additional information.

From the leading authority on marijuana—a man who has served as White House advisor on drugs to three different administrations and who NBC News once called “the prodigy of drug politics"—comes the remarkable and shocking exposé about how 21st century pot, today’s new and highly potent form of the drug, is on the rise, spreading rapidly across America by an industry intent on putting rising profits over public health. Smokescreen: What the Marijuana Industry Doesn't Want You to Know examines the inside story behind the headlines, containing accounts from Sabet’s time in the Obama administration to stunning revelations from whistleblowers speaking out for the first time. What it finds is how the marijuana industry is running rampant without proper oversight, leaving Americans’ health seriously at risk. Included are interviews with industry insiders who reveal the hidden dangers of a product they had once worshipped. Also contained in these pages are insights from a major underground-market dealer who admits that legalization is hastening the growth of the illicit drug trade. And more to the heart of the issue are the tragic stories of those who have suffered and died as a result of marijuana use, and in many cases, as a result of its mischaracterization. Readers will learn how power brokers worked behind the scenes to market marijuana as a miracle plant in order to help it gain widespread acceptance and to set the stage for the lucrative expansion of recreational pot. The author of this compelling first-person narrative leading the national fight against the legalization of cannabis through his nonprofit, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (aka SAM) is Kevin Sabet. As a policy advisor to everyone from county health commissioners to Pope Francis, and a frequent public speaker on television, radio and through other media outlets, his analysis is consistently relied upon by those who recognize what’s at stake as marijuana lobbyists downplay the risks of massive commercialization. A book several years in the making, filled with vivid characters and informed by hundreds of interviews and scores of confidential documents, Sabet's Smokescreen lays bare the unvarnished truth about marijuana in America.

Two award-winning journalists offer a “cogent, well-sourced and ambitious analysis of the slow decline of cannabis prohibition in the United States” (Kirkus Reviews). In November 2012, voters in Colorado and Washington passed landmark measures to legalize the production and sale of cannabis for social use—a first in the United States and the world. Once vilified as a “gateway drug,” cannabis is now legal for medical use in eighteen states and Washington, DC. Yet the federal government refuses to acknowledge these broader societal shifts. 49.5 percent of all drug-related arrests involve the sale, manufacture, or possession of cannabis. In the first book to explore the new landscape of cannabis in the United States, investigative journalists Alyson Martin and Nushin Rashidian demonstrate how recent cultural and legal developments tie into cannabis’s complex history and thorny politics. Reporting from nearly every state with a medical cannabis law, Martin and Rashidian interview patients, growers, doctors, entrepreneurs, politicians, activists, and regulators. A New Leaf moves from the federal cannabis farm at the University of Mississippi to the headquarters of the ACLU to Oregon’s World Famous Cannabis Café. The result is a lucid account of how cannabis legalization is changing the lives of millions of Americans and easing the burden of the “war on drugs” both domestically and internationally.

A chronicle of marijuana's journey toward and away from legalization examines how grassroots activists from the 1970s nearly secured its decriminalization before conservative parents and the Reagan administration transformed cannabis into a focus for the war on drugs.