A review of two new books on the fledgling medical marijuana industry – one with the fantastic title The Heart Of Dankness – notes how rhetoric and reality are now careening further and further apart:
The mentality that fuels our War on Drugs grows more out of touch and overreactive with each passing year, especially when compared to the actual experience of using marijuana, which both writers convey perfectly. A calm, quiet majority of pot users will continue to enjoy moments just like Smith’s and Frank’s, while state and federal governments will continue a blistering campaign to keep people from experiencing a dried plant that stopped being “countercultural” decades ago. In the gulley between the two sides, we have a multibillion-dollar industry full of unrecognized talent, countless pain-wracked patients taking pills by the dozen, and the periodic destruction of innocent lives like Jose Guerena’s.
It's almost a test of whether modern America is capable of governing itself rationally.
The Dish 