Pot Planet: Adventures in Global Marijuana Culture

Rating:
Summary: Great guide to global ganja
Review: Brian Preston documents his travels as he encounters the people, places and events that make up the core of the world's modern cannabis culture.

Preston's flobal ganja voyage begins in BC, at the first Cannabis Culture Cup in February 2000, held at Marc Emery's home on the Sunshine Coast. From there, Preston travels the world's weedy hotspots, sampling buds and meeting the locals in Nepal, Southeast Asia, Australia, England, Amsterdam, Morocco, BC, and the USA.

Cannabis Culture readers will recognize many of the people who Preston encounters on his travels. In Amsterdam he tokes with Sensi Seeds founder Ben Dronkers, in Australia he hangs at the Nimbin Hemp Embassy and attends their annual Mardi Grass, In California he discusses DEA raids with med-pot icon Dennis Peron. In Vancouver he gets high on buds from Marc Emery, and discusses activism with locals like David Malmo-Levine.

Pot Planet is a perfect snapshot of the people, places and events that make up the global ganja culture during the dawn of the new millennium. The book is written in a friendly, conversational style. It's an easy and enlightening read, and will be enjoyed by both chronic and non-toker alike.

Rating:
Summary: great summer read
Review: Having just completed 'Pot Planet', I'd like to say how great this book is. Being an lover of all things ganja, I am so pleased to see someone finally writing about the truths behind the marajuana culture. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

This travelogue/cultural history study is a fast-paced peek into the history and hypocrises of this happy herb. Without being too much of a tour-guide, and more like a buddy you're bumming around the world with, Preston takes us from the sweet, sticky buds of Vancouver, B.C, to the opium-laced weed of the Far East, stopping at places like England, Switzerland, Spain, Austrailia and the marajuana mecca, the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam on the way.

I recommend this book to anyone who is not able to vacation this year - see the world without leaving your couch!

The book itself read a little fast, with the stops he makes feeling all too brief. Having visited some of the places mentioned myself, I felt there is more that could have been said, but as always, time is a factor.

All in all though, this book is finally a true testament to pot-smoking throughout the world, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys this natural plant, in all her splendor.

Rating:
Summary: It's a Big Stoned World Out There
Review: Thirty years ago, there were plenty of late night delirious conversations about how someday soon you could buy grass at your local supermarket. But pot somehow is a much bigger deal than anyone had thought, a world-wide obsession over a simple weed that millions find fun or useful, and others find perilous. So Brian Preston, a Canadian journalist, decided he would do a worldwide survey of the international marijuana scene. It was a perfect self-assignment: he likes vagabonding, and he likes getting stoned. The result, _Pot Planet: Adventures in Global Marijuana Culture_ (Grove Press) is a hilarious travelogue through smoke filled rooms, with a subtly serious message: "What's more likely to destroy the earth, pot or pollution? And there's a war on pot?"

Preston is a dedicated journalist, or at least he loves his subject so much that he is happy to go to enormous lengths to investigate it. "For much of the research and most of the writing of this book, I was high on marijuana. Now then - it can't be _that_ amotivating." He becomes a judge of the Cannabis Culture Cup, with the difficult task of rating all these strains, and more, in the categories of appearance, fragrance, texture, taste, aftertaste, and stone (and he remarks on the difficulties of evaluating that last category after you have already judged other entrants; he can't, like a wine taster, just spit it out). He has funny stories from all over. "If you want to score anywhere in Asia," Preston advises, "just find a place where they're playing Bob Marley music." In the town of Nimbin, Australia, there are "grass palaces," houses paid for by pot cultivation: "They were hippies; now they're middle class." One wants to franchise pot restaurants in the shape of a giant bong, the Big Bong Burger Bar. In Switzerland, searching out contacts, Preston asks a city employee, a tourist helper, "Do you know where I could by _hemp_ products around here? Like clothing and stuff?" She thinks a minute. "Hmmm. Hemp clothing... No... But we have three stores where you can buy grass!" In Morocco a shady tourist guide assures him about purportedly fine hashish, "Half a kilo, Brian! Very easy to hide in a suitcase for the flight home!" In Canada, backwoods growers have given death threats to those who wish to introduce hemp production for fiber, because of the fear that the low-stoning hemp will cross pollinate and ruin the intoxicant varieties.

In every chapter, Preston shows that American politics have affected global marijuana in ways that not even the most rabidly anti-pot politician would favor. Naturally, Preston knows just what the US and the world ought to do with marijuana laws, but he usually withholds proselytization on the issue. He is an amusing writer with clever comparisons; a stoner holds in his toke so deeply that he eventually disgorges "a cloud of smoke huge and heavy enough to show up on a satellite weather shot." He withholds most of his serious arguments until his last chapter, which is quite accurately titled "Pot Polemic." And he has graceful ambivalence about what legality might bring, having seen a bit of it in Amsterdam, pushed like booze and tobacco: "Is this what legalization would be like? Would pot become just another consumer product, marketed like any other line of goods in Babylon?" Maybe there would be disadvantages, yes, but this book is indispensable for anyone who wants an amusing survey of the current world marijuana situation. Americans, especially, would do well to catch this bigger picture.

Rating:
Summary: It's a Big Stoned World Out There
Review: Thirty years ago, there were plenty of late night delirious conversations about how someday soon you could buy grass at your local supermarket. But pot somehow is a much bigger deal than anyone had thought, a world-wide obsession over a simple weed that millions find fun or useful, and others find perilous. So Brian Preston, a Canadian journalist, decided he would do a worldwide survey of the international marijuana scene. It was a perfect self-assignment: he likes vagabonding, and he likes getting stoned. The result, _Pot Planet: Adventures in Global Marijuana Culture_ (Grove Press) is a hilarious travelogue through smoke filled rooms, with a subtly serious message: "What's more likely to destroy the earth, pot or pollution? And there's a war on pot?"

Preston is a dedicated journalist, or at least he loves his subject so much that he is happy to go to enormous lengths to investigate it. "For much of the research and most of the writing of this book, I was high on marijuana. Now then - it can't be _that_ amotivating." He becomes a judge of the Cannabis Culture Cup, with the difficult task of rating all these strains, and more, in the categories of appearance, fragrance, texture, taste, aftertaste, and stone (and he remarks on the difficulties of evaluating that last category after you have already judged other entrants; he can't, like a wine taster, just spit it out). He has funny stories from all over. "If you want to score anywhere in Asia," Preston advises, "just find a place where they're playing Bob Marley music." In the town of Nimbin, Australia, there are "grass palaces," houses paid for by pot cultivation: "They were hippies; now they're middle class." One wants to franchise pot restaurants in the shape of a giant bong, the Big Bong Burger Bar. In Switzerland, searching out contacts, Preston asks a city employee, a tourist helper, "Do you know where I could by _hemp_ products around here? Like clothing and stuff?" She thinks a minute. "Hmmm. Hemp clothing... No... But we have three stores where you can buy grass!" In Morocco a shady tourist guide assures him about purportedly fine hashish, "Half a kilo, Brian! Very easy to hide in a suitcase for the flight home!" In Canada, backwoods growers have given death threats to those who wish to introduce hemp production for fiber, because of the fear that the low-stoning hemp will cross pollinate and ruin the intoxicant varieties.

In every chapter, Preston shows that American politics have affected global marijuana in ways that not even the most rabidly anti-pot politician would favor. Naturally, Preston knows just what the US and the world ought to do with marijuana laws, but he usually withholds proselytization on the issue. He is an amusing writer with clever comparisons; a stoner holds in his toke so deeply that he eventually disgorges "a cloud of smoke huge and heavy enough to show up on a satellite weather shot." He withholds most of his serious arguments until his last chapter, which is quite accurately titled "Pot Polemic." And he has graceful ambivalence about what legality might bring, having seen a bit of it in Amsterdam, pushed like booze and tobacco: "Is this what legalization would be like? Would pot become just another consumer product, marketed like any other line of goods in Babylon?" Maybe there would be disadvantages, yes, but this book is indispensable for anyone who wants an amusing survey of the current world marijuana situation. Americans, especially, would do well to catch this bigger picture.