Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine
Files
Document Type
Book
Description
In Dying to Get High, noted sociologist Wendy Chapkis and Richard J. Webb investigate one community of seriously-ill patients fighting the federal government for the right to use physician-recommended marijuana. Based in Santa Cruz, California, the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) is a unique patient-caregiver cooperative providing marijuana free of charge to mostly terminally ill members. For a brief period in 2004, it even operated the only legal non-governmental medical marijuana garden in the country, protected by the federal courts against the DEA.
Using as their stage this fascinating profile of one remarkable organization, Chapkis and Webb tackle the broader, complex history of medical marijuana in America. Through compelling interviews with patients, public officials, law enforcement officers and physicians, Chapkis and Webb ask what distinguishes a legitimate patient from an illegitimate pothead, good drugs from bad, medicinal effects from just getting high. Dying to Get High combines abstract argument and the messier terrain of how people actually live, suffer and die, and offers a moving account of what is at stake in ongoing debates over the legalization of medical marijuana.
ISBN
9780814716663
Publication Date
8-3-2008
Publisher
New York University Press
City
New York
Keywords
Pharmacology, Alternative Medicine, Medical Marijauna
Disciplines
Alternative and Complementary Medicine | Health Policy | Medicine and Health Sciences | Pharmacy Administration, Policy and Regulation | Public Policy
Recommended Citation
Chapkis, Wendy, and Richard J. Webb. Dying to Get High: Marijuana As Medicine. New York University Press, 2008.
