Early in the morning of September 5, 2002, camouflaged and heavily armed Drug Enforcement Administration agents descended on a terraced marijuana garden. The DEA raid on the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, a sanctuary for severely ill patients who were using marijuana as medicine, is the riveting opening scene in Weed Land, an up-close journalistic narrative that chronicles a transformative epoch for marijuana in America. From the 1996 passage of California's Proposition 215, the nation's first medical marijuana law, through law enforcement raids, clinical studies that revealed medical benefits for cannabis, and the emergence of a lucrative cannabis industry, Weed Land reveals the changing political, legal, economic, and social dynamics around pot. Peter Hecht, an award-winning journalist from The Sacramento Bee, offers an independent, meticulously reported account of the clashes and contradictions of a burgeoning California cannabis culture that stoked pot liberalization across the country.

1. The Way It Was Supposed to Be2. Oaksterdam3. Kush Rush4. Reefer Research5. The Pot Docs6. L.A. Excess7. Wafting Widely8. Courting Compassion9. Martyrdom for the Missionaries10. Campaign for Cannabis11. A Mile High and Beyond12. Cultivating Trouble13. Return of the Feds14. Back to the GardenAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex