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Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine

Name: Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine
Rating: 4.23 (3 reviews)
ISBN: 9780814716670

Wendy Chapkis, Richard Webb

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An inside look at how patients living with terminal illness created one of the country’s first medical marijuana collectives

Marijuana as medicine has been a politically charged topic in this country for more than three decades. Despite overwhelming public support and growing scientific evidence of its therapeutic effects (relief of the nausea caused by chemotherapy for cancer and AIDS, control over seizures or spasticity caused by epilepsy or MS, and relief from chronic and acute pain, to name a few), the drug remains illegal under federal law.

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.

272 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2008

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About the author

Wendy Chapkis

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Dr. Chapkis is the author of many articles in the area of gender and sexuality including “Sex Workers” (in the anthology "New Sexuality Studies," Seidman, Fischer and Meeks, eds., Routledge 2007), "Soft Glove, Punishing Fist: the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000" (in the anthology "Regulating Sex," Bernstein and Schaffner eds, Routledge 2004), "Trafficking, Migration, and the Law: Protecting Innocents, Punishing Immigrants," (in the journal "Gender & Society," 2003), and "Power and Control in the Commercial Sex Trade," (in the anthology "Sex For Sale", Weitzer ed., Routledge 2000). She has also edited two anthologies ("Loaded Questions: women in the military," and "Of Common Cloth: women in the global textile industry," co-edited with Cynthia Enloe, both published in the 1980s by TNI/IPS) and has authored two books in the area of gender and sexuality ("Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor," Routledge 1997 and "Beauty Secrets: Women and the Politics of Appearance," South End Press 1986).

Research Interests
My current research is in the area of drug policy; in this field, I have published several articles including "Cannabis, Consciousness and Healing" (in the journal "Contemporary Justice Review," 2007), "Mother's Milk and the Muffin Man: grassroots innovations in medical marijuana delivery systems" (co-authored by Richard J. Webb and published in the journal of "Ethnicity in Substance Abuse,'" 2005) and “Patients, ‘Potheads,’ and Dying to Get High” (in the anthology "Production of Reality," Jodi O’Brien ed., Pine Forge Press 2006). I am also the co-author (with Richard J. Webb) of the book "Dying to Get High: marijuana as medicine" (New York University Press 2008).

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