Marijuana & Hemp: History, Uses, Laws and Controversy
By John McCabe ; Carmania Books, 2011

New-agey author John McCabe sent us his new book, "Marijuana & Hemp," but we looked on Amazon and saw that he forgot to tell us it's a re-packaged version of his 2010 book "Hemp: What The World Needs Now." That seems like cheating somehow, but we promised him we'd review the book, so we'll do that now.

McCabe covers everything marijuana-related here, making this book a good starting point for someone who is getting up to speed on the marijuana scene. The book is all over the place, with chapters on hemp history, the "Hippy" Trail, and "The Palm Oil Debacle" -- who knew that the sprawl of palm oil plantations is destroying natural habitat in Southeast Asia? The point being that oil made from hemp seeds would be a healthier choice for both humans and their environment.

A large part of the book is devoted to the conspiracy to wipe out the hemp industry by various bankers and industrialists, in association with Harry Anslinger and, of course, William Randolph Hearst.

"Marijuana & Hemp: History, Uses, Laws and Controversy" is a clutter of pot trivia, and also has appendixes full of interesting-yet-slightly-dated material. Want to see a re-print of Representative Ron Paul's 2007 pro-hemp speech to Congress? It's in there. Old white guys who have smoked pot are well represented: another appendix entry re-prints a 2006 letter from Jack Herer to then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Overkill? Maybe. But the glossary of names in the book is fairly cool: McCabe drops every celebrity name that could possibly be connected to marijuana, from Barack Obama to David Lee Roth.

The last chapter of the book is about nuclear proliferation and has absolutely nothing to do with marijuana. I spotted a number of fact-check-errors, and the writing is sometimes clunky -- you'd think that if McCabe was going to re-hash and update a previous book and re-title it, he would have hired a college English major to help him clean things up a bit. McCabe writes that Fitz Hugh Ludlow first has his book "The Hasheesh Eater" published in Putnam's magazine in 1850 -- Ludlow would have been 14 at the time, so that's wrong. (That one stood out because we did a piece on Ludlow in Mary Jane #3: "The Hasheesh Eater -- Best-selling Book of 1857 Caused Cannabis Craze.")

Few of the photos or art in the book are properly credited. They are poorly reproduced, and many of the images are ones we've seen a million times before -- the Reefer Madness movie poster and whatnot.

Despite some rough edges, Marijuana & Hemp is loaded with marijuana facts. The negative -- people are thrown in jail for messing with it, because our system is insane. The positive? Unlimited applications -- McCabe mentions that phytoremediation is a great use for the hemp plant. The plant quickly sucks up contaminants, and can then be harvested and disposed of safely. Let that be a warning to potheads out there who are forced to smoke unregulated product that is not tested for quality and potency! According to McCabe, experiments using hemp to remove toxins from soil have taken place in Chernobyl, and you'd think that inhaling radioactive material into your lungs would be bad for them, so let's hope those Ukrainians aren't smoking that shit!

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Editors note: this was written and posted to the Internet before the Japanese Tsunami and subsequent plutonium leaks and whatnot, and now McCabe's anti-nuke stance seems like a real good idea.

We're now glad he stuck it in his book. Also, in a post-March 11 world we might not have made such a crude nuke joke, so sorry about that.

This story originally published in Mary Jane Magazine #4, Spring 2011.