Pot Planet: Adventures in Global Marijuana Culture

By Brian Preston

Marijuana is cultivated in nearly every region of the world, from the jungles of Laos to the bedsits of Manchester - and is smoked and enjoyed for medicinal, recreational and spiritual purposes by an estimated 200 million people worldwide. In Pot Planet, Brian Preston set out on a global ganja safari to explore strange new cannabis cultures, to seek out new growers activists and other reefer revolutionaries... and to boldly get baked with each of them.

Preston's journeys take him across every stratum of pot cultivation and enjoyment. In Cambodia and Laos he explores the final frontiers of Third World dope tourism. In California, he takes a clear-eyed look at the medicinal marijuana movement, while in Britain, Spain and Switzerland, he finds grudging governments caching up with public tolerance. At the Cannabis cup in Amsterdam he joins the raucous multi-day tasting competition at the international summit of best breeders, growers and connoisseurs in the world.

Part investigative travelogue, part cultural history, part manifesto for the unfettered enjoyment of nature's most pleasing herb, Pot Planet is an hilarious odyssey into the multifaceted world of hemp.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Release date: Jul 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781782397915

Brian Preston

BRIAN PRESTON lives on Vancouver Island with his wife, child, and in-laws. He has been writing for a living for sixteen years, mostly for Canadian and American magazines. The New Yorker called his first book, Pot Planet (Atlantic Books 2002) gimlet-eyed and often hilarious. For a long time he thought by gimlet they meant the alcoholic beverage, but then he discovered a gimlet is also a very sharp woodworking tool resembling a corkscrew. Bruce Lee and Me was published in 2007.