As Colorado governor John Hickenlooper points out, “Federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug, so don’t break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly.” While Colorado and Washington have made it legal to smoke, sell, or carry up to one ounce of marijuana, it will take some time to sort out the federal-versus-state issue. Despite the fact that there was no big funding in opposition to the legalization propositions—and despite a recent poll showing that “fifty percent of voters around the country now favor legalizing the drug for recreational use,” cited by Benjamin Wallace-Wells in the December 3, 2012 issue of New York—the battle is hardly over.

With the marijuana debate, medical or otherwise, ongoing and persistent, I knew I wanted to echo that in this anthology with the inclusion of some writing about the facts. So The Marijuana Chronicles includes both fiction and nonfiction pieces. The writer and journalist Rachel Shteir supplied just that in a story about cannabis advocate and multiple sclerosis sufferer Julie Falco, whose brave fight for survival is at once human and legal. The issue raises its head again in former student radical Raymond Mungo’s close-to-home tangled tale of the pursuit of legal and not-so-legal medical marijuana in California. The fact that the subject was taken up yet again but in an entirely fictional way in Thad Ziolkowski’s short story about a medical marijuana farm felt not only like kismet but a reflection of the zeitgeist and confirmation that art and life always share a stage.

Hollywood has long reflected and embraced the change in attitude with such stoner star turns as Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke, Sean Penn’s hilarious Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jane Fonda’s pot-smoking hooker in Klute, Bridget Fonda in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, and the granddaddy of all counterculture stoner films, Easy Rider, wherein Peter Fonda (what is it with these Fondas?) introduces Jack Nicholson to his first smoke (and if you believe that was really Jack’s first toke, you will believe anything). Diane Keaton needed a hit to relax her in Annie Hall, and Jeff Bridges played the ultimate stoner dude in The Big Lebowski.

Like film, literature has been no stranger to the drug, going back to Charles Baudelaire’s 1860 Artificial Paradises, in which the French poet not only describes the effects of hashish but postulates it could be an aid in creating an ideal world. The pleasures, pains, and complexities of marijuana are more than hinted at in works by William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, Hunter S. Thompson, and Thomas Pynchon, to name just a few, and I hope this anthology will add to that legacy and keep the flame of pot literature burning bright.

National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates creates an instant classic for the genre in her dark tale of suburban-meetsurban weed consumption gone wrong, and Linda Yablonsky turns your head inside out with a pot-smoking, cross-dressing, guntoting character as alluring as he is terrifying.

I never expected pothead zombies but that’s just what Maggie Estep delivers in her zany and hilarious story. Cultural critic Edward M. Gómez gives us an urban tale at once real and idyllic, while Josh Gilbert takes us on a stoned journey through Hollywood hell. Amanda Stern offers us a coming-of-age cautionary tale with heart, soul, pot, and coke! And multi–award winning crime fiction author Lee Child could not help but write a story that will keep you guessing till the last line.

Marijuana crosses the ocean in Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan’s story of pot-smoking friends in Singapore, and Abraham Rodriguez rocks us back to the future with his idiosyncratic blend of sci-fi and urban realism.

Bob Holman and Jan Heller Levi produce poems filled with poignancy and humor which remind us that poetry and pot have had a long acquaintance, while award-winning graphic artist Dean Haspiel creates a hallucinogenic world in pictures. As for me, I won’t say how much of my story is real or imagined, but I do have a faded photo of my flower-painted face, which can be had for a price.

This diverse group of writers, poets, and artists makes it clear that there is no one point of view here. Each of them approaches the idea of marijuana with the sharp eye of an observer, anthropologist, and artist, and expands upon it. Some writing projects are difficult; this one was smooth and mellow and a continual pleasure.

As a survivor of the sex-and-drug revolution, I could never have imagined the decriminalization of my generation’s forbidden fruit. Perhaps there is another Anslinger waiting in the wings, but practically every day a new article extols the virtues of medical marijuana and other states get ready to put the drug in the category of alcohol. Is it possible that in a few years it will be easier to buy a pack of joints than cigarettes? I don’t know the answer to that but in the meantime I hope you will sit back, relax, and enjoy these wide-ranging tales of the most debated and discussed drug of our time. Though, according to former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, “That is not a drug, it’s a leaf.”

Jonathan Santlofer

New York City

April 2013

PaRT I

DANGEROUS

L

EE

C

HILD

has been a television director, union organizer, theater technician, and law student. He is the author of the Jack Reacher novels. He was born in England but now lives in New York City and leaves the island of Manhattan only when required to by forces beyond his control. Visit

www.leechild.com

for more information on his books, short stories, and the

Jack Reacher

movie starring Tom Cruise.

my first drug trial

by lee child

Was it smart to smoke a bowl before heading to court? Probably not. The charge was possession of a major quantity, and first impressions count, and a courtroom is a theater with all eyes on just two main characters: the judge, obviously, but mostly the accused. So was it smart?

Probably not.

But what choice did I have? Obviously I had smoked a bowl the night before. A big bowl, to be honest. Because I was nervous. I wouldn’t have slept without it. Not that I have tried to sleep without it, even one night in twenty years. So that hit was routine. I slept the sleep of the deeply stoned and woke up feeling normal. And looking and acting normal, I’m sure. At breakfast my wife made no adverse comment, except, “Use some Visine, honey.” But it was said with no real concern. Like advice about which tie to choose. Which I was happy to have. It was a big day for me, obviously.

So I shaved and dripped the drops into my eyes, and then I showered, which on that day I found especially symbolic. Even transformational. I felt like I was hosing a waxy residue that only I could see out of my hair and off my skin. It sluiced away down the drain and left me feeling fresh and clean. A new man, again. An innocent man. I stood in the warm stream for an extra minute and for the millionth time half-decided to quit. Grass is not addictive. No physical component. All within my power. And I knew I should.

That feeling lasted until I had finished combing my hair. The light in my bathroom looked cold and dull. The plain old day bore down on me. Problem is, when you’ve stayed at the Ritz, you don’t want to go back to the Holiday Inn.

I had an hour to spare. Courts never start early. I had set the time aside to review some issues. You can’t expect lawyers to spot everything. A man has to take responsibility. So I went to my study. There was a pipe on the desk. It was mostly blackened, but there were some unburned crumbs.