BOOK REVIEW

Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine. Wendy Chapkis and Richard

Webb. New York: NYU Press, 2008. pp. 257. ISBN: 978-0-8147-1667-0, $22.

It seemed almost inconceivable to many local residents that federal

agents had entered the county and destroyed the work of terminally ill
people growing their own medicine. That this occurred without the
knowledge or consent of any public official or local law enforcement
officer was widely reported in the media and further raised the hackles of
the community. The prevailing belief was that … the DEA had no
business there. [Chapkis and Webb 2008:184]

Dying to Get High is a daring and insightful ethnography that explores the
role of activist scholarship in a political struggle to legalize the provisioning of
medical marijuana. Chapkis and Webb tell how their personal and profes-
sional lives as participant-observers became deeply enmeshed in the usually
mundane, albeit sometimes dramatic, organizing being done by chronically ill
and dying people committed to improving their health management efforts.
These scholars explore how and why activists battle with organized medicine
over how to manage their own illnesses. They show how these struggles have
led many sick people to form (then join, operate, and defend) a non-profit
organization called Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM).
Dying to Get High deftly intersperses an analysis of federal cannibus control
in conflict with ethnographic observations of organized grassroots health
activism. Chapters 1, 3, and 8 illustrate, analyze, and historically situate the
timeline of WAMM’s political struggle against government institutions’ crimi-
nalization of cannibus, including the various and strategic methods of repres-
sion (i.e., stereotyping cannibus by dubbing it “marijuana,” racially associating
this hot-button term with immigrant Mexicans and African American minori-
ties, blocking decriminalization movements by classifying cannibus as a Class

Anthropology of Consciousness, Vol. 22, Issue 2, pp. 245–246, ISSN 1053-4202, © 2011 by the
American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1556-3537.2011.01052.x

245
246 anthropology of consciousness 22.2

I-controlled substance, prohibiting the recreational use of cannibus, and

sustaining the illegality of its cultivation, storage, processing, distribution, and
prescription as medical marijuana). Chapters 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 examine WAMM’s
emergence from convergent local activist histories, reveals the WAMM model for
provisioning medical marijuana, considers the therapeutic value of medical mari-
juana, recognizes and circumvents the dangers of smoking marijuana, and con-
veys the therapeutic voluntary organization and value of cannibus horticulture.
This collaboratively authored study shows how the federal government
strives to prevent any form of cannibus use while WAMM and its allies insist
it should be given freely to patients for whom it is a medical necessity (93).
While officials fail to comprehend its harmless medical advantages, research-
ers establish and recognize its health effects, despite federal policies that
impede botanical cannibus research. As Chapkis and Webb demonstrate,
cannibus prohibition relies on the rhetoric of moral panic, motivated by
profit, where pharmaceutical corporations (seeking to market costly cannibi-
noid products) cannot compete with the greater effectiveness and ease of
accessibility provided by far less expensive home-grown cannibus (205–206).
WAMM members report and the authors theorize that marijuana aids pain
management by altering the patient’s state of consciousness (120). Research
reveals introspection to be one of cannibus’ positive side effects as compared
with the harsher, dangerous side effects of most pharmaceutical drugs (119,
128). Many WAMM members embarked on spiritual journeys as the greater
wellness cannibus offered them included experiences of “present moment”
consciousness. Such an improved quality of life enabled and motivated them
to share with others knowledge of how to use this ancient remedy for the
edification of their wracked bodies and worried minds. Cannibus has an
unexpected effect on those suffering illness; patients who formerly sought a
recreational high no longer felt “high” using it therapeutically for pain (117,
125–128). Others who never smoke cannibus (to protect their lungs from the
pyrolytic compounds generated when burning it) safely ingest non-smoked
cannibus to mollify their health conditions. Cannibus does not work for every-
one, as the authors remind us (116, 135), but in most cases they emphasize its
harmlessness for those who test its efficacy and experiment with setting the
right dosage for themselves prior to using it for medical reasons (31, 69, 168).
This most engaging study can be read in any seminar or class surveying
contemporary ethnographies, but it has special relevance to those studying
organized resistance, social movements, medical anthropology, the anthropology
of horticulture, and the anthropology of regulatory state bureaucracies.
Enoch Page
Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst MA
Dr.ehpage@gmail.com