In The Last Bookstore in America, there's this other product that is also being changed forever by the forces around it. You can read more about why the legalization of marijuana interested me as a subplot in a book about bookstores here. I had to answer some questions from my publisher (who has since decided not to publish the novel) about the marijuana plot line, and I thought I'd share those answers with you here.
Who would ever believe that a bookstore could sell pot under the counter?
Welcome to my world. Humboldt County is part of what is known as the "emerald triangle" which includes the adjacent Mendocino and Trinity counties. This is the largest marijuana-producing area in the United States. A study commissioned by Mendocino County estimates that marijuana accounts for a full two-thirds of that county's economy. Humboldt State University economists estimate the value of our marijuana crop at $300-$500 million, larger than all our legal agricultural crops put together.
Thanks to our medical marijuana law, which allows a cardholder to grow up to 99 plants at a time, marijuana is practically legal here already. People stop on the sidewalk and finish their joint before they walk into our bookstore. During the fall harvest season, our cash drawer smells like pot because there’s so much money rubbing up against dope. The City Council recently issued safety guidelines for indoor grow operations to reduce the risk of house fires caused by faulty wiring, and the fire department will come out to people's homes and perform free safety inspections of grow operations.
We have twelve hydroponic shops (for pot growers) as compared to eight garden centers (for gardeners). We also have several retail medical marijuana dispensaries that sell pot in a variety of forms, including tintures and baked goods. Our local Border’s bookstore, hardly an independent-minded business, devotes three prominent endcaps to marijuana books.
Pot growers have a lot of cash they need to spend. A great deal of it goes through the post office in the form of money orders, which are harder to trace, so pot growers use them to pay their bills. One day, a kid in dreadlocks walked up to the window ahead of me and asked for $4000 in money orders. The postman calmly said, “Sorry, kid. The maximum amount of money you can launder through the post office is $3000 per day.”
On the town square, just across from our bookstore, a young woman selling handmade jewelry from a cart was shooed away last week when the Old Town merchants realized she was selling pot, not jewelry, from her cart. There was very little outrage; the owner of another shop just said, “Now, if only she had only been paying sales tax, nobody would've minded.” Believe me, there is nothing implausible about a bookstore selling pot under the counter.
Here is a blog post about the time Scott bought a box of books that included a little residual marijuana in the bottom of the box.
For a wonderful analysis of Humboldt's perspective on the legalization of marijuana, read Ryan Burn's feature on the subject in the North Coast Journal.
How plausible is it to imagine that marijuana could be legalized on a national level?
I wanted to have a little fun with the idea of legalization. I think the best fiction and the best satire pushes against the boundaries of what seems plausible to challenge people's assumptions about how the world might work. The trick, of course, is to do it well enough to get people to buy in. And it’s not that far-fetched; look at Amsterdam.
And-- consider the following:
· A bill was introduced recently in California's State Assembly to legalize and tax marijuana.
· At one of President Obama's town hall meetings, he had agreed to answer the top questions chosen through online voting. The top question, submitted and voted on by 92,000 people, had to do with the legalization of marijuana, forcing him to address the issue on the air. (It was also the top issue submitted by citizens to Change.gov during the transition.)
· Congress is granting the FDA to regulate tobacco, which doesn’t outlaw it but is somewhat similar to the law Congress passes in my novel.
· News stories on NPR and elsewhere about Secretary Clinton's visit to Mexico have highlighted the fact that legalizing marijuana would allow us to better focus law enforcement and prison resources on hard drugs, while generating a good source of tax revenue.
· Government surveys show that 35 million Americans have smoked pot in the last year, and 100 million Americans have smoked pot in their lifetimes (that’s 40 percent of us.)
Won’t people be put off by a novel that has marijuana as a plot line?
35 million Americans can't be wrong. That’s the same number of people that played golf last year, and nobody worries about not being able to sell a book about golf. Showtime’s ‘Weeds’ manages to draw 1.3 million viewers, making it their top-rated show. And I would say that murder and violence are off-putting. Plenty of books celebrate irresponsible drinking, sex, and violence. Novels explore all kinds of taboos.
So. That's where I'm coming from when I decide to explore the issue in fiction. But back to reality--what do you think? Legalize it or lock it up?
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