Book Review: 'Weed Rules: Blazing the Way to a Just and Joyful Marijuana Policy' by Jay Wexler

A US law professor's how-to guide for cannabis legalisation

Imagine you saw someone light up a joint — what would be your first reaction?

Curiosity, and a mild craving to also take a drag? Revulsion, the urge to contact the authorities and see this person bundled into the back of a police van? Familiarity? Fear..? Anger...? Respect….? Indifference.….?

Ask a dozen different people and you’ll probably get a dozen different answers, dependent on location, cultural background, previous exposure to cannabis and so on.

While many Asian countries maintain conservative, prohibitionist polices — with harsh laws on consumption or dealing, alongside societal attitudes that have led to public figures becoming social pariahs after admitting to drug use — there has also been a gradual shift in others.

Compare Thailand — where if you threw a rock in busier tourist areas then you’d probably hit a weed shop (the latest number was over 10,500 across the country) — to Singapore. In the latter, where anyone convicted of trafficking more than 500 grams of cannabis will receive a mandatory death sentence, Second Minister for Home Affairs Josephine Teo recently gave a speech saying:

There are all kinds of ridiculous claims, for example: “Cannabis is natural, so it must be safe.” […] “Cannabis is not very different from alcohol or tobacco. And since it’s not against the law once you reach a certain age to consume alcohol and to smoke a cigarette, why should it be so problematic that we consume cannabis?”. These assertions, however, cannot be further from the truth. The science on cannabis is very clear and it is compelling: cannabis is addictive, with far-reaching and irreversible health effects.

(Sooo, uhhh… kinda like tobacco and alcohol, then?)

This type of moral panic highlights the core notion that many prohibitionist policies boil down to: anything cannabis-related is inherently bad. But this approach is gradually losing its hold. Across the world, more and more countries are reforming their drug laws and moving toward less punitive harm reduction measures.

What the blazes?

The US launched their war on drugs in the 1970s, using their influence to push other countries into following suit. Now, around 50 years on, almost half of the states in the country have, to one degree or other, legalised cannabis for recreational use (with 39 legalising it for medical use).

Weed Rules: Blazing the Way to a Just and Joyful Marijuana Policy, published in 2023, tells the story of how this change unfolded in the US, the policies and considerations that went into making this happen, and how the legalisation process continues to evolve.

From the outset, author Jay Wexler, a law professor at Boston University and former legal clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, makes it clear that he's not addressing this issue from an unbiased or objective standpoint: this is a guy who enjoys weed, and he doesn't care who knows it (the title of the book itself is a pretty good play on words that tells you what you need to know about his stance).

Wexler’s writing style is casual and direct. He actively advocates for legalisation because he believes it'll be a net good, but takes care to explore the context, nuances, obstacles and responsibilities that have to be addressed in making this outcome a reality. This personableness makes the book more approachable for the casual reader; at the risk of generalising, I assume that texts on the minutiae of regulatory legal statutes don’t often make the bestseller lists.

While some may find Wexler’s unambiguous and direct messaging somewhat off-putting — if you’re already sceptical of cannabis usage, would you really be won over by an author who’s essentially broadcasting that he’s a committed pothead? — this unapologetic enthusiasm for weed and advocacy for its legalisation is coming from someone who's both deeply invested in the issue and knowledgeable about the intricacies of legalisation.

How does it cut up?

In the first section of the book, Wexler delves into the history and status of cannabis in the US, from medicinal usage in the early 20th century to its criminalisation in the 1930s; from the onset of the War on Drugs under the Nixon administration in the 1970s to the changes in laws in numerous states over the last decade or so.

At this point you might be wondering how many of the US's original anti-cannabis laws were, at least in part, motivated or facilitated by racism. If so, well done, you’ve called it: the US has a long and well-documented history of introducing laws stemming from discrimination against minority communities, and these are no different. It’s worth noting that while Wexler uses 'marijuana' often throughout the book, he recognises that the word was initially adopted by American politicians to make cannabis sound more ‘foreign’ and ‘scary’.

At one point, Wexler quotes cannabis historian Martin A. Lee describing the strategy used by Henry J. Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (precursor to the Drug Enforcement Agency), who has sometimes been referred to as the “Godfather of America's war on drugs”:

“To gain public support for his crusade,” Lee writes, “Anslinger depicted marijuana as a sinister substance that made Mexican and African American men lust after white women. One of the worst things about marijuana, according to the [Federal Bureau of Narcotics] chief, was that it promoted sexual contact across color lines. ‘Marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes’, Anslinger frothed.... He never tired of telling new versions of the same morality tale, which featured a vulnerable young white woman whose tragic downfall is triggered by smoking marijuana with dark-skinned rogues.”

Moving away from these racist, prohibitionist positions is all well and good, but how one moves away matters, and Wexler makes it clear early on that legalisation is an art, not a science. There are tools like regulation, taxation, equity, etc. but there is no one-size-fits-all. What's most crucial is figuring out what works for a specific place and context, and staying flexible enough for approaches to evolve and change.

The second half of the book, moves on to case studies from various states. This includes advertising, promotion, and employment laws, the protections (or lack thereof) for people who use cannabis — even for medical purposes — and contradictions in the system, such as states that have legalised weed but where it can be ridiculously difficult for people to consume without breaking the law.

This is where the real US-centricity kicks in. One can't begrudge an American legal scholar for writing about what he knows, but for those of us in countries that aren't the US, a lot of the analyses — like differences in advertising regulations in various states — can be a trudge to get through. It’s reasonably interesting from an academic perspective, but ultimately fairly meaningless in a broader global context where, in many places, conversations about even the prospect of cannabis legalisation are at a far more nascent stage.

So, is it worth reading?

Wexler shows he’s not just a passionate weed legalisation advocate, but also a gifted writer who's able to demystify the narratives around an often demonised drug as well as address legal and regulatory issues for a wider readership.

The book includes some genuine nuggets of information. For example, while almost half of the US states have legalised weed to some extent, cannabis remains illegal under federal law (which seems like a contradiction, but they somehow make it work). Discussions of the post-legalisation status of people with drug-related criminal records also give more insight into some states’ modern day attitudes to the War on Drugs:

A […] basic issue facing all states that legalize marijuana for either medical or adult use is whether to exclude those individuals with felony convictions, in particular convictions for prior drug offenses, from working in the industry or holding licenses. Massachusetts and several cities in California have decided that not only should most drug felons not be excluded from the industry, but they should also be considered equity applicants for having suffered as a result of the drug war.

Weed Rules isn’t perfect and, in many cases, is not entirely applicable or particularly relevant outside of the United States — but it gives a mature appraisal of the intricacies of cannabis policy which, in turn, offers an alternative narrative to the ones we might more commonly hear in this part of the world.

Although there’s no obligation for Asian countries to follow an American blueprint, Weed Rules provides plenty of food for thought for those who’d like to cast a more critical and questioning eye over their own countries’ approaches. Even if you’re not ready to completely shift your view on cannabis, it might be worth considering dipping your toe — recreationally, perhaps? — into arguments for legalisation and giving Weed Rules a shot.