Grass Roots: A History of Cannabis in the American West by Nick Johnson

436 OHQ vol. 119, no. 3 remains for burial in their homeland offers some hope and the beginning of healing. Steven M. Fountain Washington State University, Vancouver GRASS ROOTS: A HISTORY OF CANNABIS IN THE AMERICAN WEST by Nick Johnson Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2017. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. 256 pages. $19.95, paper. As one state after another legalizes recreational marijuana use, think-pieces and books about cannabis have proliferated. Nick Johnson ’s Grass Roots: A History of Cannabis in the American West adds to this burgeoning literature, offering an “agricultural history of the drug cannabis” (p. 9). Johnson, associate editor of the Colorado Encyclopedia, treats “marijuana as a crop first,” and as such, the cannabis plant as a historical actor (p. 8). This plant has constantly befuddled Americans, adapted to ecological and political circumstances, and placed burdens on its environment. Through in-depth research in newspapers, government documents, and interviews, Johnson traces the history of cannabis’s evolving (and contentious) relationship with humans. While there are precedents for sustainable cultivation of cannabis, he argues, the government’s century-long effort to prohibit and destroy the plant has produced an unregulated and unsustainable industry. Johnson develops this argument through six chapters, each of which balances a broad social, cultural, and political perspective of marijuana with a focused look at cannabis cultivation. The author positions the American West at the center of this study, suggesting that prominent themes in the region’s history, from immigration and reclamation to a spirit of selfdetermination , help to explain the evolution of the crop and its relationship with humans and the state. Grass Roots begins in the mid nineteenth century. Chapters one and two follow the uneven shift from scientific interest in cannabis to a narrative that positioned marijuana as a menace — resulting in the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act. In their attempts to enforce this act, as Johnson notes in chapter two, federal agents could not distinguish between hemp and cannabis and often failed (hilariously) to eradicate fields of either plant. In spite of these mishaps, enforcement and arrests disproportionately affected communities of color in the West. Chapter three focuses on these communities . Here, Johnson examines Mexican and Mexican American farm laborers’ medicinal use of marijuana — particularly for ailments associated with stoop labor — and their efforts to grow cannabis in backyards, gardens, and amid other crops. This chapter exhibits the author’s best work, as he uses newspaper accounts to reveal small-scale growing (and selling) among Mexican-origin sugar beet workers from northern Colorado to Montana. In fact, reports of cannabis growth in the early twentieth century correspond very closely with the geography of the sugar beet industry. Grass Roots thus reveals a landscape of resistance, as communities sought to cope with the aches, pains, and low wages of agricultural labor in the West. In chapter four, Johnson tracks challenges to the marijuana-as-menace narrative as countercultural youth and hippies took an interest in cannabis cultivation — and found guidance in new underground publications. Yet, this embrace of the plant occurred just as the war on drugs escalated. Chapter five details the failures of enforcement in the 1980s, pushing growers indoors and off the grid, posing significant ecological challenges to the region and its wildlife. In its final chapter, Grass Roots turns to the more recent embrace of medicinal and recreational marijuana use. But, as Johnson notes, states have yet to effectively regulate growers’ use of energy, pesticides, and rodenticides. At the end, readers are left with the question of what comes next — the author suggests policy makers and growers look to the natural and “sun-grown” cannabis of generations past (p. 180). This is an engaging, readable book that offers a unique perspective on the history of, 437 Reviews and present policy challenges in, the region. Grass Roots will find eager readers among policy and industry leaders, cannabis enthusiasts, and scholars of the American West. Johnson’s chapter on sugar beet workers will also be of interest to labor and Latinx historians, although these readers may wonder why this is the only section to focus on laborers, rather than growers . As Johnson notes, transient laborers cut stems and collect flowers from...

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