The Pope of Pot

The Pope of Pot: And Other True Stories of Marijuana and Related High Jinks is a pocket collection, by the award-winning journalist (and former Rolling Stone drugs correspondent) Mike Sager, highlighting his dispatches from the cannabis underground. In "When Should a Man Stop Smoking Weed?" Sager looks back on a half-century of pot smoking, starting on a humid night in summer at age 12. "Marijuana has served as a great equalizer, a frequent teacher, and a pleasant companion," he writes, "leading me places I would never have otherwise gone." The Pope of Pot founded the nation's first marijuana delivery service in New York City, with a corps of bicycle messengers, all of them covered by a company dental plan. Meet the marijuana pope and his faithful followers at the Church of Realized Fantasies. Too bad the cops didn't think he was so amusing. In "Dab Artists" we meet the artesian crafters who occupied the outlaw edge of the vaping boom in the early days of legal weed. Cool but nerdy, deliberately unkempt, these self-taught Heisenbergs of hash oil gathered for the Secret Cup Finals in Las Vegas. In "The Pot Doctor Will See You Now," we meet Don Davidson, MD, a pioneer of online medical marijuana recommendations. Over several years, Dr. D. and his crew of doctors issued hundreds of thousands of weed licenses. A long and jangled day with the hardest working doctor in the marijuana business. And in "Meeting the Ghost of Christmas Future," Sager is sent by Rolling Stone to Woody Creek, CO, to aid his colleague, the legendary Hunter S. Thompson. Busted for possession of illegal drugs, HST faces a fifty-year prison sentence. The next three weeks will teach at least one of them lessons to last a lifetime.