| Italic Title: | (see above) --> |
| Reefer Madness: The History of Marijuana in America | |
| Author: | Larry Sloman |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Publisher: | Bobbs-Merrill |
| Pub Date: | 1979 |
| Media Type: | Hardcover |
| Pages: | 404 |
| Isbn: | 0-672-52423-6 |
| Congress: | HV5822.M3 S54 |
Reefer Madness: The History of Marijuana in America is a book by Larry "Ratso" Sloman, originally published in 1979.[1] The book is a history of social cannabis (also known as marijuana) use in the United States. The book was reissued in 1998 with an introduction by William S. Burroughs.
Writer Abe Peck gave Reefer Madness a mostly negative review, writing, "Sloman knows what he's talking about; the problem is that he presents his material as a multistyled hash of unsifted information. [...] [H]is reporting is so skeletal you can still see the ribs of a book outline poking through his prose."[2]
The Boston Globes Lee Grove criticized the book for its pro-cannabis bias and selection of interviewees, whom Grove describes as "[Sloman's] boring pothead friends", while also noting, "I would have expected Sloman to interview at least one major rock star smoking in the seventies – he alludes to so many of them in the book – but he doesn't."[3]
Larry King of Democrat and Chronicle referred to the book as an "exercise in futility", criticizing a lack of details and statistics: "Sloman consistently fails to include any body of information that might lend some credibility to his subtitle, with its claim to be a 'history.' The book reeks of haste and sloppiness."[4]