Get a head start on 4/20 with 'How to Smoke Pot (Properly)'

Buckle up, America. This trip is only getting started. 

As we head towards this year's April 20th -- a.k.a. 4/20, a national celebration of everything pot-related -- the spread of recreational and medical marijuana legalization is legitimizing a substance that for decades was consumed in the shadows and slandered with banal stereotypes. 

We're on a journey to a new country -- a place where the relationship between cannabis, citizens, business and government looks like nothing the nation has seen before. 

If you're traveling somewhere new, you want a guidebook written by an expert. In 2016, our expert is David Bienenstock, a ten-year veteran of High Times magazine, and our travel guide is his book How to Smoke Pot (Properly), which just came out this week. 

Less pedantic than the title might suggest, How to Smoke Pot (Properly) is a 266-page primer on all things ganja rather than a step-by-step manual. 

There are plenty of tutorials on everything from cooking to vaping, but that only scratches the surface of the territory Bienenstock explores. 

The book is part history lesson, part manifesto and a full introduction to an emerging world. Whether you're a weed rookie starting from scratch or a seasoned smoker who's gathered disparate strands of information about the plant over decades, How to Smoke Pot (Properly) presents everything in one place, at the right moment in time.

Prohibition and period cramps

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Bienenstock provides context from the start. He opens with a quick history of cannabis' place in human civilization dating back to 6,000 B.C. He summarizes its spread from Asia through Europe and North America -- including the story of how Queen Victoria of England used cannabis to treat menstrual pain. 

Then, of course, he recaps is tumultuous legal history in more recent decades. Pot prohibition is "an insidious plot to protect the pharmaceutical industry, Big Tobacco, the booze barons and the plastic industrial complex from unwanted competition while building up a modern police state right under our noses," according to Bienenstock. 

"And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for us meddlesome stoners." 

That passage encapsulates the book's tone, which is fiercely pro-pot. Our author isn't just some stoner on a rant -- well, he may be exactly that, but he has bonafides to back up the ranting. 

Bienenstock, formerly High Times' senior editor, now produces weed-themed video content for Vice and can be found writing or talking about cannabis across all media. He uses those credentials to give us plenty of insider access and serious-style coverage. 

One highlight is a behind-the-scenes look at the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), the collective that was raided by the DEA in 2002 and became a pivotal player in the medical movement. Another is a simple breakdown of how cannabis is used to treat various illnesses. 

Yet another is a primer on how to enter the industry, replete with interview tips from the operator of America's largest dispensary, Harborside Health Center in Oakland. 

How to Smoke Pot (Properly) is very much a book for the recreational enthusiast, though. There's something for tokers at all levels. 

Science and subcultures

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Bienenstock breaks down the science, such as the basic difference between sativa and indica strains. But he goes deeper, explaining the other terpenes and chemical compounds that give different marijuana strains their own effects, smells and appearances. 

Along the way, he dispenses plenty of practical advice. (Just a few examples: why you should never drive stoned; how to roll a joint in the wind; why it's never wise to buy a pre-rolled joint, even from a legitimate dispensary.)

Bienenstock's book shines most, though, when it functions as cultural documentation, exploring the past and future of cannabis from the vantage point of our current watershed moment. 

A section on smokers' "headiquette" runs down modern rituals, while elsewhere Bienenstock provides synopses of influential stoner subcultures over the past 200 years. 

Using this historical lens, and explaining how decades of prohibition have shaped the current world of marijuana, Bienenstock then casts a skeptical eye at the future and gets to the most incisive parts of his book. 

Tough compromises

When a business -- and the entire culture that surrounds it -- is thrust from the shadows into the mainstream, what gets lost? What compromises are made, and who do they effect? Who gets rich, and at whose expense? 

We're only beginning to see the answers to these questions develop, but simply being able to ask them is remarkable in itself. 

"Fifteen years ago, publicly self-identifying as a marijuana user, or even taking it up as a political cause, pretty much disqualified you from being taken seriously in the public square," Bienenstock writes in a chapter called "Keep Pot Weird." 

Bienenstock writes that well-intentioned colleagues -- "almost all of them closeted pot smokers" -- warned he'd never be able to get another serious journalism job after signing on at High Times. All these years later, the legalization tide is rising nationwide and Bienenstock just wrote a serious book on the subject. 

Pot is coming, America. Whether you like it, loathe it or bemoan its mainstream immersion, you might as well read up now.