I could not finish this book as it was a lot different than it had been marketed. I felt positive going into the book but then it turned part memoir and biased

I love learning about cannabis legislation, history, etc. so this was a really interesting read! I loved how it was a blend of pop-culture, memoir, and political critique. Just Dope is well-written and introspective. I would highly (no pun intended) recommend this to anyone interested in learning more about cannabis legislation!

As someone who supports the arguments for the decriminalisation of drugs, I really wanted to love this book. While the author make a few interesting points, overall I feel this book probably does more harm than good. It wasn’t over cohesive, and I found some of the arguments to be problematic.

There was also a good chunk of the book that randomly turned into a biography on River Phoenix which I just didn’t understand. For me this book was more an exploration on the authors opinions of addiction and causes of addiction rather than educational arguments for the legalisation of drug use.

This was a deeply personal and very informative book about the impacts of drugs and the arguments surrounding the legalisation of these substances.
I really was interested learning about all the different cases there have been regarding the “war on drugs” and how these played out.
I didn’t know much about this topic before reading but it has been a topic that I’ve had an interest for quite some time so it was thoroughly rewarding to learn more about it.

I did not mind this books combination of memoir, science and law. I think I would hav eliked consuming it more via audiobook given the personal nature of the author's story telling.

I was expecting something more along the lines of Carl Hart's DRUG USE FOR GROWN-UPS but from a lawyer rather than a scientist's perspective, but this book wasn't that. They also changed the title between when I requested and publication to accurately reflect that it was about her personal journey rather than a case for legalizing all drugs (the original subtitle), but unfortunately I was a lot more interested in the latter than the former so ultimately this book didn't hold my interest.

Not quite what I expected. There was not as much about the case for and against the decriminalization of drugs.

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Unfortunately this is a did not finish. Not quite what I expected from the initial blurb prior to being given the advance copy for review. There is a lot of personal reporting in this and not just a case, legal, moral etc, being put forward for legalisation of drugs. Managed about 20 percent before putting it down for the final time.

I was expecting a lot more from this book. Marketed more as a case for legalizing drugs in America, I was expecting Allison Margolin to discuss specific cases, drugs, and policies which make up her argument. Instead, she seems to self=indulge for a majority of the chapters, jumping all over the timeline of her family's history without any seeming connection to drug legalization for large parts.

I skimmed the latter two-thirds of this book to see if the memoir elements were toned down, but it seemed to continue. I think this is a book the author was saying she'd write for a long time which her immediate community is intrigued by and to learn from, but for a wider audience, I'm not sure it will be well received.

As a reader who is moderately interested in drug policy and mental health, I was also a little underwhelmed that an author as experienced and well-knowledged in drug policy as she claims to be, quoted from and talked about several books and texts that have already found wide acclaim and audiences.

Just Dope 4 stars

This has a lot of good information in it. In the beginning, Margolin basically writes that she couldn’t decide how much she was writing a memoir and how much a straight up treatise as to why all drugs—not just marijuana—should be legalized. After all, alcohol is legal, and for ten percent of the population, it’s addictive, but we only pester people about their drinking when they get behind the wheel of their car, get into a bar fight, or can’t take care of their kids. Why don’t we treat other drugs this way?

When Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, that’s considered the beginning of what most consider the War on Drugs, which has been a disaster unless you consider that it did accomplish at least part of what it set out to do: Destroy the lives of people of color through ridiculously high incarceration rates. Nixon had two main enemies, black folks and the antiwar left. “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting people to associate hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing them both heavily we could disrupt those communities.”

Anyone who has studied the War on Drugs knows that it’s always been used as a tool against various races. Here in America, the first War on Drugs targeted the by-products of opium poppy that flourished in San Francisco. After the completion of the Central Pacific Railroad in 1869, work done by Chinese immigrants, hate groups started protesting the foreigners supposedly taking their jobs. The opium dens really became a problem when white women started going to them, too. The hate from other groups led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred immigration of Chinese for 10 years. Part of the excuse for this was the fear that the Chinese were bringing opium with them, despite the fact that opium had already been the United States for at least a hundred years.

Then we had the Eighteenth Amendment that passed in 1920 prohibiting alcohol. That amendment had support from all sides of the aisle and various religious groups. Lots of women were also against alcohol, hoping that making it illegal would stem some of the domestic violence that women, who were men’s property, faced. Prohibition of alcohol was an egregious failure. Instead of the government benefitting from the high cost of the vice tax we put on alcohol, Al Capone and crime in general flourished, getting a lot of tax-free income.

After the end of prohibition, Harry Anslinger needed a way to remain head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, so he, along with William Randolph Hearst, decided to demonize marijuana by associating it with Mexicans and black jazz musicians. Hearst used his newspapers to flame this propaganda because in addition to his publishing empire, he owned acres of wooded land. If marijuana and hemp were legal, people would buy hemp, which is cheaper and more sustainable than products made from trees.

Part of what set Anslinger on his anti-drug crusade was that when he was 14 years old, he heard a woman in morphine withdrawal scream out in agony. Clearly her addiction was a problem, but she was able to buy her drug safely from a pharmacy because of the Pure Food and Drug Act. If you’re an addict and have to buy your drug off the streets, you have no idea what you’re getting, not to mention having to go to sketchy parts of town, which is ridiculously dangerous for women in particular.

The arguments against legalizing drugs are the addiction problem and the accompanying complaints that with drugs comes crime. For the crime problem, we see how crime flourished when alcohol was made illegal in 1920 until the Twenty-First Amendment was passed in 1933, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment. Today, licensed dispensaries are correlated with a reduction in crime. Opioid addiction fell by 25 percent in states that had legalized medical and recreational marijuana.

Yes, addiction is a problem for some, but we deal with that by offering healthcare to all, not just those based on marital or employment status, and by treating addicts with respect instead of the current way religious and political and people in law enforcement choose to paint them as morally weak. For those who don’t have a problem, they use recreationally regardless of what the law is, so let’s save our jails for violent criminals. Making everything illegal seems to be the government deciding to save us from ourselves, even though, especially with drugs that aren’t physically addictive like magic mushrooms, the overwhelming majority of people don’t become addicted. In Portugal, they legalized all drugs and found a sharp drop in addiction rates and steep reduction in incarceration rates (they have universal healthcare over there).

“Dehumanizing drug addicts does not solve the problem of addiction, in fact, it only makes matters worse." Treating patients with respect, offering evidence-based treatment, and promoting harm reduction helps.

I understand why Margolin included parts of her own story because they’re relevant, but those are also the weakest sections of the book. Her father was the lawyer for Timothy Leary and was a longtime advocate for the legalization of marijuana. Margolin also helped usher in the medical and recreational drug laws in California. Sometimes she goes off on tangents that are interesting but a little jarring compared to her arguments for why we should legalize drugs.

The war on drugs isn’t a war on pills, powder, or plants, but on who gets to decide if we alter our mental states. Especially with drugs that aren’t physically addictive and have actually show the potential to help with addiction and PTSD like magic mushrooms (psilocybin), the government would help people through legalization. Think of the lives of suicidal veterans we could help if psilocybin was legalized. (Psilocybin has been shown to help with dealing with trauma and depression.)

“For the majority of human history there has not been a civic law governing what people put into their bodies.”

We’ve spent $1 trillion on the drug war, money that could have been used on infrastructure, education, and affordable healthcare. Instead, we have the highest incarceration rate in the developed world. And for what? Studies have shown that every class of animal possesses the instinct to use drugs, drink alcohol, and find ways to alter their perspectives. “The desire to alter one’s consciousness is as natural as the desire for lunch.”

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book, which RELEASES AUGUST 30, 2022.

A part memoir immersed with a partially legal standing on the legalisation of cannabis, seen through the eyes of a practitioner of law who resides in california where cannabis is legal. An easy to read book, ultimately thought provoking, smattered with a sprinkling of stars whom I was never aware of that used drugs illegally.
Definitely a book that everyone should be aware of as it is a constructive, compelling argument that may lead to many open ended discussions, no matter on which side you stand.
Thank you netgalley and the publisher for an arc copy, all of this review is my own.

Not what I was expecting, or what the book was originally marketed as. The new cover now emphasises that this is a 'personal journey', whereas the tagline for the ARC I downloaded was 'the case for legalising all drugs for a more just world'. On that basis, I was looking forward to a long-form essay style read, with analysis and critique of current legislation, and was thus disappointed. Did not finish, as I was not particularly interested in an autobiography of an otherwise unknown lawyer at this time, however, I may return to it at a later date.

Content warnings: Violence, death, suicide, abuse, child sexual exploitation, racism, antisemitism. I have tried to provide a more detailed breakdown for specific chapters below. Apologies if anything has been missed.

Content warnings by chapter:
Chapter 1 - Fetishisation of injury
Chapter 2 - Anti-Chinese, Anti-Black, and Anti-Mexican sentiment
Chapter 3 - Holocaust, antisemitism, rape, death (including family death), hunger and starvation, intergenerational trauma, animal experimentation, PTSD
Chapter 4 - domestic abuse, police corruption, cancer, death, surgical malpractice, emotional abuse, animal abuse, harassment
Chapter 6 - Murder, suicide
Chapter 7 - Assault, murder, rape, kidnap, suicide, racism
Chapter 8 - Child sexual exploitation, incest, molestation, death
Chapter 15 - suicide, racism, racialised killing, police brutality

The shortest review possible of this book is: this book is bad.

The longer version of a review of Just Dope would be that it is a fundamentally flawed and mis-marketed book, that also is trying to wear far too many hats to pull any one of them off convincingly. How is this possible?

The book is marketed primarily as a social policy polemic against drug prohibition, with some personal asides and insights from someone who is intimately acquainted with the world of drug prohibition as a criminal defence attorney. Instead, it is a self-indulgent and difficult to follow.

Alison Margolin clearly cares about decriminalisation of drugs, and I suspect she does know more about it than a lot of other people, but you would be hard pressed to understand that from how the book is written.

The book is, in truth, primarily Margolin's (potted) memoir, with gaps and time jumps, that passes itself off as a social policy critique or even, at points, a social.history of Los Angeles. The problem is that the book would be much better as any one of these things. By her own admission in the early chapters, Margolin struggled writing the book and it comes across as a series of disparate essays, that would fit much better into a column of some kind, than a coherent argument or narrative. In some places, the argument is downright contradictory, for instance in her criticism of NORML as being too hard-line against opiates and other 'hard drugs' and then later in her seeming detest of opioids like fentanyl and how favourably marijuana stacks up against it.

On the fentanyl section, the book also reveals a worrying question- the reliability of its sources. Any social policy book like this does, rightly, have almost endless endnotes (almost 20% of the book if Netgalley's reader is correct). However, as also happens I was curious about how the figures were derived for the limit of opioid tolerant thresholds for death amongst fentanyl users. The cited web page was a short article on a harm reduction website, that said it collated 'all available research' but linked to one paper and its tables cited the website in question (also without links). Whilst this might seem nitpick-y, any argument is only as strong as its weakest source - and I didn't even check that many. This is a genuinely worrying thing for Margolin to contest with. Either, she hasn't done her due diligence to check against a legitimate cause and has weakened all.of Just Dope because of it, or, more worryingly, this is her best attempt at finding sources, and the book is memoir first, accurate and cogent arguments against drug prohibition second.

It is important, however, to highlight some good things about Just Dope. As I wrote earlier, Margolin is clearly plugged into this world better than almost anyone in the United States at least, and her revelations about some of the more salacious aspects of the decrim movement are entertaining. Moreover, chapter 2 is a competently written history of prohibition in the United States, and her later look at how William Randolph Hearst opposed marijuana to protect his lumber business was certainly interesting.

I wish I could continue with positive things about Just Dope. I wanted, desperately, to love this book. I wanted it to be a powerful call to arms for those who oppose the racist, insular, bigoted origins of Western punitive drug policy. I wanted a clear path out of this mess, something that took a flaming sword to decades of War on Drugs rhetoric and could be recommended to anyone who wanted to know more. That's what I wish Just Dope was.

It is not. Instead, it is weakly written, veering between grossly offensive and gratuitous with a lack.of prior warning, being poorly researched and easy to pick part, to, finally, being the one thing Just Dope almost has to fight to be: boring. It is a one star book that I would have given up after part one if I didn't get it for free.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced reader copy I received.

Rating: 1/5
Content warnings: Violence, death, suicide, abuse, child sexual exploitation, racism, antisemitism. I have tried to provide a more detailed breakdown for specific chapters below. Apologies if anything has been missed.

Content warnings by chapter:
Chapter 1 - Fetishisation of injury
Chapter 2 - Anti-Chinese, Anti-Black, and Anti-Mexican sentiment
Chapter 3 - Holocaust, antisemitism, rape, death (including family death), hunger and starvation, intergenerational trauma, animal experimentation, PTSD
Chapter 4 - domestic abuse, police corruption, cancer, death, surgical malpractice, emotional abuse, animal abuse, harassment
Chapter 6 - Murder, suicide
Chapter 7 - Assault, murder, rape, kidnap, suicide, racism
Chapter 8 - Child sexual exploitation, incest, molestation, death
Chapter 15 - suicide, racism, racialised killing, police brutality


I would not recommend this book, and had I not committed to reading it in exchange for an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher, I would not have finished chapter 3 or read beyond this point. I found the lack of warnings about book content to be negligible to readers. Based on the marketing (which I went back and re-read mid way through and at the end of reading this book), I do not feel I at all received what I signed up for in requesting an ARC of this book and had the marketing been accurate, would not have selected to read this book.

Interestingly, I have now seen two covers for this book - one of which emphasises in large lettering that the book is a personal account of the author and their experience, the other declares the book will set out the case for legalising all drugs for a just world. I thought I was getting a book that would do the second - give me persuasive arguments and evidence for legalisation with rebuttals to the opposition, whereas I feel I received the former - a memoir, with some chapters that while offering an insight into the life of the author, gave me little to no information relevant to legalisation argument.

Not only do I feel this was more a memoir than an educative argument, the book jumps about and the lack of flow did not make for a particularly enjoyable read for me. Further, the chapter titles often made no sense - even upon discussion with other readers of the book - and for several chapters, I did not understand their purpose. I felt occasionally I could dig out something that I could go away and look for further information on - but this would often result in reading 40-50 pages that were draining to read, to find a couple of nuggets in 2-3 pages where my interest was finally captured, before quickly lost again. These infrequent interesting segments could be the basis for a book that I think would be incredibly interesting and useful, but as they exist throughout this book, they are just insufficient among the other information to sustain my interest or earn the book a higher star rating from me.

One particular issue I take with this book is how graphic it is when its graphic nature does not seem justified. I willingly read many a book that is purposefully graphic in nature (e.g. war accounts), but this book seemed, at times, to relish in a graphic account that did not build up or further an argument. For a book that emphasises the importance of recognising and addressing trauma, to lay such extensive trauma out for the reader with no warning is something I find to be very problematic.

I am also dismayed by how poor some of the references are. Looking up the references for comments about how much fentanyl is likely to result in overdose took me to a harm reduction website that references a single paper with regards to opioid tolerant users, and provides no links to the information provided about non-tolerant users. The table given only sites the website on which it is provided as a source. It conflicts with other sources, and yet claims on this website that other sources are inaccurate, with no links to evidence to validate this claim. This really makes me concerned for the legitimacy of the argument presented. Furthermore, having previously emphasised the importance of considering routes of drug administration and how these make a difference in how drugs affect a user, there is no reference to administration routes in talking about fentanyl overdose. I would expect a clearer and more comprehensive argument, considering the information provided in previous chapters.

I am disappointed that I feel so misled by the marketing to have requested this title, and had I spent money on the book would have been even more disappointed. I am further disappointed by the lack of warnings to the reader about the information they will encounter in selecting this book to read, and it would need extensive revision for me not to warn other reads to stay clear of this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free electric ARC I received in exchange for a review.

Current (420 Day 2022) Description Inaccurate. Read As Memoir. If you go into this book expecting what the current description claims the book is - a take down of all drug laws by a lawyer who knows them well - ummm.... you're going to be severely disappointed. As pretty well every review earlier than my own notes. If you go into this more as a memoir with some generalized points about why legalization of all drugs would make for a more just world - with scant documentation, accounting for only 10% of the ARC text -... you'll be more satisfied with this book than had you believed the current description. The text here is truly more about Margolin and her parents - her dad being one of the more famous/ infamous drug criminal defense lawyers in the US - than any other central issue, though the drugs Margolin uses and she and her dad defend others using in court are never far away. Overall, this is more of a primer text for those who may not be familiar with many of the complete legalization arguments to see how they play out in the life and mind of one particular LA-based drug lawyer. If you're looking for a more detailed examination of the arguments and their pros and cons... this isn't that text. Still, for what it is this is a worthy read that can at least add a degree of nuance to the overall conversation, and for this it is recommended.

Just Dope: The Case for Legalizing All Drugs for a More Just World by Allison Margolin

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3.9999 out of 5)

So close to a four star and I think with adjustments this would easily be higher.

Firstly let’s start with the first issue I had with this book. Flow. It just lacks flow, it darts through timelines and stories, like memories popping into a mind sporadically. Also it doesn’t seem to know if it is a work of non fiction , a call to arms or a memoir. So let’s just strip that back and view it as a series of essays which works perfectly to me.

By viewing this as a series of essays I can fully appreciate this book. It has so many interesting, personal, relatable heartbreaking and joyous stories . It has a fascinating insight into a world I knew so little about.

It delves into the subject fantastically offering a more in-depth view in terms of politically , racially, the power and control which controls the way drugs are viewed and categorised.

The authors family and personal history are fascinating and I would love to read her memoir.

The only other negative is whilst this book is a masterpiece in some aspects offering a unique and powerful view it is repetitive and could do with stripping back to make the points more powerful. Occasionally the author also gets too factual stating legal case details and using terminology confusing to the general reader which can take away the enjoyment. Having a simple * with details at the back of the book or as a footnote so the reader can choose to refer to details if they wish would make this a much easier read.

Fascinating and insightful but just needs a few tweaks. Would certainly read more from this author .

I chose to not finish this title. I was hoping for a more persuasive argument based book, and although the memoir aspect of it was very interesting, that is not how the book was marketed to me. I feel like the title, even if very catchy, does the actual content a disservice. The author is clearly intelligent and has a lot to tell about her experience but her carelessness when discussing such topics like opium addiction in the 19th century, to actual death of public figures fails to see actual trauma that can come from drug addiction, and how serious that is.

I agree with her baseline argument that society is the issue here with unjustified treatment of people who have used drugs as the problem in any capacity. But I think that because she is so passionate she lost sight of her argument many times by making light of the actual physical, emotional, and psychological impact addiction can have.

Ultimately I was hoping for a book that was researched at length and provided some form of political activism in a concrete manner, the authors personal work as a lawyer seems to be just that, but we are not shown how to emulate or even act on that within this book. I appreciated the memoir aspect at first, but at some point it took over the book. This is after all I think, the fault of marketing for not actually reading the content before designing a campaign.

First off, thank you to NetGalley and North Atlantic Books for providing me with an ARC of this book and giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

I think this book's biggest flaw is how it was marketed and the blurb that was provided. From just reading the blurb, it seems like this book will be a strong argument for drug legalization and will be primarily focused on this topic, with the author drawing on her own experiences as support and to provide a narrative structure. In reality, this book is closer to a memoir, with most of the content being about the author, her family, and her experience as a lawyer working in this field. I did appreciate the personal touches in the book and had that been what I was expecting from the description, I think I would have been able to give this book a slightly stronger review. Given my expectations, I was hoping for the content to be overall more informative and to provide me with some resources for learning more but I found it lacking.

In addition, there were some sections that needed some additional editing, which is to be expected to an extent with an ARC and I hope will be corrected in the final published edition. There were a few formatting errors and missing punctuation (which to be fair, may have been related to how Kindle devices display PDFs, not the actual manuscript), although I ultimately did not weigh that strongly in my review. I did notice however, a few paragraphs that were repeated nearly verbatim in multiple sections and a few confusingly worded sentences that seemed in direct conflict with points made just pages earlier.

Despite its faults, there were some very interesting pieces. I particularly enjoyed the section on epigenetics and generational trauma and wished that would have tied in more strongly to the central thesis. The section on supervised consumption services at the end was also interesting and could have been longer--I particularly would have liked to hear more about the ongoing studies about these services so that I was more easily able to learn more.

I think I entered expecting the wrong thing. I picked up expecting to learn more arguments in favor of legalizing drugs, but I found an autobiographical work. We learn about the author’s family, her life experience and famous people, which could be interesting but it’s not what the book is marketed as. My problem with the book is that the argument behind legalising drugs feels like “drugs are not that bad” or “most people don’t become addicts” which can be true, but it is acting blind at the thousand families who had experienced living/being an addict. I like the message in the afterword but it felt not linked with the journey of the book. Thanks to NetGalley for sending this my way!

The description of this book and it's title suggests that it will provide arguments for why all drugs should be legalized. I was expecting more in depth and generalized arguments that I could take valuable information from and utilize in a discussion or debate, but I got a more personal story of the author's life and the people surrounding her. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, just not what I was expecting.
She talked about family members, friends, lovers, celebrities and herself.
The arguments were very vague and short. I did not like the part where the author tells about the time she was actively doing drugs during college and on the way to her bar exam, drove on the same highway Paris Hilton received a DWI and said, "at least I didn't get THAT f*cked up". It just felt wrong to compare or make that connection in that situation and an out of place comment for this particular book.
This read like a long essay or thesis. There was no sympathy, connection, passion, or emotion for me and I feel a book on this heavy of a subject needs that to be successful.