The Cannabis Revolution
What You Need to Know
The Cannabis Revolution contains a wealth of balanced information for those in the medical field.
Comprehensive to the point of being hard to digest, Stephen Holt’s The Cannabis Revolution covers all things marijuana-related.
At more than six hundred pages, the book is extremely thorough. Written by a medical doctor who has years of training in therapeutics and clinical pharmacology, this is a manual with a clearly defined audience: It is meant to educate those who want to use cannabis in any of its many forms to treat patients. Readers may send in the results of an extended quiz at the end of the book to receive a certificate of completion.
Heavily researched and cited, The Cannabis Revolution discusses everything from the medical benefits and drawbacks of using cannabis to using hemp products in cooking to how exactly cannabis affects every part of the brain and body. The book is well-balanced, explaining both positives and negatives in every section. Citing medical doctors and holistic practitioners as well as quoting politicians and others involved in the cannabis movement, this book leaves out very little when it comes to explaining the impact of marijuana use on culture.
Written with an excess of medical jargon and large, technical words, this book will not be easily understood by laypeople. It’s dense and is not laid out in a way that is conducive to easy fact-checking or referencing, through there are a number of charts that make it a bit more accessible. The text becomes repetitive, with the same topics arising multiple times in multiple chapters, even when they don’t really seem to fit.
The material is organized in a confusing manner. For example, in a chapter about the history of legalization, there are sections thrown in on endocannabinoid receptors, definitions of marijuana terms, and the coevolution of the drug. In another instance, a chapter on the side effects of marijuana use has a section on the legality of CBD oil and teen use of cannabis.
The chapters on how cannabis affects a number of different medical conditions—including ALS, AIDS, arthritis, and mental disorders—is quite helpful. Two chapters at the end of the book (“Miscellaneous Issues” and “Social Perspectives” ) are a hodgepodge of random and repeated information. The book concludes with a lengthy list of references, the aforementioned quiz, and further reading material.
The Cannabis Revolution is clearly aimed at those in the medical field; for them, it contains a wealth of balanced information.
Reviewed by
Angela McQuay
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
