Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Brave New Weed
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.joedolce.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.bravenewweed.com/ * http://www.harperwave.com/book/9780062499912/Brave-New-Weed-by-Joe-Dolce/au/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2016143994
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2016143994
HEADING: Dolce, Joe (Periodical editor)
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670 __ |a Brave new weed, 2016: |b title page (Joe Dolce) about the author (the former editor-in-chief of Details and Star magazines; the CEO and founder of Joe Dolce Communications, a presentation and media-training company based in New York City)
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Editor, executive, and writer. Details magazine, began as senior editor, became editor-in-chief; Star magazine, former editor-in-chief; Fashion Wire Daily Web site, founder; Joe Dolce Communications, New York, NY, founder and chief executive officer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Joe Dolce began his career as a journalist specializing in business, media, and the arts, and in time he became senior editor at Details magazine. After being promoted to editor-in-chief, Dolce helmed Details through two National Magazine Award nominations. He next cofounded the fashion news Web site Fashion Wire Daily. Dolce later became editor-in-chief at Star magazine as well as founder of the media-training company Joe Dolce Communications.
In 2016, Dolce added author to his list of credentials. His first book, Brave New Weed: Adventures into the Uncharted World of Cannabis, explores contemporary marijuana culture and scientific research and provides an overview of prohibition and legalization. Dolce shares personal experiences, interviews, and commentary on marijuana’s evolving role in mainstream culture. Dolce’s personable approach to journalism thus produces a reader-friendly discussion of how people use marijuana, how they think about it, and how society has reacted to it over time. Dolce covers the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam and comments on medical marijuana and its myriad uses, thus addressing both the recreational and the therapeutic. From treating traumatic brain injuries to preventing seizures, Dolce covers several applications for marijuana and its derivatives. He profiles casual users as well, and he charts marijuana’s progression from reviled drug to popular pastime.
Discussing his decision to write the book in an online Huffington Post article, Dolce noted that his inspiration was both scientific and personal: “In my interviews with chemists, biochemists, biologists, botanists and other curious minds I have come to learn that cannabis is not just one thing: it’s a complex factory of compounds–60 of which are actively involved in the high and the healing. … Like wine, weed is subtle and complicated, and only recently have we had the technology to discern its many components. A decade ago science thought it was comprised of 200 compounds. Today that number is over 700 and still climbing.” Dolce also remarked: “Letting people know that I like weed as much as they like wine is also a direct result of my first coming out as a gay man. Owning my identity was one of the defining acts of my adult life and I will always believe that once everyone started doing it it paved the way for real, lasting change.” Praising the author’s efforts in Publishers Weekly, a critic asserted that Brave New Weed “will likely prove popular with cannabis enthusiasts, and it will surprise and entertain the general reader.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, August 22, 2016, review of Brave New Weed: Adventures into the Uncharted World of Cannabis.
ONLINE
Brave New Weed Web site, http://www.bravenewweed.com/ (June 7, 2017), author profile.
Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (September 16, 2016), Joe Dolce, “Why I Wrote a Book on Weed.”
A journalist for more than two decades, Joe Dolce has written for dozens of national magazines and interviewed leaders in business, media, the arts and sciences – Hugh Hefner, Barry Diller, Dr. Andrew Weil, Julia Child, Dr. Antonio Damasio, to name but a few.
He was a key player at Details magazine, first as a Senior Editor and then as Editor-in-chief. Under his leadership Details won two National Magazine Award nominations. Joe went on to co-found the first web-based fashion news service, FashionWireDaily.com, and after that was handpicked by the editorial director of American Media, to transform Star from supermarket tabloid into a glossy magazine as editor-in-chief.
Brave New Weed is Joe's debut book.
Why I Wrote A Book On Weed
I make it a point to tell everyone about what I’ve learned.
09/16/2016 01:48 pm ET
BRAND NEW WEED BY JOE DOLCE
“Why on earth did you write a book on weed? What is there to say?”
This is one of the first questions strangers ask when I tell them what I’ve been doing for the last three years. It’s a reasonable question ― I don’t present as a shaggy stoner; nor am I’m someone who blazes all day. Sometimes weeks go by without even thinking of being high. In fact, the answer to the question didn’t become clear to me until I had finished writing the book. Weed is ubiquitous, after all and that leads us to think that we know this stinky, sticky flower. As I learned we are only beginning to understand it.
The last 60 years of propaganda, disinformation and questionable science have effectively blurred the lines between fact and fiction. See for yourself:
True or False:
Weed is addictive! (False)
It can help hard drug addicts recover! (True)
It kills motivation! (Sometimes)
It’s a creativity stimulator! (Sometimes)
It’s bad for your lungs! (Not necessarily)
It helps people with asthma and COPD! (Apparently)
In my interviews with chemists, biochemists, biologists, botanists and other curious minds I have come to learn that cannabis is not just one thing: it’s a complex factory of compounds – 60 of which are actively involved in the high and the healing. Add to this, the fact that each strain has its own ratio of terpenes (pharmaceutical strength smell molecules) and phytonutrients (flavonoids) that steer the high in different directions. This is why certain strains bring you up or and others make you sleepy, why some make the mind race or others calm it. Like wine, weed is subtle and complicated, and only recently have we had the technology to discern its many components. A decade ago science thought it was comprised of 200 compounds. Today that number is over 700 and still climbing.
Second, the cannabinoids, terpenes and flavonoids – the active substances in each strain – all effect our body’s endocannabinoid system differently. What the hell is that, you ask? It’s a massive receptor network that wasn’t discovered until the 1980s. It extends throughout our bodies like a galaxy, with the densest receptor concentration – the Milky Way ― in our brains. It controls complicated functions such as intracellular communication, homeostasis and the head of the NIH said that it is apparently involved in “in almost all diseases affecting humans.” Many think of it as the body’s supercomputer.
This is complicated and subtle stuff, but the sheer size of the system and the number of things it controls is also why cannabis has such a wide range of seemingly contradictory medicinal uses. Research has shown that cannabinoids can positively impact PTSD, bone healing, traumatic brain injury and certain forms of cancer, and no, I wasn’t high when I wrote that last sentence. (For a comprehensive and in depth explanation of this see Chapter 7 in Brave New Weed). Suffice to say cannabinoids add a new, and bewildering, dimension to the way we think plant medicines. Aspirin (originally derived from birch bark) is the most obvious comparison. Rather than working as a single bullet treatment that zeroes in on only one illness, those little white tablets relieve symptoms ranging from headache to stiff muscles to sore throat. And even though it’s been around for over a century we still don’t really understand how it works.
The reasons we understand so little about cannabis are so confounding as to strain credulity. I am no conspiracy theorist but once I learned how the US government has, since 1937, campaigned to malign the plant, I have come to believe that the conspiracy is far more than just a “theory.”
Despite the trillions of Drug War dollars wasted trying to eradicate it and to limit people’s desire though legislation, weed is still the most popular plant on earth. An estimated 30-50 million Americans have used it consistently without the disastrous effects predicted. Instead, they’ve found that it increases sexual pleasure and relaxation. It’s anti inflammatory and relieves pain, and anti microbial so when applied as an unguent, stops pimples. It expands lateral thinking. Film editors and coders often use it to deepen focus—the FBI stopped banning tech users from the agency because they need those types of brains. Parents use it to attune to their childrens’ curious minds. Thousands of years of evidence show that weed used mindfully is one of earth’s least harmful substances. It won’t rot your guts like alcohol. It causes no physical addiction. It has never killed anyone.
To be clear; viewing cannabis as a wellness product isn’t some arbitrary marketing shift. It’s a profound reincarnation led by science. Prior to writing Brave New Weed I might have said that weed is less harmful than cigarettes or alcohol. Smoking kills 5 million people worldwide each year. Alcohol kills 88,000 Americans a year and is linked to domestic violence, car accidents, rape, homicide and a large percentage of suicides. But science is now showing that pot, used intelligently, might actually be good for you.
I’m ready to let science lead the discussion going forward. After all, prohibitionists have monopolized the conversation over the last 80 years. They’ve used fuzzy science, irrational laws, and cruel punishments that far outweigh the crime of getting high to make their case. Until recently the mainstream media has unthinkingly followed their lead without being held accountable.
But their arguments are proving increasingly hollow. As we can see from Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska, legalization has caused no societal earthquakes. The streets of those states aren’t choked in clouds of cannabis smoke. There has been no outbreak of schizophrenia, brain damage or arrests of people driving under the influence. There hasn’t even been an outbreak of the supposed laziness that weed brings on. As of December 2015, the cannabis industry in Colorado added 26,929 jobs, up 68% from the previous year.
All of these reasons make coming out as a cannabist (I prefer that word to “stoner” or “pothead” just as I prefer “wine enthusiast” to “drunk.”) a necessary act. But letting people know that I like weed as much as they like wine is also a direct result of my first coming out as a gay man. Owning my identity was one of the defining acts of my adult life and I will always believe that once everyone started doing it it paved the way for real, lasting change.
When I began this book, I was cautious about telling clients or strangers what I was doing. But as I learned, the weed world was far more diverse and included many more types than the shaggy haired ZZ Top stoner. The more I talked, the more I learned that my accountant, investment broker, lawyer all used cannabis ― one of my doctors asked me to get her some edibles when I was next in a legal state. It strikes me today, as it struck me 30 years ago when struggling with sexuality, that if regular people who hold jobs and have professional lives don’t come out as cannabists, opinions will stay stuck in a sort of cultural aspic.
I now make it a point to tell everyone about what I’ve learned. Some worry aloud about the effect it will have on my reputation, but most people dive right in and pepper me with questions. As it turns out there is a lot to say about this much maligned weed and I’m pleased to play my part in changing the conversation.
Joe Dolce is the author of BRAVE NEW WEED: Adventures into the Unchartered World of Cannabis available from Harper Wave October 4, 2016
Brave New Weed: Adventures Into the Uncharted World of
Cannabis
Publishers Weekly.
263.34 (Aug. 22, 2016): p105.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Brave New Weed: Adventures Into the Uncharted World of Cannabis
Joe Dolce. HarperWave, $25.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-249991-2
Dolce, former editor-in-chief of Details and Star, guides readers around the changing world of marijuana culture. Employing aspects of travel
narrative, pop history, journalism, and personal diary, Dolce provides a wide-ranging introduction to the drug, aiming to refute stereotypes and
showcase the many ways in which people interact with marijuana. These range from recreational fun, as showcased in his coverage of the
Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, to pain relief and even healing, as demonstrated by research he cites into cannabis's potential for mitigating
traumatic brain injuries. As might be expected from a book about pot, the focus is soft and the narrative meandering, moving from profiling
different types of cannabis users, to connecting the chemistry of cannabis to that of the brain, to diagnosing the growing pains of an underground
market as it becomes regulated and mainstream. Dolce is a genial and engaging narrator with a knack for breaking down complex science and
making it easily digestible for laypeople. The book will likely prove popular with cannabis enthusiasts, and it will surprise and entertain the
general reader, even if, at times, the excessive detail feels in need of pruning. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Brave New Weed: Adventures Into the Uncharted World of Cannabis." Publishers Weekly, 22 Aug. 2016, p. 105. General OneFile,
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p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA461609354&it=r&asid=5fc731aa3e889b85a361eb1285968e2c. Accessed 14 May
2017.
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