Tony Dokoupil on the Coming Marijuana Backlash | Big Think

Tony Dokoupil on the Coming Marijuana Backlash

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America has been undergoing a marijuana revolution of sorts. Marijuana is legal for medical use in 20 states and the District of Columbia, and now it’s sold in Colorado and Washington, with around a dozen more states likely to follow. A recent study by the University of Texas at Dallas found that legalized medical marijuana actually lowered crime rates.

This is all good news for advocates for legalization, but author Tony Dokoupil warns of a coming backlash. What will be the impact once marijuana is mainstream and industrialized? Dokoupil, the author of The Last Pirate: A Father, His Son, and the Golden Age of Marijuana, raises important arguments that should be of concern to people on both sides of the issue.

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Tony Dokoupil:

Tony Dokoupil is a senior writer for NBC News and the author of The Last Pirate (Doubleday, April 2014), a book about a father, his son, and the golden age of marijuana.

Over the years, his reporting has made The Daily Show (the moment of zen) and The Tonight Show (the opening monologue), and generated guest spots on CNN, NPR, MSNBC and The Today Show. His writing—which has recreated drug smuggling, hate crimes, suicides, and free sperm donations (not a euphemism)—has garnered attention from the good people at Longform, Byliner, and Longreads.

HBO awarded a development grant to turn his story “The Devil in Deryl Dedmon” into a documentary film, and NPR's Fresh Air made his piece "The New Pot Barons" into an hour long program. His earlier cover story “The Coffee Shop Baby” became a 30-minute segment on ABC’s 20/20, and his profile of the antiquities-hunter Forrest Fenn helped push the man’s hidden treasure into the pantheon of findable millions. His 2009 story “My Father the Dope Dealer” was bought by Doubleday, and the accompanying video was a "Must See" pick of the New York Times Lens blog.

His work has taken him to more than a dozen states and into interviews with a $10,000-a-day corporate psychic, the last surviving veteran of World War I, and the only black father in Baltimore to adopt a white girl. It has included training as a private astronaut, diving to the bottom of the Pacific, and living inside the last wholly company town in America. His past characters include the reclusive author of the Anarchist Cookbook, defrocked mega-pastor Ted Haggard, and (via an exclusive cache of letters) the would-be savior of humanity, L. Ron Hubbard.

Previously, as a senior writer at Newsweek & The Daily Beast, he wrote numerous cover stories, including "The Suicide Epidemic," "iCrazy" and "Dustoff 73," which helped anchor the first annual Hero Summit in Washington, DC. His story “The Last Dive" and the original video became Newsweek's first animated cover.

Dokoupil was one of two staff writers in Newsweek's Periscope section, which was nominated for a 2008 National Magazine Award for best stand-alone department. Later he edited a weekly page of idea-driven news and the My Turn column. Dokoupil joined Newsweek part-time in the summer of 2006, working as a researcher in the international edition before moving to the domestic arts section as a full-time reporter. Prior to Newsweek, he co-wrote the “Research Report” column for the Columbia Journalism Review. His freelance work has appeared in Radar, W, and GQ.

He received his B.B.A. summa cum laude from George Washington University, where—and this just sounds immodest no matter what—he graduated first in his class. He was also captain of the baseball team, which it must be said is terrible now but wasn’t when he was there, he swears. He holds a masters degree in American Studies from Columbia University, and earned a fellowship towards a PhD in media studies before dropping out after two years to pursue journalism

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TRANSCRIPT:

Tony Dokoupil: I think legalization will continue to spread around the country and I think at a certain point there’ll be a very strong liberal backlash because the pot market that is emerging is gonna get bigger and more professionalized. And it’s only a matter of time before the advocates for legalization realize that hey, we didn’t used to like the guy who’s on the cover of Fortune magazine or Forbes. And it’s kind of cool now that that’s a marijuana guy. Actual examples Fortune and Forbes. But we weren’t really about big business before and we never really liked genetically modified anything. If it was a mango we’d fight it. And it’s all genetically modified in Colorado.

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