Emily Dufton
“ I realized that revolution leads to counterrevolution leads to counterrevolution. It’s a never-ending cycle of people trying to get the last word.”
Emily Dufton
© Mike Kepka
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“Emily Dufton has done an admirable job focusing on the activists, both pro- and anti-marijuana, who have helped steer the conversation, and in some cases, the legality of our favorite weed. And she ends with a cautionary note: if you don’t defend your freedom, it can be whisked away by a reactionary regime intent on imposing their morality on the multitudes.”
“A comprehensive history of marijuana legalization in America...Dufton puts years of dedicated research, interviews, and social scrutiny to impressive use...The author’s astute, well-rounded report spotlights the virtual tug of war of the movement and pays close attention to each side’s setbacks and advancements. She presents an engrossing, evenhanded timeline of the marijuana legalization revolution and its backlash...A lively, perceptive refresher course on the politics of pot.”
“Americans may now walk by medical marijuana dispensaries on their streets and encounter full legalization initiatives on their ballots. Dufton’s book provocatively asks (and answers) the question: Why did this take so long? ... Grass Roots reorients the celebratory drug legalization story that is so often told today in a number of ways... [it] shows not just the caprice of U.S. drug policy, but how quickly and dramatically the legal and social changes called for by the hippie generation were quashed, creating a backlash still felt today.”
Emily Dufton is a drug historian and writer based near Washington DC. Her first book, Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017) is widely considered the definitive book on cannabis activism in the United States. It was named one of the “The 8 Best Weed Books to Read Right Now” by Rolling Stone. Her next book is Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America’s Forgotten War on Drugs (University of Chicago Press, 2026), which has already received the Lukas Work-in-Progress Award to help finance its writing, as well as a Robert B. Silvers Grant and a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant.
Dufton is a sought after commentator on America’s changing cannabis scene. She has appeared on CNN, the History Channel and NPR’s “Back Story with the American History Guys”, and her writing has been featured on TIME, CNN, Smithsonian Magazine, and the Washington Post. She hosts a podcast on the New Books Network, where she interviews authors on new books about drugs, addiction and recovery.
In a New York Times interview, she was asked to persuade someone to read Grass Roots in 50 words or less. She responded: “More than any other drug, pot means something in this country, around ideas that are at the core of many debates about American democracy: freedom, public health, social justice, identity. This book tells people why America continues this discussion, and what marijuana has meant to us, both historically and today.”
A former American Council of Learned Societies fellow at the Center for Public Integrity, she received a BA from New York University and earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from George Washington University. She lives in Takoma Park, Maryland with her husband Dickson Mercer and their two children.
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Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall of Marijuana in America
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