Los Angeles attorney and longtime drug legalization advocate Allison Margolin became known as “LA’s Dopest Attorney” for her work on complex legal cases, including California’s medical marijuana battles. Now she’s taking a ‘novel’ approach to arguing her case for legal reform.
Margolin’s non-fiction, narrative memoir, Just Dopecomes out this summer to shed light on today’s global movement to roll back the punitive approach that has dominated the past 150 years of drug policy.
Margolin narrates her work in the first person, starting with the perspective of someone who knew at age 12 it was her dharma to end the Drug War. She writes about how 18 years of experience practicing state and federal criminal defense only further convinced her that people possess the inalienable right to get ‘high.’ To criminalize human nature is, in itself, inhumane and bad for society.
With Just DopeMargolin uses a fluid writing style that seamlessly weaves together disparate threads of her own life and sense of justice with courtroom drama, history, science and a blistering critique of the Drug War.
She chronicles her very personal odyssey from hippie child to DARE student to drug user to Dopest Defense Attorney and offers frank appraisals of political and prosecutorial policies along the way. Her gut-wrenching stories range from her grandmother’s life in Poland’s Jewish ghettoes, targeted by Hitler’s Nazis, to medical marijuana doctors and providers targeted by the DEA to racist enforcement policies. She explores topics from River Phoenix’s tragic fatal overdose to the brutal murder of George Floyd in a search to tie drug policy to justice and, ultimately, find … “Just” Dope.
Masterful, expansive, well-written and fun to read, we highly recommend this book.
Both sides now
Margolin bares her own drug habits and also shares insight into the colorful hijinks that have characterized her legal escapades in the world of licensing and lobbying around state-legal marijuana. She gives a loving and yet critical picture of her relationship with her famous marijuana-attorney father, Bruce Margolin.
To Read The Rest Of This Article By Chris Conrad on The Leaf Online
Published: March 09, 2022
Founder & Interim Editor of L.A. Cannabis News
