marijuana

Ray Mirzabegian and Arsineh Yaghyaei attend to their daughter Emily as she recovers from a seizure. Los Angeles, CA, April 2018.

The Taboo Medicine

By Harriet Brown, Photography by Lynn Johnson

Winter 2023

Many parents know firsthand how cannabis can transform the lives of children with severe illness. Why won’t the legal system listen to them?

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Holding

By Jamie Quatro, Illustrations by Anna Schuleit Haber

Winter 2016

This is how it is with my mind, heading out over the ocean, tipping one way so I see only water, shades of blue and green and cloud-shadow slate; tipping the other, all sky and complication of cloud. Ruckus of glinting refracted light. Some days, just empty gray, in both directions.

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The Mule

By Simon Apter

Fall 2009

The first run, from Tampa to McAllen to Greensboro, was a bit of a lark. Maria was living in Tampa, and she was bored. So when a friend, someone she knew to be a Mexican drug cartel–affiliated smuggler, appeared at her door with a business proposition, she leapt at the opportunity. He said to her and her friend, “You girls want to make about $5,000 for driving for us for a few hours?”

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Are We Losing the War on Drugs?

By Ted Genoways

Fall 2009

Thousands of deaths in Mexico are chiefly the result of traffic in high-potency pot smuggled across the border with ruthless resolve. But when marijuana legalization came up as one of the most requested questions during a presidential town hall meeting early in Obama’s presidency, he laughed it off.

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