Catch a Fire: The Highs and Lows of the Legalization of Canadian Cannabis

＂Sharply observed, fiercely researched, starkly revealing, written with wit, verve, and insight, making room for the tragic ironies without ever taking its eyes off the comic ones, Catch a Fire left me shaking with laughter - when I wasn’t shaking my head in dismay.＂ - MICHAEL CHABON

The untold story of the ＄131-billion Canadian cannabis blow out.

Canopy Growth founder Bruce Linton didn’t invent marijuana, but he figured out how to turn a Canadian start-up selling the stuff into a ＄22 billion international buzz. Catch a Fire goes behind the scenes of Justin Trudeau’s legalization gambit and the stoned pioneering lawyers who helped make weed gummies more valuable than U.S. Steel. From the dope dealers of the 1960s to the never-before-told bribery accusations during Covid-19, cannabis historian Ben Kaplan speaks with the dealers, stealers, and renegade freaks who made and then lost money with the combined chutzpah of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Sam Bankman-Fried.

This is the definitive history of a massive societal change - and a great boom and bust.

Ben Kaplan is a writer and editor who worked at GQ, New York Magazine, and the National Post. Originally from Brooklyn, Kaplan is a founder and editor of KIND Magazine, distributed in Canada’s legal weed shops, and the owner of iRun, the country’s largest running magazine. His writing has been published in the New York Times and Spin, and he is a frequent television commentator. His first book is Feet, Don’t Fail Me Now. He lives in Toronto.