“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.

Prologue: The First Hit

Part I: Risk

1. Patient Zero 2. Government Weed 3. Recreational Opium 4. Stephen Harper Don’t Smoke Hash 5. The Founders

Part II: Reward

6. Bruce Being Bruce 7. Justin Time 8. Rolling 9. Growing Pains 10.17

Part III: Revenge

11. God Bud 12. Dark Clouds 13. All of the Lights 14. 50 Shades of Grey 15. Licensed to Kill 16. Edible

Part IV: Redemption

17. Got ’Em 18. 2.0 Chapter Covid- 19 20. Merge or Die 21. Last Dance with Mary Jane

Epilogue: The Last Drag

Index

About the Author

Catch a Fire captures the highs and hangovers and historic moments of the legalization of cannabis and its sweeping effect on North American culture and the lives of a handful of daring and opportunistic adventurers who seized the day. It's a raucous and riveting narrative worthy of a Hollywood movie, with swashbuckling corporate dealmakers, big dreamers, inflated egos and company valuations, soaring heights and nosediving crashes. It's an entrepreneurial adventure like no other, with many powerful business lessons. But above all, it's just a fantastic story with characters so compelling you won't believe they are real.

Cannabis legalization has been a wild ride. Very few people have followed this industry closer than Ben, which makes this book such a great read.

Catch a Fire is a rollicking tale about the strange menagerie of people — compassionate stoners, pothead PhDs, risk-taking weed ruffians, pain-wracked patients, principled politicians, corporate suits, tech bros, and boastful billionaires — who transformed cannabis from a recreational drug to a pharmaceutical product to the world’s hottest stock market commodity and back again. At the same time, Ben Kaplan delivers a serious examination of how a multi-billion-dollar business was often little more than smoke and mirrors, a green rush driven by greed, sleazy salesmen and corporate malfeasance, and went up in a puff of smoke by over-promising and under-delivering.

You can't come to Canada and not smoke a joint with Ben Kaplan.

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.

Ben Kaplan is a storytelling genius. With unparalleled access and dynamic writing, acclaimed journalist Kaplan delivers a riveting, untold chronicle of the explosive $131-billion Canadian cannabis industry — its euphoric beginnings and inevitable crashes. Catch A Fire is a gripping and entertaining look at the wild highs and dramatic chaos of an unprecedented financial and cultural phenomenon.