"But they're ridiculous. They have no support. Barely a hundred, and half of them students on a lark," Finn countered.

Mathers looked up at the tin ceiling.

"But you know, Bud, the hell of it is that they're right about most of their facts. It's true that marijuana isn't a peril to western civilization. Nasty obnoxious stuff, but nothing like cocaine or heroin. And they might even be right about hemp agriculture and the trees and all. I'm no expert. They aren't either, but it wouldn't be the first time the government has been proven wrong. Those people could put Drug Enforcement out of business in this state."

Mathers reflected. A sobering thought.

But it didn’t sober the sheriff.

"Fat chance. Drugs are Public Enemy Number One. We've got a War going. The public wants a Drug-Free America. We're going to give it to them." Jake Lincoln was always running for election.

So was Mathers.

--Excerpt from WITCHGRASS: a pipe dream

"As in Jamaica, work and ganja have become an ingrained culture. Reggae bands can always find work in Maine. There is even some direct cross-fertilization through the Jamaican apple pickers who visit the state every fall. Real Lamb's Bread ganja, though, is only a memory of the serendipitous seventies.  Other world-class strains of ganja now proliferate in the woods.

This culture seems to exist, in some variant, in every Maine town. Other places too, maybe, but everywhere in Maine. Along the coast, in the back counties, in The County itself. Little towns, mill towns, farm towns surrounded by green woods. Hard work, trees, opportunity.

An ethnicity of work in the warrior mode. Agricultural Entrepreneurship that even some legislators have admired. Taking back old farms marked by endless stone fences. Taking back the land to make green gold."

-- Excerpt from WITCHGRASS: a pipe dream

New novel lampoons Drug War

WITCHGRASS: A pipe dream, a novel by Dave Wilkinson portrays shattered lives and conflicted families as a New England town splits apart.

What if a Vietnam helicopter suddenly landed in your back yard? The town of New Salem, Maine faces an invasion of military operations, secret spies and child-parent betrayal that sets a peaceful rural county spinning.

Carolyn Chute, author of best-selling The Beans of Egypt, Maine, “cry-laughed and laugh-cried through a book more important than most of what they give kids to read in school.”

Witchgrass: A pipe dream sweeps the reader into a quiet world turned upside down by the War on Drugs. An afternoon invasion becomes a multi-faceted dramedy as helicopters cause confusion and panic one summer during the early 1990s.

School children, sheriffs, professors and prosecutors play their parts in a story about one of America’s major social issues. Emotions boil in the culture clash over cannabis, a matter which divides parent from child, employee from company, husband from wife.

As the story comes to its unexpected and riotous climax, Maine in the Bush One era becomes a positive vision of future enlightenment. In its non-judgmental portrayal of cannabis users, this novel could be an image breakthrough for much-maligned pot smokers.

Witchgrass: A pipe dream is available for sale online at Amazon.com and other channels, also at selected bookstores in July.