By Steve Elliott of Toke of the Town
Communist Bosses Won’t Even Allow Book Inside The Country
Steve Elliott: “You can always tell a totalitarian dictatorship, because they’re afraid of the truth.”
The worldwide release of an American book on cannabis has been delayed, due to the refusal of the communist government of China to allow its binding on Chinese soil, according to the publisher.
The Little Black Book of Marijuana, by yours truly, Toke of the Town editor Steve Elliott, was scheduled for availability on August 1, but that printing schedule was thrown off after the totalitarian Chinese government decided the book was “too controversial” to even allow the printed pages inside the tightly-run dictatorship.
“Our printer is located in Hong Kong, with binderies in mainland China,” production manager Ginny Reynolds of Peter Pauper Press explained to me Friday morning. “Usually it’s no problem to move printed books from Hong Kong to China for binding.
“However, Chinese censorship is extremely tight,” Reynolds told Toke of the Town. “Any content deemed ‘sensitive’ or ‘controversial’ by their standards is banned.”
“We have the same problem with our books on sexuality,” she told me. “The printer has to arrange for binding in Hong Kong, and facilities there are limited and overbooked in the summer season.
Basically, what this means for prospective readers of The Little Black Book of Marijuana is that instead of an August 1 availability date, we are now looking at a delay until around September 15. Believe me, that doesn’t make me any happier than it does you. In fact, it frustrates the hell out of me.
You wanna talk about frustration? The book is already bound, at this point — but it’s literally on a slow boat from China. The damned thing is somewhere in the mid-Pacific, chugging this way at a glacial pace, and there ain’t shit you or I can do, except maybe fire up a doob and wait.
“We’re doing everything we can to speed things along, although I know patience is hard to come by!” Reynolds said. “We were unaware of the extent of the delays until recently.”
So, for those of you who have already ordered The Little Black Book of Marijuana: The Essential Guide to the World of Cannabis, I offer my sincere apologies. You will receive your books, just a month later than planned.
The book is already available in electronic format at Amazon (Kindle), Barnes and Noble (Nook) and iTunes.
Now, who’d care to join me in a big shout?: FUCK CENSORSHIP!
Article From Toke of the Town and republished with special permission.
