AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 SPLIFFS

Steven Wishnia Brian Preston's Pot Planet: Adventures in Global Marijuana Culture (Grove Press) is a writing gig many would envy. The B.C.-based journalist traveled in a dozen countries to sample the herb and its social context, sparking up on mountaintops in Nepal and balconies in Bangkok, copping gansa in Laos and kif in the Rif, as well as visiting Nimbin, the Cannabis Cup and the B.C.-bud hotbed in the Kootenay Mountains. (Conspicuously absent are Jamaica, Mexico and all of Latin America.) Along the way we meet Laotian tribeswomen, Australian hippies and the British "original cockney yardie" author of Council Flat Paradise, a guide for housing-project growers "from the root to the Rizla."

More familiar faces include Ben Dronkers, Dennis Peron and B.C. activist David Malmo-Levine.

Preston's prose is pretty prosaic -- there are no Kerouacian road rhapsodies here -- but he's enough of a social critic not to write fluff, to mix in pot history artfully, to notice poverty in Thailand and ghosts of genocide in Cambodia.

In Amsterdam, he confesses he's slightly disappointed by the coffeeshop scene: "Finally, a place where you can freely buy marijuana, and they're pushing it at you like it's booze or tobacco."

Still, he has a "why I love Holland" epiphany, watching pot-smokers and ice-skaters coexist. Pot Planet isn't the ultimate stoner-travel book, but it's well worth reading