Investigative reporter Scott Eden knows a great story when he sees one.
Upon being asked by his editor at Inc. Magazine to look into the 2019 murder of Santa Cruz tech entrepreneur and budding cannabis operator Tushar Altre, he says he knew almost instantly that he had a potential book on his hands.
“I think I knew within the first three or four phone calls,” Eden told the Chronicle. “I felt, provided I could talk to the key people in Tushar’s career in cannabis, this could be a book.”
Eden’s award-winning work for outlets like ESPN: The Magazine, GQ and Wired has established his talents for tackling complex topics. But despite his experience covering everything from baseball players being smuggled out of Cuba to police brutality within the New York Police Department, Eden admits he had a lot to learn when it came to the wild, often dangerous world of cannabis – both as it once existed and as it still frequently remains today.
The result of four years of in-depth research and dozens of interviews, “A Killing in Cannabis: A True Story of Love, Murder, and California Weed” is a new whodunnit true-crime yarn of immense intrigue that also manages to offer a bird’s eye account of the largely lawless and mostly unwritten history of cannabis as it relates to both Santa Cruz and California at large.
Eden recently spoke to the Chronicle about the challenges of reporting on a famously tight-lipped industry and how the process ultimately led him to fall in love with Santa Cruz.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Had you done much reporting on the world of weed before you started investigating Tushar Atre’s murder?
A: No. I’d done zero writing on the world of cannabis prior to this. I knew next to nothing other than having enjoyed the substance across my youth.
Q: People who work in cannabis are not famously the most forthcoming when it comes to press requests and sharing stories. How did you gain the confidence of the sources you spoke with?
A: That’s why it took four years. You develop a source, and that person leads to another person, who leads to another person. I had many doors metaphorically slammed on me, but some people were willing to talk.
I think it was important that, from the beginning, I framed this not as a murder story but as a story about the transition from prohibition and the medical marijuana era into recreational legalization and the chaos that ensued.
Q: Santa Cruz is a fascinating place. Was this your first time there?
More Information
A Killing in Cannabis: : A True Story of Love, Murder, and California Weed
By Scott Eden
(Spiegel & Grau; 384 pages; $30)
Scott Eden in conversation with Steve Palopoli: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 11. Free, RSVP requested. Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. https://bookshopsantacruz.com
A: Yes. I’ve come to love the area – the whole region, really – but I knew next to nothing about Santa Cruz. I’d seen (the 1987 Santa Cruz-set vampire film) “Lost Boys” and I knew about the surf culture, but that was it.
Read more at
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/killing-cannabis-tells-story-santa-193442192.html
