PRESS RELEASE:

FRONTLINE's primetime monthly newsmagazine returns with The Pot Republic, a timely report from the frontlines of marijuana legalization in California, airing Tuesday, July 26, at 9:00 p.m. on KUED.

The bulk of the marijuana consumed in the United States used to come across the border from Mexico, Canada and elsewhere. Now, more than half of it is believed to be home grown in California, where an enormous black market has emerged under the cover of the state's medical marijuana law.

With more than a third of all states now experimenting with some form of legalization and decriminalization -- and several California counties attempting to openly regulate pot production -- FRONTLINE and The Center for Investigative Reporting team up to investigate the country's oldest, largest and most wide-open marijuana market. Is the federal government now moving to shut it down?

The program also features New Yorker writer and surgeon Atul Gawande reporting on a doctor in Camden, N.J., who actually seeks out the community's sickest -- and most expensive -- patients. Dr. Jeffrey Brenner and his team are pioneering a practice called hotspotting," in which medical care is focused on the hardest-to-treat to improve their health and dramatically reduce costs.

And finally, after the largest recorded earthquake in Japan set off a nuclear disaster, its people are facing a generation-defining moment as they question their lifestyle and dependency on nuclear power. FRONTLINE journeys with Marco Werman of PRI's The World as he meets Chim-Pom, a provocative group of young artists making headlines as they use art to challenge the status quo and ask Japanese society to rethink their way of life.