Union: The Business Behind Getting High, The (2007) Movie Script

( host )
Marijuana History 101.
Or should I say extremely brief
Marijuana History 101 ?
It's big, complicated,
and we'll only be able to
scratch the surface,
so let's get started.
The first thing
that strikes one as odd
when looking at the history
of marijuana,
which is also
known as cannabis,
is how very much legal
it once was.
In fact, it wasn't only legal,
it just happened to be one of
the largest agricultural crops
in the world,
including the United States.
You see, cannabis can also be
hemp-- and just what is hemp ?
Well, it's by and large
the most robust, durable,
natural soft fiber on the face
of this planet.
Up until 1883,
and for
thousands of years before,
cannabis hemp was the largest
agricultural crop in the world.
It had thousands of uses
and products.
The majority of
fabric, lighting oil,
medicines, paper and fiber
came from hemp.
The first marijuana law
to exist in the United States
was a law ordering farmers
to grow hemp.
Benjamin Franklin
used it to start
one of America's
first paper mills.
The first two copies of
the Declaration of Independence
were written on cannabis
hemp paper.
Up until the 1800s,
most of the textiles
in the United States were
made with hemp.
last half of the 19th century
was made from cannabis.
Even Queen Victoria used
the resin extracts from cannabis
to alleviate her
menstrual cramps.
But the funny thing about
industrial hemp
was you couldn't
get high from it,
yet it was lumped in
with the following,
which also made little sense--
"Reefer Madness."
In the early 20th century,
yellow journalism had surfaced.
Articles depicted blacks and
Mexicans as frenzied beasts
who would smoke marijuana,
play devil's music,
and heap disrespect and
viciousness on the readership,
a majority of which happened
to be white.
Some offenses included
looking at a white woman twice,
laughing at a white person,
or even stepping on
white men's shadows,
and this ended up leading to a
law in the form of a tax stamp,
a tax stamp that would not only
include marijuana,
but also hemp
and cannabis medicines.
It speculated that hemp's
potential
for an abundance
of new products
was going to be in direct
competition with other sources.
And this,
added to the Reefer Madness,
led to the eventual downfall of
all forms of cannabis.
"Popular Mechanics" magazine had
actually prepared an article
entitled
"New Billion-Dollar Crop."
Hemp was touted as being
able to produce
more than 5,000 textile products
from its threadlike fiber
and more than 25,000
products from its cellulose,
ranging from dynamite
to cellophane.
Its superiority as a source for
paper was also becoming known,
especially with the development
of hemp-processing equipment.
Now, the new Marijuana Tax Act
was all fine and dandy,
except for one thing.
If you wanted to grow hemp,
you needed to buy a stamp,
but they weren't giving
any out--
to anybody.
And so, in effect, all forms of
cannabis became illegal.
Things pretty much stayed
that way until World War II,
when the government decided
that hemp,
once again, was a good thing,
and produced a video,
"Hemp for Victory."
But by the time the war was
over, hemp again became bad,
and in 1948,
when the Marijuana Law
once again came into question,
Congress recognized that
marijuana was made illegal
for the wrong reason.
It didn't make people
violent at all.
It made them pacifists.
The Communists would use it to
weaken America's will to fight.
Congress now voted to keep
marijuana illegal
for the exact opposite reason
they had outlawed it
in the first place.
And all through the years,
report after report,
commissioned by everybody,
from the mayor of New York
to the president
of the United States,
has come back with the view
that marijuana
should have no criminal
penalty attached to it.
Yet marijuana remains
as illegal today
as it did
nearly 70 years ago.
Marijuana.
It's become big business,
a multibillion-dollar
business
both in Canada
and the United States,
but why has it become
such a big business ?
Here in British Columbia alone,
it's speculated that
the illegal BC marijuana trade
brings in upwards of
$7 billion annually,
and up to 85% of that product
heads south
to the United States.
Having become an international
issue, when do the lines blur ?
How does a massive underground
market like this survive
while remaining illegal ?
Why is marijuana illegal
in the first place ?
And if Prohibition
is meant to protect us,
I guess the most obvious
question is,
does the Prohibition work ?
( man )
If Prohibition worked, okay ?
If you could just wave
a magic wand and say,
"This is gone away,"
I'd be all over it, you know ?
But the fact of the matter is
that Prohibition
has never worked.
( man )
You know,
we've been here before.
You remember the first
Prohibition, right ?
Which was ?
( host )
Prohibition of alcohol.
No, no, I'm talking about
thefirstProhibition.
"Thou shalt not partake
of the fruit of the tree
of knowledge."
And who was the big cop ?
And how many people
did He have to watch ?
Two.
What are the goals
of this Prohibition ?
( man )
I assume the goals
of Prohibition
are to reduce the amount
of drugs available
and to reduce
the demand for those drugs.
In both instances, cannabis
Prohibition's an utter failure.
Has the Prohibition stopped
people from using marijuana ?
( man )
You get a phone call,
and it says,
"I'm from
the federal government.
"I wanna know whether
you've been using cocaine
or marijuana recently."
Presumably, you might be
getting a little bit
of an underestimate.
In 1937, there were estimated
to be 55,000 marijuana users,
and now there are estimated
to be more than 50 million
of them.
That's a 100,000% increase.
Seems to be quite
a few of them.
Yes, I'm afraid there are.
Whether the drug is
criminalized or decriminalized
does not affect the rates of
smoking of cannabis,
either of uptake
or of discontinuation.
( host )
So what are the dangers
of using marijuana ?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It gives you, like,
a rapid heartbeat.
( woman )
Smoker's cough.
I'm sure it has some effect on
your brain function, memory.
I don't know,
is there something unhealthy
about moving slowly ?
It's just not good for you.
You're not fully conscientious
of what you're doing.
Thickens some membranes
in your brain or something.
Well, it's been science--
I guess it's--
I'm being told it's been
scientifically proven
that marijuana
kills your brain cells.
Ahh, that's one I remember--
marijuana kills brain cells.
I thought the same thing.
You know, I didn't start smoking
pot until about five years ago.
I thought pot
made you stupid.
I bought into it just as
much as anybody did.
I realized when I was like
I was like, "You got to be
fucking kidding me."
Ronald Reagan announces the most
reliable scientific sources say
permanent brain damage is one of
the inevitable results
of the use of marijuana.
Monkeys pumped
full of marijuana,
apparently 30 joints a day,
had begun to atrophy and die
after 90 days.
Brain damage was determined
after counting
the dead brain cells
of both monkeys
who had been
subjected to the marijuana
and ones who had not.
The study became the foundation
of the government
and other
special-interest groups' claim
that marijuana
kills brain cells.
Here's what they didn't
tell you.
After six years of requests,
how the study was conducted
was finally revealed.
Instead of administering
Dr. Heath used
a method of pumping
through a gas mask within
five minutes over three months.
( man )
They suffocated the monkeys.
What they did is they
put these gas masks,
basically on their face,
and they pumped pot into it,
but without additional oxygen,
so after "X" amount of time,
the brain shut down.
Well, if you suffocate,
the first thing
that's gonna happen
is your brain cells are gonna
die with lack of oxygen.
So what they did is they
suffocated the monkey,
showed all these
dead brain cells,
and then went on to
associate it
by saying that cannabis use
causes your brain cells to die.
And how many people, not knowing
the origin of the study,
have gone on to
quote it and re-quote it,
and now people believe it.
Studies since have shown no
signs of any brain-cell damage.
In 2005,
new research suggested
that marijuana could possibly
stimulatebrain-cell growth.
That study hasn't received
the same attention.
Another common belief--
marijuana causes lung cancer.
In the 1999 study by the
Institute of Medicine
that was paid for by
the United States Government,
they had to use words like "may"
and "should" cause cancer.
We've been hearing
for years them trying to say
that it causes lung cancer,
and we say, "Really ?
"That's interesting, because
you can't even show us one case
of cancer being caused by
cannabis use alone."
You definitely
have to do it moderately
because it does paralyze
the cilia,
but if it's not radioactive,
you're probably not going
to get cancer from it.
( man )
Smoking it can be harmful
because of the properties
of smoke.
Not as a result of anything
in the cannabis plant,
but because they're
intaking heated plant matter
into their lungs.
People said,
"Well, you don't know.
We haven't been smoking it
long enough."
Look what happened
with cigarettes.
We've had about four decades,
more than four decades,
of experience.
If this was gonna show up,
it should have shown up by now.
Finally, a study came out just
in the last month verifying
that cannabis smoke
does not cause cancer.
It's different than nicotine,
and the elements in the tobacco
smoke do cause cancer,
and elements
in the marijuana don't.
There's no cases of
marijuana-only smokers
getting brown-lung syndrome.
There's no cases of
marijuana-only smokers
getting emphysema.
Strange for a plant
that's so "dangerous."
How come none of that ?
Marijuana is as bad for you
or worse than tobacco ?
Impossible.
If they had the evidence,
they'd be putting emaciated
bodies or emphysema,
lung cancer, black lungs,
they would be parading them
throughout the media.
They don't have one,
yet people, somehow or other,
think that it might cause
the same thing.
In fact, if you look at the
straight deaths from substances,
a different type of picture
starts to appear.
The number-one killer
in the country--
it beat out AIDS,
heroin, crack, cocaine,
alcohol, car accidents, fire
and murder combined.
Tobacco.
That's a nasty,
dirty thing to say, sir.
A lovely, pure, white cigarette,
causing cancer.
It gets me right here.
( coughing )
With an average of 430,000
deaths per year,
considering it's
the number-one killer,
it's interesting to know that
tobacco receives
government subsidies--
and is grown with radioactive
fertilizer.
Now get out there
and sell cigarettes !
Number two on the list ?
If we don't include poor diet
and physical inactivity,
with well over 85,000
deaths a year... alcohol.
As we look much further
down the list,
there are others
that may surprise you.
Caffeine comes in with one
to 10,000 deaths a year.
And some of our most
popular pain relievers--
nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory
drugs such as aspirin--
still make an appearance with
over 7,500 deaths annually.
Where does marijuana lie
in this ?
What kind of staggering
number do we find ?
I don't know, 50,000 ?
From marijuana ?
I would probably say,
then, 80,000.
I would say it would
be hundreds of billions.
Get ready for it--
here it comes.
There are no deaths from
cannabis use anywhere.
You can't find one.
( Joe )
In 10,000 years of
known use of marijuana,
there's never been a single
death attributed to marijuana.
There's 400,000 deaths
in America alone
every year that are directly
attributed to tobacco.
I've heard that you have
to smoke something like
to get a toxic amount of
delta 9-tetrahydracannabinol.
I challenge anybody
to do that.
And even in
the animal studies
where people have loaded
the animals up
with doses that would
be hundreds of times
what a human could possibly
be exposed to,
no, animals don't die.
The LD50 seems to be
astronomical.
You can die from ingesting
too much aspirin.
You can die from
ingesting too much coffee.
The drug warriors who say,
"We have to protect society,
save these people,"
are being just a little bit
disingenuous.
Not one university
or medical facility
has ever
recorded a single death
directly attributed
to marijuana.
But never mind that.
There's other problems,
other reasons to fear it.
Take addiction, for example.
There are more kids in
addiction clinics for marijuana
than any other substance.
This must mean
that marijuana
is the most addictive
substance today.
It's undoubtedly true
that there are more teenagers
and kids in treatment
for marijuana
than all the
other drugs combined.
What the DEA never tells you
iswhythat's true.
( Lester )
A kid is caught
possessing or smoking marijuana.
He's taken to court,
he's given a choice.
Either you, you know,
some horrible penalty,
or you go to
a treatment center.
Obviously chooses to go
to treatment,
and goes to treatment there,
he's considered an addict.
But then the DEA gets the point
of that stat and says,
"Look at all these kids
in treatment for marijuana.
"God, it must be because
today's marijuana
is not the marijuana that
your parents were smoking."
As far as I understand,
only 3% of the people
in treatment for marijuana
are there voluntarily.
The other 97% were
told to by their guardian
or told to by a judge,
"You can choose between jail
or treatment."
A lot of people
choose treatment.
It provides no basis for
speaking about addiction.
Anybody who is at all
sophisticated about marijuana
would rate them the way
two researchers
were asked to rate drugs
in order of addiction.
Nicotine was one,
alcohol was two.
Then heroin, then cocaine,
then coffee,
and then marijuana.
There may have been a couple
of other drugs,
but marijuana
was at the very bottom.
Below coffee.
( man )
This narcotic, unlike
the opiates, the synthetics,
and cocaine,
is nonaddictive.
( man )
What do you mean by
"nonaddictive" ?
By "nonaddictive," it is meant
that the user of marijuana,
when deprived of the drug,
will not experience
the agonies of withdrawal.
It is habituating, but its
use can be discontinued.
Then what is its danger ?
It's used as a scapegoat
for covering up underlying
problems in people,
especially young people.
"Here I am,
don't ignore me."
If you use marijuana on
a daily basis for a year or so,
and you stop using it,
you're gonna
notice some differences,
but nothing like the kind of
withdrawal people will
experience withdrawing from
either tobacco or heroin.
But why would the government
and the DEA
wanna put a statistic
like that out there ?
We'll learn more
about that later.
The Gateway Theory.
( host )
Is marijuana a gateway drug ?
Yes, I think it is.
If you haven't--
How do you know ?
I don't exactly know why,
but I know it is.
It opens the doorway
to other drugs.
It makes you wanna
experience more.
It makes you feel good.
Yeah.
People wanna experience
something else,
and you know,
have a...
I guess, more dreams.
( man )
Its greatest danger
lies in the fact
that it is a steppingstone
to the harder drugs,
such as morphine and heroin.
That's why
there are people
that wanna legalize
marijuana.
They think if they can get the
young people of this country
onto hard drugs, they can
destroyyourgeneration
during this generation.
You know, in the days
of Harry Anslinger,
it was called the
Steppingstone Hypothesis.
If you stepped on this stone,
marijuana,
you were bound and determined
to go onto the next stone,
which would be one of
the so-called hard drugs.
Every time it's been studied
and looked at and so on,
they have never,
ever found that there's--
certainly nothinginmarijuana
that makes you
want to go to anything else.
There is no inherent
psycho-pharmacological property
of the drug which pushes one
toward another drug.
I'll smoke a joint,
I want a bag of chips
and fucking junk food.
I don't wanna go out
and get ripped.
I drink alcohol,
that's my drug of choice.
It could be said
I started on milk.
I mean, this is crazy.
If I use marijuana,
why does that automatically
make me a candidate
to black-tar heroin ?
It's a nonsensical argument.
In fact, only one out of every
and less than one use heroin.
The black market throws
the dealers of soft drugs
together with the dealer
of hard drugs.
So if you have a black market,
and you have a dealer that's
dealing in marijuana and LSD
and everything else,
and the dealer might say
to you,
"Hey, you wanna try
something stronger ?"
Well, in that sense,because
of the black market,
because of Prohibition,
people may be more susceptible
to seeing these other drugs
and being willing
to try these other drugs.
( Kirk )
And so what you see is that
there is a gateway effect,
but it's a gateway effect
caused by Prohibition
and the blending of the
hard- and soft-drug markets.
( host )
Where does this leave us ?
Oh, wait-- what about
laziness ?
You will be useless to
society if you use marijuana.
But if that's true, well, there
are about 50 million people
who smoke marijuana in America,
and over half of the Canadian
population who've tried it.
And yet, both societies
seem to flourish.
And just look who
some of these people are.
( man )
Steven Jobs developed
Apple Computer smoking pot.
Ted Turner developed
CNN News smoking pot,
still smokes
a joint every day.
You go through every musician
you like,
from the Rolling Stones to
the Beatles to Led Zeppelin.
They all smoked pot.
( man )
Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson.
Come on, Bill Clinton,
for fuck--
He didn't inhale, man.
( scoffs )
Don't be so naive !
( Norm )
Virtually every
presidential candidate
has now copped to using
marijuana at some time
in his or her life.
A few times in the Army,
I tried marijuana.
It was not
a significant part of my life.
I had a senior law-enforcement
official tell me,
that in his judgment,
up to a quarter
of the White House staff,
when they first came in,
had used drugs in the last
four or five years.
The people that have
personality problems
and the people that are
gonna be lazy
and gonna lose their job,
they're gonna lose
their job, anyway.
They're not losing their
job because of marijuana.
That's just a lie !
( Todd )
I love Tommy Chong.
I think that a lot of the
"Cheech and Chong" episodes,
that people believed,
not knowing that Tommy
wrote and directed the movies,
thinking that, you know, that's
what a stupid stoner looks like.
No, actually, that's what a
really brilliant creative genius
looks likeactinglike somebody
you think's a stoner.
And none of this is
borne out in the research
or when you look at people
who are long-term users.
And there happen to be
lawyers, judges, doctors,
and, you know, writers.
But what about the potency
of the drug ?
"Marijuana is dangerous.
There's higher THC levels
than ever before."
( Ian )
Any time you got a bag of
Columbian dope 20 years ago,
it was way better than
the Mexican shwag
that you normally got,
so there's always been a range
of THC in plants.
And the fact that
we can now grow stuff
that's equivalent of what
Columbian was, 20 years,
well, it doesn't mean
that we're boosting THC
to unheard-of levels.
It just means, you know,
"Hi, there are some nuances
in this discussion that people
should be aware of."
( Todd )
And I actually think that it's
a real stroke of our own ego
to think that for the 50
or so years of Prohibition
that we've improved
upon varieties
that have been
cultivated for drug use
in places like India and such,
for thousands of years.
People say, "Well,
you can abuse marijuana."
Well, shit, you can abuse
cheeseburgers, too, you know ?
You don't go around closing
Burger King
because you can
abuse something.
I can take a fucking fork
and jam it in my eyeballs.
Does that mean forks should
be illegal ?
You know,
I could jump off a bridge.
Should we outlaw bridges--
let's Nerf the world.
But what about all the crime
and violence associated
with marijuana ?
From beat cop
to police chief,
I saw ample evidence of
the harm caused by alcohol
and the absence of evidence
caused by marijuana use.
And I mean
the complete absence.
I cannot recall a single case
in which marijuana contributed
to domestic violence,
crimes of theft and the like.
You wanna know what
a weed smoker looks like ?
You're staring at one.
You know, like,
I'm a weed smoker.
I'm not, like, crazy or,
you know,
I'm not
stabbing you right now.
Most of the violent crime
that's committed,
or most of crime,
period, that's committed
or having to do with drugs
is people who are on drugs
committing violent crimes.
If you make it legal,
if you make it cheaper,
you make it more available,
you're gonna have more
violence, more--
Tom, that is not true,
stop lying to us.
Oh, now come on.
Stop lying to us.
That is not true.
You know--
don't tell me that.
I've smoked pot, Tom.
I've admitted it,
I've done it.
I've done all
of the big three.
I've done tobacco,
I've done alcohol,
and I've done marijuana,
Tom-- guess what ?
Marijuana's the least
of the three, pal.
You guys prove me wrong,
or whatever,
I want to hear someone
that has smoked too much weed
and went home and beat
his wife
and beat his
children, or whatever,
like you see on booze.
( Stephen )
The only big issue around
alcohol is drunken driving
and binge drinking among
college students.
Otherwise, you can drink
to your heart's content.
There are far more
crimes committed
under the influence of
unadulterated,
if you will, emotions.
Anger, rage, jealousy.
A lot of our understanding is
driven by what's in the paper
and on the television
and the radio these days.
And we get extremes,
and the black-and-white
thinking is reinforced,
I think, by that.
If only there is something
to compare it to,
something that was prohibited at
one time but is now regulated,
so we could see what
the difference might be.
Hmm, what could that be...
what could that be ?
( Jack )
Under Prohibition of alcohol,
everythinggot worse.
Everything.
( Kirk )
Alcohol Prohibition really
birthed and gave rise
to massive organized
criminal groups
within the United States...
It led to a general
disregard for the law
and a general disregard
for police activity
because it was a law
that most people didn't obey.
Would you have supported
the Prohibition of alcohol
Well, I'm glad you brought up
the alcohol example.
I mean, as a governor,
you must have known firsthand
the cost of alcohol.
I hear this argument a lot
of times, like alcohol--
That isn't what
I asked you, Tom.
I asked you a specific question,
don't give me spin.
I said, would you have supported
the Prohibition of alcohol
I don't think I would have.
Why ?
Because alcohol,
for better or worse,
and a lot of times for worse--
it's a close call--
is long-entrenched
and ingrained
part of our
culture and our society.
I mean, you go back
thousands of years,
the first writing is about
alcohol, the Bible,
everything else.
Really-- well, Tom,
wait a minute.
Let me inject something then--
if you believe that God--
God also made
the marijuana plant.
I'm talking about society.
I'm talking about our culture
and our society.
Wait, you just
said "the Bible."
( Jack )
Alcohol poisoning went up
by 600% during Prohibition.
There were more speakeasies in
large cities like New York City,
under Prohibition,
than there are taverns
and liquor stores today.
( John )
Sure, one can point to alcohol
as being a continuing
social problem,
but we don't have
people shooting each other
over alcohol.
( man )
When alcohol was prohibited,
people lived at that time
to know the difference between
Prohibition
and non-Prohibition.
They could see that the
Prohibition of alcohol
caused the emergence of
gangsters and the underworld
that took control of these
substances.
Alcohol then was
no longer in their control.
Could this be the same
for marijuana ?
It strengthens organized crime,
without a doubt,
because you have to
be a criminal to sell it.
It's that simple.
This brings crime into it.
That's why-- the benefits
and the ability to make money
is so huge in it.
Weapons were used
to intimidate people,
and we seized approximately
sawed-off shotguns,
and most of them are loaded.
Where's all this competition
we've heard so much about ?
You call these prices low ?
Marijuana is just a weed.
And marijuana is worth more,
ounce for ounce, than gold.
You don't find legal
commodities, you know,
at $200 an ounce.
You don't even find them
at $200 a pound.
Heck, most things
are $200 aton,
for corn
and grain and barley.
( Neil )
That's why when you walk
ten pounds of marijuana
across the border into
the United States,
it becomes worth 20 pounds.
You create an artificially
inflated value for that drug
that is so huge that
people decide
it's worth murdering people
in order to control
this market.
( Kirk )
I think the Fraser Institute
called cannabis Prohibition
"a gift of revenue to
organized crime."
But what do growers and dealers
think of this ?
Would you like to see
the government in the future
legalize marijuana here
in BC ?
No, it's
stealing money from us.
I know I wouldn't like
to see it legalized.
The government would control
and regulate the product,
and that could potentially hurt
a lot of people in the industry.
( man )
How can you compete
with factories
of perfectly
rolled-out doobies ?
They'd perfect it, and we'd
all be out of money.
It makes for
strange bedfellows.
You've got the police and the
high-level drug dealers
both agreeing that we should
maintain this Prohibition.
Well, when you got
high-level drug dealers
saying Prohibition is good,
you might wanna scratch your
head a little and think,
"Well, shoot, why would they
want to continue Prohibition ?"
I can't imagine why a grower
who's making $150,000
or $300,000 a year
would ever wanna see
marijuana legalized.
I mean, the last thing a grower
wants is sensible policy.
The madness continues,
and they continue to get rich.
You know, Betty,
I'm going to bring this up at
the business meeting tomorrow.
You make the penalties
stiffer ?
You know what-- good.
For those people who are not
getting caught, price goes up.
( Jack )
See, so not only do
we allow them to tell us
how much drugs are gonna
be supplied,
or the potency of those drugs,
who they're gonna sell it to,
where they're gonna
sell them,
just to make sure
they get it all right,
we let them keep all
of the profits.
( John )
So you've got
essentially a Wild West.
You've got an unregulated market
in which anything can happen.
It certainly may work for things
that people generally accept,
but if you try to prohibit
something that's in demand
that the people want,
then it's pure folly.
And without control,
it's hard to regulate
areas of concern,
like keeping it out of
the hands of our children.
There have been some studies
that suggest
heavy, sustained long-term use
from adolescence to adulthood
has the potential
to exasperate symptoms
of those with a genetic
predisposition
for schizophrenia.
And although there is strong
evidence that refutes this,
it does lead one to question:
Could there be a better way of
deterring children from using,
rather than letting dealers
decide what age is appropriate ?
( Jack )
For the last ten years,
our children across
the United States have said
that it's easier to buy
illegal drugs
than it is to buy
beer and cigarettes.
( Kirk )
It's harder to get beer
because you have to go through
a regulated establishment
that's going to check ID,
that's gonna have
those safeguards in place,
that isn't just gonna
sell it to you
'cause you got
( Jack )
Guy down on the street corner,
he doesn't want to know
how old they are.
He doesn't wanna see an ID,
he says, "Show me the money."
And if they get the money,
it doesn't matter if that child
is four years old.
They're gonna get the dope.
( Kirk )
If you can't control
the sale of the product,
how on Earth are you gonna
keep it out of the hands
of kids ?
Could we be the creators
of what we now see
as some of
our biggest problems ?
Have our solutions been prelude
to our worst fears ?
The use of the criminal law
for the basis of public health
is a wholly bad idea,
no matter how you cut it.
It doesn't work-- you cannot
legislate morality.
One person can say
it's immoral to legalize it
just as much as someone
can say
it's immoral
not to legalize it.
It doesn't get you anywhere.
You have to have a rational
policy debate
by talking about
the consequences.
Now, I've had young people
tell me that,
"Well, your generation
had a martini,
"and that was your crutch,
and why can't we have
our own kind of crutch ?"
You know what ?
Why don't you be a generation
that doesn't have to have
any kind of crutch ?
( Neil )
It's a lot easier argument
if you just say,
"Oh, it's immoral."
Then you don't have to debate
why it is that alcohol kills
so many more people
than marijuana,
or why it is that tobacco
takes seven years off your life,
and we can't establish
that marijuana
does anything particularly.
If people do do drugs
and they commit crimes
around those drugs, they should,
in fact, be punished.
But you can't punish someone
for something that hurts no one.
We should legalize marijuana,
tax the hell out of it,
and put every dime back
into the health-care system.
( record scratching )
Taxation and legalization ?
Doesn't that seem
a little extreme ?
Wouldn't it be better to just
decriminalize ?
The distinction is simple.
Legalization of marijuana
makes it a product
that is legally
available to adults.
That doesn't mean that there's
unregulated distribution,
unregulated sale
and unregulated use.
The decriminalization
of marijuana
still makes it an offense.
You're not gonna go
to jail for it
under a decriminalized model,
but society is still
saying, "No, no, no, no."
It doesn't address the problems
of organized crime,
and it doesn't
create a situation
where you have retail sales.
( Jeffrey )
Decriminalization is just kind
of a goofy concept.
To say that it's legal
to own something, to use it,
to possess it, but not
to produce it or sell it,
just seems like this illogical
position because,
where did this
stuff come from ?
( Larry )
It's the worst of both worlds.
It sends out an incredibly
bad message.
It should be controlled
like alcohol, like tobacco.
( Jeffrey )
The total impact for the U.S.
budget from legalizing marijuana
and taxing it at rates like
alcohol and tobacco
is somewhere in
the 10 to $14 billion range.
( Kirk )
It can be used to pay for
health-care costs,
it can be used
to rebate to lower taxes
and give people
lower tax rates.
It can be used for highways,
for hospitals,
for national defense.
It's $14 billion,
and it can be used for whatever
its best use is.
( Norm )
The production or the
harvesting, the packaging,
the sales of marijuana
could be handled
essentially the way
we handle alcohol.
You sell to a kid, you sell
to somebody under the influence,
your license is in jeopardy.
That license ought to be hard
to get and easy to lose.
It seems to make sense.
It's a little jarring,
but nowhere are these issues
more relevant than here in BC.
Yes, marijuana is
illegal here,
and yes, police actively
pursue growers and dealers,
but that doesn't stop the market
from thriving.
It's believed that the illegal
BC marijuana-trade industry
employs anywhere
from 90 to 150,000 people,
and the product is now known
around the world.
It's even been given
its own name.
BC bud.
Bud.
( host )
BC--
Bud.
British Columbia bud.
I don't know what
you are meaning.
BC-- BC bud ?
Bud ?
( host )
You guys know
what BC bud is ?
No.
You guys know where
British Columbia is ?
No, isn't it in Britain ?
No, it's in Canada.
When I say BC
is famous for...
Pot.
Weed and hippies.
Mountains, sea.
Marijuana.
I usually think of
"The Beachcombers,"
back in the days,
but now I just think of
that BC bud.
( host )
Do you know what BC bud is ?
No.
Oh, it's really well-known.
BC bud is bud that
comes from British Columbia.
And that's why they call it
BC bud, or "beasters."
"Dude, you got the beasters ?"
"Yeah, I got the beasters,"
which means you got bud from BC.
( host )
You know what the word
"grow-op" is ?
I'd say it's pretty common
knowledge here
what a grow-op is.
People do them in their houses,
in their basements.
I'm surprised it's not
in our dictionary.
A grow-op is something that
happens inside somebody's house,
like, one of our friends
or something,
and they just grow
weed inside their house.
( host )
Do you know anybody that's
growing marijuana ?
I don't-- well, no.
Kelowna...
my hometown.
With a population
of only 100,000,
Kelowna is said to house
well over 1,000 grow-ops.
A police officer stated
in the local paper,
"If they were to bust one
grow-op every day for a year,
they would still be nowhere near
getting rid of them."
And Kelowna is not alone.
Where are they in BC--
they're everywhere.
They're in every single
corner of the province.
There is no community
in the province
that doesn't have grows
and hasn't had an increase
in grows.
The fact is that there's
thousands and thousands
and thousands of grow-ops
all over British Columbia,
and the most common thing
you hear
when they raid a grow-op is--
from the neighbors is--
"I had no idea they were
growing pot on my street."
You know, if you actually took
my estimate seriously--
that there were 17,000
grow-ops in British Columbia
in the year 2000--
if you took that seriously,
you're looking at roughly
one out of every 100
dwelling units
in British Columbia.
We need to have
a sense of that.
Not bad for a province
with a population
of only 4 million people.
It's certainly changed a great
deal from the '70s and '80s
when it was an import-
export business
to the domestic-production
business of the '90s and beyond.
That would make us
"Columbia North."
We're talking
a lot of production.
The reality is that there's
a huge range of people
involved in the marijuana
industry in British Columbia.
It's not a hierarchy.
People don't beat you up if you
go into the marijuana industry.
It ranges from people
growing a few plants
to members of motorcycle clubs
and others
possibly being
involved in the business.
( Darryl )
Police, at one time, used to
attend to every single call
that came to their attention.
Somebody would call and say,
"I think there's a grow-op."
Police would do an
investigation,
do a full investigation.
Well, that has dropped
over seven years
to where it's only
about half the time.
But is seems to me that if we
look around and talk to people
who are living in
the real world,
one of the things we discover
is that we don't understand it
very well.
And when
we see these numbers,
like 1% of all dwelling units,
potentially,
are involved in
marijuana grow-ops,
it certainly ought to give our
politicians perspective
on what it is
they're trying to do.
So how does one find
these grow-ops ?
For police,
it involves the use
of forward-looking
infrared cameras
that can detect the above-normal
heat radiating from a grow-op,
or the sniff test.
But if all else fails, this--
Grow Watch.
Communities have become so
flooded with grow-ops in BC
that some neighborhoods
have started their own
watch programs.
This one, set up
by the Chilliwack RCMP,
even has an education package
with phases, training,
neighborhood cooperation,
certification.
Once certified,
you are able to hang this sign
which shows that you are
a neighborhood
that does not approve of
marijuana grow operations.
There are questions provided
to citizens
in order to aid them
in identifying a grow-op.
Questions like,
"Do the residents keep
to themselves ?"
"Was the sound of construction
heard coming from the basement
soon after occupants took over
the residence ?"
"Is there condensation
visible on the windows ?"
"Is the yard unkempt ?"
The education package does state
that a positive response
to one or some
of these questions
does not necessarily indicate
that the residents are involved
in criminal activity.
Maybe that's a good thing.
But why is it that grow-ops
are popping up
in virtually
every neighborhood of BC ?
How much money can
actually be made
by simply growing some plants
in your basement ?
And what do these
grow-ops look like, anyway ?
We finally got a grower.
Right now,
we're driving to meet them.
It's around eight lights--
it's not a huge, huge show.
This is what they use for
clippers and stuff like that.
When they hire clippers to do
a show, you put these on,
and if people are
looking from the outside,
it just looks pretty much like
you're wearing sunglasses.
But when you're on--
I mean, I can't put them on
right now because I'm driving--
won't be able to see.
Everyone's getting glasses,
director, other producer.
Where's my phone ?
We just wait for the phone call,
so keep in line
for when this comes to--
oh, I see a vehicle pulled up.
Maybe that's them.
Hello ?
Okay, so put
the glasses on ?
Okay.
( man )
Now, can you tell them
we're just gonna have
the camera running, but we're
going to have the lens cap on--
is that cool ?
Hey, Diggs, we're going
to have the camera running,
but we're going to have the
cap on so there's no video.
Shit.
Yeah, just do it,
just keep it on.
Just put the cap on.
How are you guys feeling ?
Feel that heart rate
increased ?
You want the camera ?
Yeah, cool.
You're not feeling
motion sickness ?
Oh, yeah, now I am feeling--
I'm feeling sick.
( man )
We're just gonna hold
people's arms
and kind of
guide them inside.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's what I was saying,
so I don't fall
on my face here.
A real grow-op.
The grower admitted that this
wasn't the biggest of grow-ops.
In fact, it was probably on
the small end of the scale
in terms of size...
but I really didn't care.
There were just so many
things to see.
The lights,
the tools, the power,
the pots...
and of course,
the marijuana.
What do you guys do
for the smell ?
I noticed there's a big--
Well, we got this
carbon filter here, whatever,
it just kind of filters
the air in there,
and then it goes
underneath the house,
and we have it so it goes
into, like, a dog shed.
I'm in the beginning stage
and I'm learning.
Over here, there's
also another room in there.
So you have a total of--
is it eight lights ?
Eight lights, yeah,
they go on 12 hours.
This one runs 12 hours
in the daytime.
This one comes on
at 8:00 at night.
Would you say a majority
of the guys you know
are just growing
to earn some extra money ?
Yeah, yeah, they have normal
jobs, and you know,
they're normal
The grower told me he cropped
out about every two months,
and every crop
was worth about $20,000.
That's $120,000 a year.
Even though this was
a small grow-op,
the numbers didn't
seem small at all.
If those kind of numbers
are coming out of a set-up
of eight lights,
what kind of numbers are
coming out of the big ones ?
And where do you find them ?
Well, it would seem
just about everywhere.
Barges, semi trucks.
( man )
Whether it was for
the mobility of it
or whether it was an attempt
to disguise the smell
of growing marijuana,
in any event,
it's unusual for that reason.
Even in...
( train whistle )
... train cars ?
Yes, it seems as though
even our beloved caboose
cannot escape grow-op fever.
When we read that 20 train cars
were buried underground
to grow marijuana,
busted or not,
we had to see this,
so we set out.
But not before asking our sound
man if we could use his SUV
and coaxing him
with a little free gas.
Where we were going,
we would need it.
We're in the boondocks,
way up here.
Wouldn't wanna
go over that puppy.
This is what they brought up--
diesel fuel to power
the generators in.
With how much
they were growing
and how much the generators
needed,
I mean, that's
a full truckload there.
And finally, after a few hours
on the highway
and climbing up the side
of a mountain, we get there.
We had to go into four-low
just to get up here,
and you can see,
I'm dressed right.
I'm in jeans
and frickin' sneakers.
Fuck...
My feet are cold !
There's no neighbors--
like, look to the right.
There's nobody there.
Nobody here,
nobody there.
I mean, I imaging they're
probably laid this way.
They've been obviously
following you,
like, where are
you getting your diesel ?
Where are you getting
the tanks ?
Where do you
buy ten train carts ?
Where do you buy 150 lights ?
These are diesel pumps,
and it looks like
there's still diesel
leaking in these things here.
This is how you got
down there.
Just wanna make sure
it's okay to go down here.
Feel like I'm going
into a cave.
All right,
watch your feet there.
Not as cold under here.
About eight train carts down
that way, I'm guessing.
I can't even see to the end.
And then two deep,
each one is two deep.
Down here, two deep, down
the next one, two deep.
Three, four,
there's numbers on the wall.
And then what they did is they
cut them to make doorways,
and that's how you have your
hallways going into each one.
There are water reservoirs here,
and you see one, two, three.
You're like,
"Okay, that's quite a bit."
But then there's this one
and that one
and another one at the end.
Look at these things.
Like, no wonder the cops
just left it.
Moving this shit
would be a pain in the ass...
These train carts, I see why
they bought them.
They got a deal.
They're all rusted
in the bottom.
We could start
growing here tomorrow.
There's still dirt and
fertilizer ready to go.
Oh, here, who wants a little
leftover plant there ?
Look at this.
Look at all this wiring
right here.
You can see the cops
have come, severed everything.
( man )
What are those chains for ?
Chains are where they were
hanging the lights.
Reason why they
use the chains,
'cause then they
can adjust the height.
Actually, you wanna get me
a run all the way down
to see how far away I am ?
So I'm going to go the end here
to show you how deep this is,
and this was all filled
with plants.
Whoa, I'm at the end.
I can hardly see over there,
it's just like lights to me.
This is how far away, like,
to give you an idea
just how big this is.
God, it's a trek just to get
back to where you guys are.
Now, you're gonna see
a lot of repetition,
because here
it goes again.
Bang, all the way down.
When it said in the paper, 20,
it's probably--
it's gotta be ten long
and two deep each one,
'cause then
you've got your 20 carts.
Man, I wish we could have seen
that while it was still rolling.
That is crazy.
You wouldn't know
there's a law here.
Check this out--
Cannabis Day.
An actual day dedicated
to marijuana.
And take note,
this takes place
on one of the busiest,
high-traffic blocks
of BC's largest city,
Vancouver.
Marijuana ?
It's everywhere.
Consumed and sold in every
imaginable way.
Pipes, bongs,
joints, baked goods.
It was hard to imagine that
nearly every person
attending this event
was breaking the law,
and yet no one
seemed to care.
The police were there,
but not to bust people.
They held traffic for the band
to play for Cannabis Day.
Now they went back
to their side of the street.
Sure, no problem, brother.
( man )
Thank you very much.
No problem--
complying with the 5-0.
One of the organizers told me
that in all the years
this event has taken place,
there's never been a violent
incident, except once,
by a man who was believed to be
under the influence of alcohol.
We heard there was
a jazz festival
happening at the same time
on the other side of the block.
It wasn't doing quite as well,
but there was one group
doing all right.
Right up there,
as you can see,
is still Cannabis Day
going on,
but right here, not even a block
away, is a church retreat,
and they're selling doughnuts.
I was like, "Well, what do you
guys think about the rally ?"
And they're like,
"We need to pray for them."
Then I was like, "You guys are
selling food for them, right ?"
I'm sure they've sold record
amounts today, I guess, too,
so we'll see.
We'll get an interview here
shortly, hopefully.
The interview never came.
There was so much marijuana,
it was unbelievable.
I think we almost
all got contact highs
just from being around
the smoke.
But I did get a doughnut.
I did purchase some of these
on the way out.
Those church girls got me.
A culture of marijuana
has been established in BC,
from paraphernalia to caf?s,
from seed selling,
to its very own political party,
the BC Marijuana Party.
Even bakers.
Hey, everybody,
I'm Watermelon,
and welcome to my
vaudeville cooking show,
"Baked and Baking,"
where we're gonna
revolutionize the cooking show,
and we're gonna let you guys
in on the action.
Meet Watermelon Girl.
She's made a name for herself
as BC's only drug-dealing,
nudist, comic,
pin-up baker.
Did I get all that in ?
She was arrested for selling her
cookies down on Wreck Beach--
a nude beach...
is this for real ?
( Watermelon Girl )
I'm like the Heidi Fleiss
of weed.
I tell everybody, like,
lawyers, doctors, like,
there's no proverbial,
"Yo, G," you know ?
Like, none of those.
Like, all professionals come in
through my house, you know ?
A lot of people with money,
a lot of people in politics.
You don't wanna know who
comes through here, you know.
My mother was a baker,
and her mother was a baker,
and we just--
we just bake.
So I made these pot cookies
and I started selling them.
It's hard to ignore
such a large demand.
So you got arrested one time
on Wreck Beach, right ?
Yep, yeah, I've been
arrested more than once.
Allegedly trafficking
gingersnap cookies.
Allegedly trafficking
gingersnap cookies.
So I'm assuming not regular
gingersnap cookies, right ?
The one that packs,
"snap, crackle, pot" ?
But even the judge
was like, "Uh-huh."
You know what I mean,
like, he's just--
He's seen violent crime
after violent crime,
and then along
comes the cookie girl.
Cops are supposed to come
and remove undesirables
from communities,
and I clearly was not
an undesirable person
in my community--
( phone rings )
Uh, somebody else
needs cookies.
Actually, I just got picked up
by the National Speakers Bureau,
so I actually go on speaking
tours to universities
and talk to kids
about marijuana.
Oh, really ?
Yes, like, the most genius--
I'm like, "You want me
to talk about marijuana ?"
Okay, and they pay me
to do it.
Lock up your kids,
this is a heinous crime.
So at some point,
one might ask oneself,
how does an industry of this
size function
while remaining illegal ?
Where does the money flow ?
Who's profiting off of it ?
Is there really $7 billion
floating around the province
unaccounted for ?
Maybe people are
feeling the effects
and they don't even know it.
Turns out there seems
to be a system.
Some have even
given this system a name.
Well, a lot of people here
in town and stuff
consider it a union.
Union ?
Yeah, a union, and you know,
it's like a different term
for pretty much "industry."
It's this underground thing
where there's so many
different tradesmen
and different people
all working together.
You have to work together
with people that you trust,
because it's illegal to do what
people are doing here.
So this is how the so-called
union breaks down,
and of course, there
are many exceptions to this,
but this is the typical
set-up.
First you have
a home or landowner.
He doesn't take on much
responsibility.
He is simply
the legitimate owner
of where the grow operation
will take place.
All he has to do is pick up
a briefcase every three months
and pay off his mortgage.
His hands are clean because
he can claim ignorance
if the grow operation
is busted.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Officer,
I didn't know they were
growing marijuana there."
Then you have his 50-50 partner,
the contractor,
who will provide the equipment
and hire the grower
or grow himself.
The grower
is known as the fall guy.
Why the name ?
Because that's exactly
what he is.
If the operation
is busted, he takes the fall.
Once the crop has matured,
clippers are then hired.
They prep the weed
for distribution
by cutting away the excess
leaves and stems.
What a lot of
people don't understand
is the part of the
marijuana plant
that people smoke is the bud,
which in essence
is the plant's flower.
It's not the leaves.
Clippers are generally
hired on an hourly wage
starting around $20,
tax-free, of course.
Once the marijuana is ready,
in steps the weed broker.
He's not always required,
but sometimes the partner
with the equipment needs
a broker to buy his product
and then sell it for him.
In the event that
a broker is required,
it usually means the weed
is headed south
to the United States.
In that case,
the broker will buy the pot
for somewhere between 1,800
and 2,000 a pound.
He'll then hire
a border jumper, a risk-taker,
someone who has the balls
and hopefully the wits
to get the product
over the border.
Some of the most common ways ?
The border jumper's fee varies
with each trip,
but they're always well-paid.
Once the product has reached
the broker's U.S. connection,
it will earn about
$3,000 a pound.
The farther south
it goes, the more it makes.
If it manages to make it
all the way out east
to areas like New York,
the price is driven even higher,
somewhere between 3,500
and $6,000 a pound.
Stricter laws
demand higher prices
and in turn provide
more profits.
In Miami, seven
to eight pounds of BC bud
will trade for one kilo
of pure yayo--
cocaine.
That in turn makes its way back
up to Canada-- eh ?--
and sells for anywhere
from 30 to $35,000 a key.
If the marijuana manages to stay
in the province,
it will usually sell for
around 1,800 to $2,000 a pound,
depending on how flooded
the market is.
This is just
the tip of the iceberg.
The union embodies a slew of
businesses and services,
generating profits both directly
and indirectly for the province.
Some know they are involved,
and others choose not to
acknowledge the benefits
they gain from it.
Carpenters build tables,
rooms, sheds,
and anything else
that's needed for a grow show.
Brand-new homes are being built
expressly for the purpose
of housing
a marijuana grow operation.
Electricians set up lights,
wire the electrical components,
divert power if necessary.
Hardware stores provide
construction materials
to build rooms
and grow-operation structures.
Hydroponics stores supply
lights, nutrients, soil,
and other equipment
needed to grow.
Seed sellers
provide, well, seeds.
Clone growers create clones
from other marijuana plants
to aid in
quicker growth cycles.
Real-estate agencies market
houses to growers, unknowingly,
but they profit all the same.
There are some Realtors,
though,
who are directly
involved in the union
and will actually cater
to growers' needs,
finding houses in secluded areas
with big basements
and power that
can be spliced and stolen.
Mortgage brokers
and lease brokers
who help growers with
poor credit
get the houses
they need to start up.
Banks who have
minimal security
to prevent illegal money
from being deposited.
The way it works now is deposits
over $3,000
are sometimes questioned
but are left up to the teller
to decide whether the deposit
is suspicious.
If they believe it is, they
may put a note on the account.
It isn't until
a $10,000 deposit
that a mandatory FCAC form
is filled out and sent away,
but it is possible for $9,999
deposits to go through
with little question.
"Oh, you sold some
motorbikes-- cool."
"Oh, you sold your boat, neat,
thanks for the business."
You get the point.
Lawyers and law firms
provide counseling
on how to make
grow money legit.
They help set up and incorporate
LTD companies
and holding companies
to launder money.
They also
provide legal counsel
to keep busted growers
out of jail.
The electric company
who makes money
off of enlarged electric bills
due to excess lights.
The only time
they seem to get involved
is when they think someone
is stealing the power.
Law enforcement receives budgets
to fight the cultivation.
They create
special task forces,
like the Green Team, to
specifically target marijuana.
Canadians spend 3 to
on law enforcement
and the justice system
to enforce marijuana laws.
Police also receive the benefits
of seizing
growers' and dealers' assets.
And last but definitely
not least,
everyday businesses--
bars, restaurants,
clothing stores,
boat dealerships,
car dealerships--
the money funneled indirectly
through various everyday
businesses.
Growers and dealers like
to spend money on everything.
These growers,
after they crop out,
it's like they won
the lottery.
You can tell the ones
who are selling it.
The more they sell, the more
bling-bling they have on them.
You think they just hold it
themselves
and tuck it away somewhere ?
No, they buy houses,
they buy cars, they buy boats.
They'll purchase restaurants,
they'll purchase--
you know, I mean,
whatever they're into.
Maybe that's why we got busted,
got too carried away.
You can tell yourself
you're not gonna
let it go to your head,
but I said the same thing.
But when the money
comes in so easy,
you get accustomed to
that lifestyle,
and before you know it,
you become a steamer,
you become a hot rod.
And that's what
it comes down to.
Yes, organized crime moves
a majority of the product
once it's available
on the market,
but there aren't a lot of bikers
out there watering plants.
It's ma-and-pa operations,
it's young guys
who see opportunity.
It's not easy to make that type
of money doing anything,
especially if you've
been going to school
for the past four years and you
see this random other guy,
you know, watering plants
in his basement,
coming out of it with
an extreme amount of money.
Interesting, you had
your degree.
Yeah.
And then you're in the--
Yeah, I made the choice
to put that aside
and start growing weed.
I could be making
which is a great wage,
but, really ?
Why would I wanna do
that when I have the knowledge
to make in a whole year,
in two months ?
What have we learned
so far ?
Well, one, the Prohibition
hasn't reduced the demand,
and it certainly hasn't reduced
the supply.
Two, it's a steady source of
revenue for organized crime,
which in turn attracts
young people
because the money is so easy.
And three,
being an underground market
actually creates crime
and violence.
And yet, the only one paying
the costs for all of this
are the taxpayers,
people like you and me.
Even further, this whole deal
is over a drug
that seems to pose
no more of a threat
than the substances we
already regulate.
At the very least,
why isn't this up for debate ?
Dwight Eisenhower once spoke of
a military-industrial complex.
Have we built up a marijuana
Prohibition complex ?
The real war on marijuana
didn't start until 1972,
and President Nixon, he said
it's all the Jews smoking pot.
I mean, he really said that.
( Jack )
When Nixon got into this
with his War on Drugs,
he had things
that he wanted to do.
He had an agenda.
( Todd )
A lot of the information that
was kept and warehoused
in the Library of Congress
and also at major universities,
was actually recalled
and destroyed...
The Nixon report that came out
through his administration
was called the Shafer Report.
It was by
a Republican governor,
and when he studied it
and gave an ounce for it,
"You can pick this report up,
pick up any page, open it,
"and if you actually have
experience with cannabis,
you'll realize
they're telling the truth."
( Dana )
And then when it came back
saying that marijuana
was essentially harmless,
he totally ignored it, said,
"We're going to launch a War
on Drugs, anyways."
( Todd )
They didn't
even print as many copies
that Congress and the House
would have been able to see.
the War on Drugs.
detectives-- I was one of them.
They designated 1/3 of us
undercover.
I happened to fall in that 1/3.
That's where I spent
the next 14 years of my life.
What we were targeted on
was the pot smokers.
There was a very good reason
we were targeted on
the pot smokers.
Most of them were protesting
against the Vietnam War.
If you could arrest
that whole group of people
because they were smoking pot,
you didn't have to have
a Vietnam War protest,
which Mr. Nixon thought
was a pretty good idea.
So when President Nixon declared
this civil war
that we're
living in right now,
the drug war, in 1972, it was
really a war on marijuana.
It really didn't kick in
until the '80s when Reagan,
you know, took over his
presidency of the U.S.
( man )
Ronald Reagan, he said,
"These young people,
they get together,
they read books, they smoke
marijuana, and they talk."
Like these three elements
were a recipe for disaster.
How do I feel about
legalizing marijuana ?
Am I for it or against it ?
I am totally against
legalizing marijuana.
( applause )
Make no mistake,
the U.S. government,
the focus of their War on Drugs
is cannabis.
The focus of
their rhetoric is cannabis.
( Greg )
It's certainly used as a poster
child for all drugs.
When you see an ad for drugs,
it's always the marijuana leaf
that goes up.
It's almost like
a religious jihad.
More powerful than going
for the gusto.
It causes people to think-- when
people think, they question,
they question things like,
say, the war in Vietnam
or race separation
of blacks and whites,
like they did in the '30s
in the jazz clubs,
or women's rights,
or the Gulf War or oil wars.
( Joe )
It's real simple.
You put your loafers on,
you put your black socks on,
you get in your car, you have
your briefcase,
you say "hi"
to your neighbors.
He mows his lawn
just like you do,
and things keep moving along
in the same direction
they always have been.
That's why
marijuana laws exist.
( Norm )
There are, in my opinion,
people in government,
at all levels of government,
who know that it's not
a winnable war,
and yet they
continue to pursue it.
Acceptance of drug use
is simply not an option
for this administration.
Often, we go to debates,
and it's a police officer
debating us.
Okay, the police are
supposed to enforce the laws.
They should not be arguing
for or against laws.
That's not their job.
Well, what is their job ?
Is it to enforce laws
that exist on the books
or to determine the policy of
the laws that are made ?
The way to justify the policy
is to create a lot of fear
and then spend a lot of money
combating that.
Quite frankly, if you
took the using population
of all the other illegal
drugs combined
and you eliminated
cannabis from that equation,
there wouldn't be a big enough
drug problem
in either this country
or the United States
to justify
the massive expenditures
that go towards fighting
the war.
The amazing thing is
a small amount of enforcement
is necessary.
$400 million
is spent annually in Canada
arresting and prosecuting
marijuana crimes.
The total budget
in Canada for all drugs
is $500 million.
That means 4/5
of the drug budget
goes towards arresting and
prosecuting marijuana users,
leaving 1/5 for crack,
heroin, coke,
crystal meth,
the date-rape drug, whatever.
( Norm )
The drug-enforcement industry
is big business.
It's self-perpetuating,
it relies on taxpayer dollars.
( Marc )
And so it's an endless battle
that the DEA doesn't win,
they participate in.
It's like doing
a big-budget movie, you know.
You get $30 million
to do a movie,
and then the movie comes out
and it doesn't make any money,
but someone made $30 million.
Every once in awhile,
they'll show a guy posing
beside a big bunch
of marijuana.
You know, "This is
the DEA money at work."
It would be like asking loggers
about saving trees,
you know what I mean ?
This is where their mainstay of
their cash flow comes from.
The campaign will continue
until every available known
plot of marijuana
has been eradicated.
We've got to live with it
doing the best job we can.
Even if it's a bad job ?
We're all carrying a pretty
impossible load, Ms. Gibson.
( Norm )
There are many, many police
officers, however,
who believe that
it ought to be legalized,
regulated and controlled.
They see the hypocrisy between
our existing laws
relating to
alcohol and marijuana
in their day-to-day life...
shift after shift after shift,
and they get it.
But they don't
wanna lose their jobs.
They don't wanna lose that
promotion to sergeant
or the assignment
to detectives.
They wanna be
a chief someday,
and they don't wanna piss off
the people in power.
Judges, lawyers, prosecutors,
defense lawyers,
prison guards.
There's all of those people in
the criminal-justice industry.
Are their interests
being protected ?
Well, in a sense,
yes, they are.
Defense bar, similarly--
we make money.
The more things they prohibit,
the more money we make.
Sorry I'm late, Kent,
I was delayed in court.
( John )
You still have
large numbers of people
being busted for simple
possession.
If you look at the stats
in terms of drug offenses,
the largest group are still
simple possession of marijuana.
Every time you blow
a marijuana cigarette,
you take a chance on
blowing your future.
Oh, come on, Pop,
all my friends smoke pot.
They're not criminals.
Only because they
haven't been caught yet.
If you do drugs,
you will be caught,
and when you're caught,
you will be punished.
( Ian )
are charged with pot possession.
That's nearly a million people,
and whether you go to jail
or not,
your life
is in serious trouble.
And that number of annual
arrests for marijuana
now rivals the number of arrests
for murder, rape, robbery,
and aggravated assault...
combined.
You willnever
get over a conviction.
A conviction will track you
every day
for the rest of your life.
For instance, you remember
that guy that used to smoke
but didn't inhale--
former President Bill Clinton.
This is not a big issue
with me.
I never even had a drink
of whiskey till I was 22.
Now, if Mr. Clinton handed me
that marijuana cigarette
when he was standing
in a circle with us,
it wouldn't have mattered
whether he had inhaled or not,
he would have become a dope
dealer, wouldn't he ?
Just like all those other people
that went to jail,
never to be an attorney,
much less the president
of the United States.
But the marijuana laws
protect us.
They make our lives safer.
They send us
the correct moral message.
That's how 19
out of 21 nations
have gone down the drain
before us.
Internal decay.
The breakdown of moral,
ethical
and religious principles.
If you've been caught,
a young person in the U.S.,
with so much as one
marijuana cigarette,
you can't get a loan
or a grant from the government
to go to college.
If you've been convicted of
murdering somebody
or raping someone,
no problem, you go right down,
they'll give you the loan.
I guess the message is it's okay
to rape and murder and pillage,
just don't smoke a joint
afterwards.
( Tod )
First thing that
John Ashcroft did after 9-1-1,
sent out a strike force
to take down
the LA Cannabis Buyers Co-op.
That really helped national
security a great deal.
And what else
helps national security ?
Taking down top criminal
targets.
In 2003, the U.S. government
put aside money to do just that.
of Osama bin Laden,
$15 million each
for the whereabouts
of Uday and Qusay Hussein,
Saddam's sons,
and a $12 million budget
to go after one of the most
dangerous men of all...
this man.
( host )
Can you tell us what exactly
you were charged with ?
I was charged with conspiring
to sell paraphernalia.
Operation Pipe Dreams
was a brainstorm of
Attorney General John Ashcroft.
The Internet has been
illegally utilized
to sell these illegal products
and to facilitate large
illegal businesses
operating in the open.
A sting operation
that busted people
for selling paraphernalia
to a particular county
in Pennsylvania
where they were
willing to prosecute.
( Tommy )
Because there's two states,
Pennsylvania, Iowa--
"Void where prohibited" ?
Well, it was prohibited to send
it to Pennsylvania and Iowa.
A man like yourself that is
an established actor,
comedian--
you're not a criminal.
Why do you think
they targeted you ?
Well, because our movies were
number-one rentals in America.
What our movies did was
really show the hypocrisy
of the pot laws.
In fact, when I went to jail,
they added in the transcript
that our movies have influenced
children for 30 years
and will continue
to do so forever.
Therefore,
I should go to jail.
You gotta remember,
they were going into Iraq,
and they needed some diversion
as far as headlines go,
and they equated the
billion-dollar paraphernalia
business with aiding
terrorists.
This was a legitimate company,
paying taxes.
I was just
the face on the bong.
They chargedme.
I had nothing to do
with the company.
I never shipped
anything to anybody.
( Craig )
It wasn't even his company,
he just loaned his name to it.
Operation Pipe Dreams.
Only one person--
Tommy Chong-- went to jail.
But if I didn't plead, they
threatened my son and my wife.
Tommy stands up and volunteers
to go to jail.
Says, "Yeah, okay,
that's my paraphernalia.
Leave my wife and kid alone,"
he's protecting his family.
What kind of force was used in
the day you were arrested ?
There was over
Visors, automatic weapons,
helicopters overhead.
They had news trucks,
Fox News trucks, outside.
They had the media
on the ready.
This was
a photo-op for everybody.
They asked, you know,
do I have any drugs ?
I said, "Yeah, I got pot,"
you know.
And they wanted to know
where it was, so I told them.
They said, "Well, it's not
really a drug bust."
I said, "Well, then what the--
are you doing in my house ?"
Then they said,
"It's about bongs.
We're bringing down all the bong
companies in America."
And with Tommy safely
behind bars for nine months,
the United States drug war
reset its sights,
this time across borders.
In downtown Vancouver, just
outside the U.S. consulate,
a bunch of people had gotten
together and were having a rally
for this guy named
Marc Emery.
He had evidently
been selling seeds--
marijuana seeds--
to the wrong people.
Let me tell you,
the DEA wants me
because I am very good
at what I do.
Well, obviously I'm the most
dangerous man alive.
Like, really.
No wonder I'm facing life
imprisonment without parole
for something that no one's ever
gone to jail for here in Canada.
No one's ever gone to jail for
seeds, not even for a day.
Marc and two of his employees
are facing life in prison
in the United States--
not Canada, the United States--
for selling marijuana seeds
over the Internet.
Vancouver Police
came in here
with a warrant
for an extradition,
but we were taken then to North
Fraser Correctional Center,
Correctional Center
of the Year 2002.
Beautiful facility.
Marc Emery has gotten in
the face of the United States.
( Kirk )
The U.S. sees Marc Emery as
a major political threat
to its anti-cannabis agenda.
( Dana )
In a press release from
Karen Tandy, head of the DEA,
she said that this is not only
the end of marijuana
trafficking,
but it's a blow to the
marijuana-legalization movement.
I gave just under $4 million
away over 11 years
to Supreme Court challenges,
ballot initiatives,
political parties,
you know,
drug-addiction clinics.
Well, if you're the DEA,
who the hell do you think
you're gonna go after,
first and foremost, and as
viciously as you can do it ?
I think they even
admitted it themselves
on the day of the raid.
The DEA announced,
you know...
"He's a legalizer.
"We're shutting down one of
the biggest legalizers.
"The legalization movement
"won't have a pot of money
to draw from.
Ha ha ha ha."
Marc Emery has never gone
to America and sold a seed.
He does it all from here
by mail order,
and it's akin to
Canadians ordering, you know,
a machine gun from
somewhere in America.
It's against the law,
and if we receive it here
in Canada,
they come and arrest us for
receiving the machine gun.
They don't go to America
and say to Colt,
"Hi, we're arresting you
'cause you sent a machine gun
to someone in Canada."
No one's been sentenced
to any time in jail
in the history of Canada,
in 35 years we've had this law.
Two people, me and Ian Hunter
in Victoria, were fined.
There's all sorts of
seed businesses still open.
Marc's the only one
out of about
businesses in Canada
that's been charged.
Marc has been paying the
Canadian federal government
taxes on income he has made
from selling seeds.
The government relied
on the existence of these
Internet seed sellers so
that patients who had
qualified for medical-
marijuana exemptions,
who were bugging them
for seed,
were being directed
to these Internet seeds,
and Marc Emery specifically,
in some cases, as the place
to get their seed.
It puts Canada
and our government
in a very difficult position,
because they've either got
to hand over a Canadian citizen
to a foreign government
for activities
that were
entirely done in Canada,
for which our own government
and our own police
are not willing to charge him.
If the Canadian authorities
who rubber-stamped this shit
think that what I've done is
so bad, then charge me.
I should be tried
by a jury of my peers.
I'm not about to be tried
by my peers at all.
I'm about to be
tried by foreigners.
At 4:20, a time synonymous
with smoking marijuana,
everyone lit up,
and for those who didn't have
marijuana to light up...
Again, the police
were close by,
and again,
they didn't seem to care.
One officer mentioned
she was bothered
by the smell of the smoke.
It was kind of confusing.
How could we be sending
Marc Emery to prison for life
in the United States
if even our own police aren't
finding it worth their while
to bust people smoking it right
in front of them ?
That's not the
only thing that's confusing.
The marijuana that's consumed
in the United States,
how much comes from Canada ?
I don't know much
about Canada.
I don't, either.
Maybe 20% ?
I'll go with 35.
( host )
And a quarter.
I would say about 60%.
Yeah, 70, 80%.
At least 80% of it.
Whoo.
I don't think
it's all that much.
Most of it is here.
We're getting the drugs
and are saying,
"Oh," you know, "BC bud."
This was when some of
the people in Canada
were trying to
get marijuana legalized...
John Walters went up there and
said, "What you're talking about
"is passing a law
that will allow you
to export poison
to my country."
When we talk about "poison,"
exporting poison,
what do we export to Canada ?
Cigarettes.
the United States every year
from ingesting cigarettes.
Five million
around the world.
So who's exporting
the poison here ?
Of the six million people who
could benefit from treatment
that need it in
the United States today,
on marijuana.
( man )
Lies, lies, lies.
You know, they invitedme,
I'm sorry.
I wasn't sure who invited him
and why he came here yet again.
He's been here before.
He needs to shake his head.
So how about him
shutting down the cocaine
that's coming across
the border ?
How about him
shutting down the guns ?
Sometimes you feel like
you've stepped into
"Alice in Wonderland,"
you've gone through
the looking glass.
In fact, more Colombians die
from U.S. tobacco
than Americans die from
Colombian coca products.
So what's the drug war
really about ?
Because if you
don't want American tobacco
in your country,
America will go to war, in a
trade sense, with your country.
You have Canada engage in
cannabis-policy reform
and taxing
and regulating cannabis,
and all the scare stories
haven't come true,
you have an awfully hard time
sustaining your own
domestic policies.
( host )
What do you think would happen
between Canada and the U.S.
if Canada were
to legalize marijuana ?
There's been rumors
that they're like,
"We'll shut
down the border."
I don't think so.
I've heard that, too,
but then my question is,
do you want LA, you know,
in the dark and thirsty ?
If you do that, then
we're not gonna ship oil,
we're not gonna
ship water,
we're not gonna
ship electricity.
It's not gonna happen.
We're too important
to each other.
( Greg )
The softwood-lumber people
gonna stop doing business ?
The fishing guys gonna
stop doing business ?
Are the people who manufacture
stuff back and forth
across the border
gonna stop doing business
'cause pot's legal here ?
( Kirk )
Business interests
aren't gonna sit still
for losing millions of
dollars a day
because of border-wait times
simply because Canada takes
a different domestic social
policy on cannabis.
Yes, business interests.
Sometimes they just
seem to pop up,
and every so often,
in the most unlikely of places.
We have seen an explosion in
prison construction
that lags only slightly behind
the explosion in incarceration.
There are more people in jail in
America now than ever before.
In the United States,
it's one of the
fastest-growing industries.
( Darryl )
Some major investment companies
at one time
described private prisons
as one of the best investments
you could make.
So you could make
more money building prisons
than any other type of
investment.
( Norm )
They're extraordinarily
expensive to build.
They're even far more expensive
to operate and maintain.
Right now in
the United States of America,
the biggest growth industry is
the privatized prison complex.
Japan, for instance,
incarcerates at 38 people
per 100,000 population.
The United States incarcerates
at a rate of 726 people
per 100,000 population.
In a 20-year period,
the prison population in
the United States quadrupled.
( Norm )
We have just shy of 5% of
the world's population
and almost
Even South Africa at its worst
didn't have as many prisoners
per capita as America has now.
Texas just built 77 prisons
in about the last 20 years.
( Norm )
We find state treasuries on
the verge of bankruptcy
as a result of
prison construction.
Some think there won't be room
for them in jail.
We'll make room.
We're almost
doubling prison space.
Some think there aren't
enough prosecutors.
We'll hire them,
with the largest increase in
federal prosecutors in history.
In the late '80s,
there were about five
privately run prisons
in the United States.
By 2005, that number
had reached over 260.
As soon as you've accumulated
a certain amount of capital
from building prisons,
you can start investing that in
ensuring job security,
ensuring there'll always
be more prisoners around
to require more prisons.
We have private prisons ?
What the fuck is that ?
How did that happen ?
How can you profit over people
going to jail ?
That's scary,
that's a bad, bad sign.
Our society is in deep,
deep, deep trouble
if nobody's looking into that.
Correctional-guard unions have
become powerful lobbying groups,
pushing for longer sentences
on less-serious crimes.
California's has become one of
the most powerful in the state.
The California Department of
Corrections budget
rose from
to 5.7 billion in 2004.
Between 1977 and 1999,
overall local and state spending
on corrections across
the country grew 946%,
almost 2 1/2 times
the rate in which
spending on education
increased.
And prisons aren't the only
thing money's being spent on.
( Stephen B. )
There are millions
of drug tests per year.
There's money to be
made on that, it's huge.
It started off with
people saying,
"We really need to test people
in dangerous occupations."
Things like police officers
should be tested,
pilots in airplanes.
Then somebody said,
"Well, our athletes,
we should probably test them
for drugs, too."
Then somebody
came along and said,
"Well, it's not just the
professional athletes.
"How about the athletes
in colleges and high schools ?
They need to be tested, too."
And then they thought a little
harder and they said,
"Well, suppose
we just test everybody
"that goes out for an
extracurricular activity.
"That should be constitutional
because they don't
have to do that."
So now if you want to join
the chess club at school
or the French club,
you gotta pee in a bottle.
Now they're pushing to make laws
to test all children at school.
All the studies show this
doesn't have anything to do
with whether kids use
drugs or not,
so it looks to me
like this has a lot more to do
with the money that's being made
for drug testing.
Can you imagine how
much money will be involved
if we can randomly test every
child in a school ?
( Greg )
A lot of these places
that have been urine-testing
have refused to continue
to do it,
because the only thing
that these urine tests
are finding is marijuana.
The other drugs that people take
dissipate from their systems
fast enough to not be found.
( Jack )
If they smoke
a marijuana cigarette,
pee in a bottle,
they're gonna show
that they've had a drug.
But if they use a hard drug--
heroin, cocaine,
methamphetamine--
in a long weekend,
nobody can tell that they've
used that drug.
So what does that say
to our young people ?
It says if you
don't wanna get caught,
don't use the soft drugs--
use the hard drugs.
( Stephen B. )
It's not just urine anymore,
it's hair and saliva.
They'll do blood testing.
There's industry there,
this is money.
They're not doing
in it for free.
The most profitable industry
in the United States
is pharmaceuticals.
Dollars involved
is just... staggering.
Can it really be ?
Has medicine really
become that profitable ?
The fact is it has.
In 2005,
U.S. prescription-drug sales
rose 5.4% to $251 billion,
and global
pharmaceutical sales
rose 7% to $602 billion.
Now, why would pharmaceuticals
be threatened by a plant ?
The answer may be as
simple as one word, "natural,"
because a significant amount
of research to date
has confirmed or suggested that
marijuana in its natural state
is still
the most effective form.
Can you imagine a world
where you or I wouldn't
have to pay
for certain medicines ?
After dealing with about 10,000
patients over the last 15 years,
I would say that over 200
different medical conditions
respond favorably to cannabis.
( John )
It appears to have benefits that
we never, ever knew about.
Glaucoma.
Epilepsy, muscular dystrophy.
Arthritis.
Multiple sclerosis.
Wasting syndrome.
Nausea, chronic pain.
Depression, anxiety,
hepatitis "C," cancer.
Chemo.
AIDS patients.
( host )
Is there a product
out there today
that provides as many medical
benefits as cannabis ?
No.
It remains an un-utilized
major resource.
( Lester )
The way to riches in
the pharmaceutical industry
is to have a drug which
can be patented.
( Todd )
Cannabis is problematic
right from the start
because it's
a multi-molecule drug.
( Paul )
In 1930, it wasn't possible
to patent plants,
and that's the reason that
Pharma never picked up on this,
because by synthesizing
and owning compounds,
that's where the profit motive
comes into
the pharmaceutical industry.
The patent in the United States
lasts for 20 years.
You can charge
whatever you want at that time,
and that's where you
make the killing.
There's no money to be
made off natural plants.
If you can use
a natural medicine
that you can grow in your own
home which costs pennies to use,
you're gonna do that.
( Joe )
You need water and dirt.
Not only that, you have
that plant forever.
( James )
Prime motivation behind any drug
company is to make money,
and as much money as possible.
( Joe )
They're corporations, and
corporations, everybody knows,
it's like that diffusion of
responsibility thing.
There's so many people
working for corporations
that they lose their humanity.
( Dana )
So those potential customers for
these pharmaceutical companies
that are not there if they're
using a natural plant.
It's unlimited.
Grow more, you get more
medicine.
Pharmaceutical
companies don't want you
growing your own medicine.
The government supported
a small drug company
by the name of Unimed
to take a synthetic THC,
tetrahydrocannabinol,
and to put it into capsules
to be used
as a oral medicine.
This became Marinol.
This THC in Marinol is exactly
the same 21-carbon molecule
that's in herbal marijuana.
But it's not the same
as medical marijuana.
It's not a crude mixture
of things,
and there's no guarantee
that you get the same results.
( Paul )
You can make a synthetic
delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol
in a test tube.
It'll have exactly the same
number of atoms
in the same arrangement,
but how in the test tube can you
put the electron spins together,
the subatomic quirks and quarks,
if you like, of that compound,
in the same way that
a biological-enzyme system
will put it together--
it can't happen.
( James )
In the case of
a synthetic compound,
if it's only an ingredient
from the cannabis,
they can formulate
that as a drug
and make a lot more money
out of it.
( host )
We're confused
that if, you know,
you keep hearing that there's
no scientific proof
to medicinal benefits
of marijuana,
why are there drugs
like Marinol on the market ?
Why do they even exist ?
( Lester )
Well, that's part of this
double-talk about it.
If we take
and change it a little bit
so youbelieve
it isn't marijuana,
then it's okay, it's
a great medicine.
You know, they're trying
to make marijuana into medicine
because itismedicine !
Why did the government
actually grow marijuana ?
I mean, the government has had
marijuana programs
that existed since the '70s.
It's impossible
for me to believe
that the government even
believes their own propaganda.
What I do believe is this,
that you can fool some of
the people some of the time,
and they're doing an excellent
job of that.
And for all
the claims of these drugs
being a more viable medicine
because there's no high,
we checked some
of the side effects.
For Marinol-- dizziness,
feelings of exaggerated
happiness, drowsiness.
Last time I checked, those were
signs of getting high.
If it is indeed
side effects of marijuana
that are preventing the
pharmaceutical world
from accepting
marijuana as a viable medicine,
then they better start paying
more attention
to the products they've
been marketing for years.
Every year,
prescription medicines kill
over 100,000 people.
( Tod )
The pharmaceutical industry
has been excellent
at convincing the public
that they need their potions.
If you watch any kind of
commercial for drugs,
they're always
using the third person.
For example, "Where does
a headache come from ?
It comes from
out there somewhere."
Don't sell the steak,
sell the sizzle.
How many people
in this country alone
are addicted to
antidepressants ?
How many people who are on
antidepressants
really have imbalances,
and how many of them
just got off a bad relationship
and they're depressed ?
( John )
It seems to be acceptable
to give people something
as long as you're wearing
a white smock
or you're giving
them a legal prescription.
It doesn't matter how deadly
the particular drug might be
in terms of side effects.
( Paul )
What we call modern medicine
is actually alternative medicine
because it's highly
experimental.
It's often
dangerous, often toxic,
and it kills a lot of people.
To me, it's crazy.
There's a lot of stuff
out there that will affect you
in different ways.
Look at aspirin, heroin,
both invented by Bayer.
( host )
I thought heroin came
from opium seeds and was--
Just natural,
effective opium ?
You keep making it more
and more concentrated ?
No, you have to add certain
chemicals to it
and tweak it a certain way.
It doesn't just
come from opium itself.
What was heroin made for ?
As a cure for
morphine addiction and coughs.
"Heroin, the sedative
for coughs."
Pseudoephedrine.
That's the main ingredient
in methamphetamine,
is to cure
the cough, the cold.
You get a cold, "Oh, I think
I'll do some meth."
When you look at it from a large
perspective, like, what's weed ?
Even Francis Young,
the DEA's own judge,
who took medical testimony
for over two weeks,
made this statement--
"Marijuana, in its natural form,
is one of the safest
"therapeutically active
substances known to man.
"Yet, despite this and the
ever-mounting number
"of real-world
patient success stories,
"cannabis remains listed as
a Schedule I narcotic.
"Under that category,
marijuana is classified
as having no known
medical value."
I-I have...
m-m-multip-ple
sclerosis.
When we first met Greg,
his shaking was so severe,
he informed us that he would
need a few puffs of marijuana
in order to participate
in the interview.
The difference
was night and day.
( host )
What do you say to those
that say marijuana
needs to be tested
and regulated and have
the high taken out
for pharmaceutical
companies to consider it
a valuable medicine ?
Huh.
That's a pretty,
and I only mean this
as a measurement...
as to how much...
it is actually
a pathetic...
thing to say.
I mean, just look at me.
Is it not
blatantly obvious
that I have just enjoyed
however many tokes...
I look happy.
Greg has been using
marijuana for years
and stated to us
that he's never experienced
any negative effects.
I'm never--
( fake panting )
"I need,
I need my marijuana !"
That's... stupid.
It... takes away
my discomfort,
let's call it.
It does enhance
my very being.
Where do think you'd be if
you didn't get to smoke it,
like, dealing with
your pain ?
Huh.
I would have found a way.
( host )
How does the training
and education
of medical doctors today
work against the acceptance
of prescribing marijuana
as medicine ?
Well, it works against
them because they're brought,
right from the beginning,
right into the fold
of the
pharmaceutical industry.
Reading journals, reading
these advertisements,
or they're
reading papers on drugs
that were financed by
the drug companies,
or they're being
seduced by the companies.
Fancy dinners, a trip
for a weekend.
"Would you like to
have 18 rounds of golf ?"
And some of them get outright
money from the drug companies.
( Rielle )
I've met doctors
who said when they first
came out of medical school,
they didn't know what to do.
It was really overwhelming.
They had live patients in front
of them who needed help.
They were very happy
to have representatives
tell them what medicines would
be best for their patients.
( Lester )
So doctors have a bias
toward the products of
pharmaceutical industries.
They do not readily
accept the idea
that a simple plant
or herb may be useful.
I don't know if they think
it's hocus-pocus.
I just think
that they don't feel that
there's the kind of testing
that they're used to.
( James )
That's the problem we have.
What I try to impress
upon these people
is we're trying to
put the science into it,
and yet some people are
very resistant
to even attempts to do that.
All of the funding is coming
directly or indirectly
from the drug companies,
and these people, obviously,
for obvious reasons, are
determining the agendas.
( Paul )
Now, think of
the lobbying potential
behind the most profitable
industry in the United States.
Think of the power, and do
they get their way ?
Why can't we explore
its medicinal potential ?
Why can't we use it to
make more products ?
To myself and people
involved in this business,
it stopped making sense
a long time ago.
The common response is really
that medical marijuana
is a stalking horse
for legalizing it.
And so what ?
What do they want ?
We should be making use
of this plant,
and really,
that's all I can say.
The restriction,
the Prohibition is all,
in my mind, just stupidity,
and I don't condone stupidity.
And that's a problem--
how do politicians,
after years of promoting claims
of marijuana's harms,
pushing for larger
drug-war budgets,
constructing political platforms
based on a stance
that vilifies marijuana,
and being lobbied
by Big Business,
how do these same politicians
now reverse their stance ?
What politician can come before
their constituents today
and say marijuana
should be decriminalized
when yesterday they said it was
evil and dangerous ?
Their constituents
are gonna wanna know
why you changed your mind.
Were you lying to us,
or were you stupid ?
Either way, you're not getting
elected next time.
( Lester )
Whoops, we made a mistake.
You 17 million people should not
have been arrested,
some of you jailed,
some of you fined,
some of you lost the handle
on your career.
One way to bypass this problem,
in the face of ever-growing
empirical evidence,
is to divert attention.
Add a word--
"medicinal."
Put the word "medicinal"
in front of marijuana,
and you are now talking about
something completely different
if you're a politician.
Why is there a perception
that healthy people
are affected differently
and unable to fend off
the detrimental consequences,
whereas a person with a lowered
immune system
or terminal illness
seems to experience
none of these effects ?
( Neil )
Some people go home at the end
of the day and they drink
to kind of wash away the day.
You know, just like,
"Oh, that was a hard day.
I need a few drinks,
relax, kick back."
So is that relieving pain ?
Maybe-- or is it pursuing
pleasure ?
I don't know.
So if you think about this in
the context of cannabis,
it also has relevance.
The government's lot more likely
to forgive cannabis use
if it's for relief from pain.
If it's in pursuit of pleasure,
that's a problem,
and I think that points to
something about our culture
that's a little bit odd.
What works for one doesn't
necessarily work for another.
( man )
The father-son
confrontation.
Mom smokes like a chimney.
And you have a drink
every day and smoke, too.
It's not the same.
Why not ?
You can get cancer,
your liver can rot away.
They believe today, and I'm
disappointed in the media,
that it hasn't brought this
information,
this new information to
the people of this country
more than it has,
they believe that marijuana
could well turn out to be
the most dangerous drug that
is in use in our country today.
If you're a politician,
you can get elected on
a get-tough-on-crime platform--
"We're gonna lock up all
the marijuana cultivators
for a long time"--
'cause you're preying on
the fears of the public.
Spokesmen for giant
special-interest groups,
whether those special-interest
groups be law enforcement,
or whether
they're private prisons,
or whether they're
pharmaceutical companies
or whether they're
oil companies,
we have spokesmen
for gigantic corporations
that are trying to calm us
and get us
to press the right button
in the voting booth.
( Todd )
Everybody that gets in
has their own agenda.
They're beholden
to their own lobbyists,
so they don't go in and check
the work of anybody before them.
That's not their job,
because God forbid somebody
come in there
and check what
they do afterwards.
I understand why politicians
may be reluctant
to act on their principles,
but our politicians
need to read their own polls,
because this is one
of those cases,
and it happens a lot in life,
where the people
are ahead of their leaders.
( host )
Hempfest, the largest event for
cannabis in the world,
a showcase of modern-day hemp.
Sure, they used the stuff
but what good is
hemp in a world like today ?
A world that appears to have
everything it needs.
It opens a whole new market.
It opens a whole new market
on every level.
( Dana )
You can harvest off the seeds,
you can harvest out the inner
pulp and the long-stem fibers.
The fiber itself
is the strongest natural fiber
in the world.
( Todd )
All the clothes
I'm wearing today
for this interview are hemp.
All the clothes I actually
always wear
are made out of hemp.
Been so since
probably '94 when I realized
I could buy clothes made out
of organic fibers
that lasted
longer than cotton.
( Joe )
You can eat hemp seeds, and it
contains all the essential
amino acids and fatty acids.
It makes fuel, you can make
biodiesel out of it.
Hemp is an excellent
source for biofuel.
When you grow hemp for fuel,
every crop unleashes a huge
amount of oxygen
into the environment,
and in fact, the same amount
of oxygen that you lose
when you burn it off
you gain back,
so it's a closed cycle,
ending the greenhouse effect.
( Steve )
There are so many hundreds of
strains of industrial hemp
that you could grow hemp
almost anywhere in the world.
Not everywhere in the world,
but almost everywhere
in the world,
so just that alone makes
it a resource for fuel.
( David )
That is a solution,
is to stop using fossil fuels
and nuclear energy,
stop using them entirely,
and using wind and wave
and sun more,
and these biofuels.
( Steve )
People will get it, especially
as the gas prices go up.
It's the highest-
quality paper there is.
I mean, it's archival quality.
The words "tree-free paper"
don't make sense to people...
Hemp paper that
you find in the museums
that are hundreds of years old
haven't even yellowed.
To supplement the wood,
we could solve
the deforestation problem.
( host )
Why isn't it cost-effective
to use hemp
versus the forest
industry right now ?
The simple answer is because
you can't grow the hemp
in the United States.
( Joe )
As far as human beings
are concerned,
it's probably one of
the most useful plants ever,
if notthemost useful
plant ever.
And it's illegal.
Industrial hemp
is not a drug.
Though it is of
the same species as marijuana,
it is a completely different
variety of plant,
similar to comparing
a Chihuahua with a St. Bernard.
You can't get high from
industrial hemp,
but you can get
high from marijuana.
This is the only industrialized
country in the world
that doesn't
grow industrial hemp.
I mean, think how crazy it is
that we can eat the product,
we can sell the product,
we can wear the product,
we can export the product,
import it,
manufacture it,
everything but grow it ?
We can't grow this thing--
it's criminal.
And there you have it.
After two years of research,
our quest for answers
has only left us
with more questions.
And the only thing
that really seems
to make sense...
is that none
of it makes any sense.
It's a weird thing that you do
when you make nature
against the law.
We're worried
about things going extinct,
and yet the policy on the most
useful plant in the world
is that they should
all be eliminated
and driven to extinction.
Absolutely, they should
still be concerned about
youngsters using it.
But we're concerned about
youngsters using alcohol,
tobacco, driving automobiles,
whatever.
But that it should be the kind
of Prohibition that it is now
rather than regulation ?
It cannot be sustained
in a rational society.
I believe that it would be more
ignorant of me
to listen to somebody
who's trying to oppress me
than it would be to just ignore
the ignorant
and go on with
what I think is right.
Even now, this interview
is being conducted,
and I smoked pot all morning.
This is what
I look like high.
There's a great quote that,
"Life is a tragedy
to those who feel
and a comedy
to those who think."
And if you are a thinker,
and you look at
the marijuana situation
and you're not laughing...
you're fucking dumb.
( host )
Do you think marijuana
will ever be legalized
in Canada
or the United States ?
Yes.
I don't know about
the United States,
but it will be legalized
in Canada.
I won't be alive to see it.
I used to believe it was right
around the corner
back in the 1970s.
Check out the gray hair--
I confess to being 61.
I believe it will happen.
I didn't used to.
As recently as
two or three years ago,
I was convinced it was not gonna
happen in my lifetime.
I wish you didn't
ask me that question,
but I would say...
I think it will be.
It's always a possibility.
There can be
breakthroughs to reason.
All we have to do to end it
is get 50% of Congress
plus one human being to
say it's over, and it's over.
There's a movement
in this country,
and some people have more faith
in it than I do.
Maybe from hosting
"Fear Factor" all those years,
I've lost my faith in human
beings and their intelligence.
I think it's inevitable.
I believe that the truth
will set us free,
and I think
the truth is infectious.
And I think that while cannabis
per se is not addictive,
learning about it
quickly becomes.
When I published
"Marijuana Reconsidered,"
I, in the last chapter,
predicted that once people
understood these things
about marijuana,
the Prohibition would be gone,
and it would be gone
in ten years.
Carl Sagan, who was
a very good friend of mine,
read the manuscript
and he said,
"Lester, you're so
pessimistic-- ten years ?"
You know, well, here we are,
you know...
and nothing has happened.
Nonetheless, it can't help
but happen.
I mean, you can't sustain
a lie like that forever.