( 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.
50% of medicine marketed in the 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.
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 30 years old that I was tricked.
I was like, "You got to be fucking kidding me."
1974, the Heath-Tulane study.
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 30 joints a day for one year,
Dr. Heath used a method of pumping
63 Columbian-strength joints
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 ?
250,000 ?
300,000 ?
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
15,000 joints in 20 minutes
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 104 marijuana users use cocaine,
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
75 years ago ?
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
75 years ago ?
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 50 weapons,
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 40 bucks in your pocket.
( 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 9-to-5 type of guys.
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.
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 500 million annually
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 33 bucks an hour,
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.
1970, beginning of the War on Drugs.
76 New Jersey troopers became 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 ) 750,000 Americans every year 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.
25 million for the head 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.
51 people were arrested under 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 20 SWAT-team people.
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
50 retail cannabis-seed 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 ) 35% ?
And a quarter.
50%. 50 ?
50%.
I would say about 60%. 60%.
70%.
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.
430,000 people die in 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,
60% are dependent 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 25% of its prisoners.
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 923 million in 1985
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,
28 days later, if they 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 70 years ago,
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...
45 years later, and nothing has happened.
Nonetheless, it can't help but happen.
I mean, you can't sustain a lie like that forever.