Grass (2000)

Buy This Item Grass (2000) by Unapix / a-Pix Ent.  Available from Amazon  $59.98  on 11-29-2008     This playful documentary from Ron Mann (<I>Comic Book Confidential</I>) is less a social history of marijuana than a satirical portrait of the American government's systematic seven-decade campaign to demonize the devil's weed. Mann excerpts hysterical educational scare films, clips from campy overheated features like <I>Reefer Madness</I> and <I>High on the Range</I>, and a hilarious anti-drug spot by an obviously stoned Sonny Bono to contrast decades of exaggeration and blatant misinformation with two official (and subsequently ignored) government studies that find pot to be a relatively harmless drug, both less addictive and less dangerous than either alcohol or cigarettes. Narrated in an easy, conversational tone by hemp activist Woody Harrelson, it's a well-researched and smartly organized argument against the war on drugs, at least this drug. And Mann makes no pretense at balance: he's preaching to the converted with a sarcastic sermon. When the official record is missing, he even fabricates his own slyly ironic mock newsreels and newspaper clippings, which undercut the strength of the real documents but never hurts his case as a whole. This witty history lesson is a thinking man's <I>Reefer Madness</I> for the pro-pot movement. <I>--Sean Axmaker</I> Reader Reviews I've always wondered about the historical reasons for pot's highly illegal status even while I am accutely aware of the failed ability of the Drug War to address America's interaction with drugs. This film does best in the pre-1980's historical context. The film has incredible historical footage and regardless of your political persuasion, is worth checking out. However, what was amazing to me, revealed in the film, and which I continue to confirm in my own research, was that any time the Federal Government actually used science to research pot, it found the legal penalties to be much to harsh and that pot's affect on health and society isn't the boogeyman made to be by our enforcement brances of government. My conclusion, and maybe yours too, would be that continuing the marijuanna farce degrades the Federal Government's credibility and only lends support to the fact the US Gov't bases drug policy on fear, racism, and hysteria.

Grass (2000) Available from Amazon Price: $59.98 Updated on 11-29-2008.

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