Druglawed is a new documentary that shows how New Zealand got rolled up by the United States into a global War on Drugs and how, ironically, the US is now leading the world in making cannabis legal again.
Four years in the making, filmmaker Arik Reiss managed to snare interviews with a veritable who’s-who of drug policy wonks and pot snobs and has sourced rare and exclusive footage that even well traveled connoisseurs of cannabis may not have seen before. This includes early Kiwi cannabis medicines, Henry Ford hammering on a hemp-built car, fired UK drugs advisor Prof David Nutt, inside a West Auckland cannabis social club called The Daktory, legal New Zealand hemp fields, what the FBI said to Jenny Shipley and what John Key said to a cannabis smoke-in on the steps of Parliament.
Arik was inspired to tell the story of ‘New Zealand Green’ after hearing about police attention paid to Otago NORML‘s4:20 protests while the University condones drinking to excess. He traveled down to Dunedin to film the 4:20protests but by pure chance found himself in the middle of an alcohol-fueled riot. The footage he captured is pure film gold, contrasting the undercover cops wasting time investigating Abe Gray’s peaceful pot protest while Dunedin burns under the influence of legal booze.
Arik traveled far and wide collecting interviews including with myself. I was also happy to support the project with sponsorship from The Hempstore, although I thought at that stage it might just end up on youtube. A deal with TV3 to produce a mainstream-media version called High Time prompted Arik to produce this feature-length docomentary, partly funded with kickstarter. The end result is a thoroughly professional, broadcast-level exploration of the topic that is worthy of its inclusion in film festivals starting with Documentary Edge here in New Zealand.
Divided into ten chapters, Druglawed opens with the story of Suzanne Aubert who was probably the first person to grow cannabis in New Zealand – and now a candidate for beatification. She founded the Sisters of Compassion and manufactured a range of herbal medicines inspired by traditional Maori rongoa. Mother Aubert’s cannabis-based elixers were “a popular drink in New Zealand”, until prohibition was introduced a year after she died in 1926.
The film shows how the global temperance movement was fueled by newspaper magnate Randolph Hearst and explores the threat hemp posed to the oil patents held by US Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon and financier Nelson Rockefeller. I’m not normally one for conspiracies, but Reiss lays it out pretty clearly that these guys saw hemp as a big threat – in particular Henry Ford’s hemp-plastic car that was powered by hemp and corn biofuel. With ‘reefer madness’ propaganda that persists to this day, they got all forms of cannabis banned, including medicinal and industrial uses..
However it was Nixon who really created the modern War on Drugs. It was a handy distraction from his misadventures in South East Asia. US pressure led to the global drug treaties that bind all nations into a prohibitionist framework that considers all drugs “evil” and aims for a “drug free world”. Steve Rolles from Transform (UK) explains how this has excused governments into all sorts of reprehensible behaviour in the name of ridding their countries of drugs.
In New Zealand, Police have pursued pot consumers and providers with particular zealotry, with 381,000 apprehensions for cannabis since 1994, and until recently the highest cannabis arrest rate in the world. This includes prosecuting people with serious conditions who use cannabis to alleviate their symptoms or make life a little more bearable, such as Billy McKee and Dawn Danby, both featured in Druglawed. Their stories were particularly moving – if anything I would like to have seen more from them but that is a minor quibble for such a well made film.
With cannabis a burning topic around the world, there are now a lot of pot documentaries. Druglawed is one of the best and everyone involved should be proud. A sequel is already in the pipeline, with Arik set to interview Raphael Mechoulam, the discover of THC and cannabinoid receptors, visit Israel’s legal medical cannabis farms, and then to Uruguay which recently made cannabis legal.
My verdict is that Druglawed is a great film, a worthy project, and I can’t wait for Part Two!
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Druglawed (2015), 99 minutes. English with subtitles. Directed by Arik Reiss, produced by Section 18 Media and BT-Tokyo Media.
Watch the trailer at Vimeo. Druglawed screens at the Documentary Edge festival in Auckland and Wellington.Download a copy here for $4.20. Buy a DVD from druglawed.com or at The Hempstore in Auckland and Whakamana the Cannabis Museum in Dunedin.
We have a cannabis museum?!
Any chance of this airing on television sometime?
The war on drugs was always meant to fail and not be effective and cost many millions of dollars and ruin tons of lives. Privatized jails need prisoners for their profits and Nancy Reagan played her part in creating fear and spreading lies about drug use.
The drug and alcohol lobbies and the pharmaceutical corporations and the cotton industry played their parts in convincing the US govt and as many as they could that marijuana was bad and led to harder drugs which is a lie. The CIA had to cover up their arms and drug smuggling and on and on and on this very ugly story goes that many have paid heavily for.
They were and still are afraid of the INDUSTRIAL HEMP INDUSTRY and its power to bring about economic health and jobs and produce hundreds of super high quality products.
http://cannabiology.org/
http://hempethics.weebly.com/industrial-hemp-vs-cannabis.html
Is there a transcript for this documentary?
I downloaded last night and highly recommend viewing this doco if you’re at all interested in the subject. It explains the absurdity of the war on drugs without coming across as another “pro stoner” youtube rant and Its the type of film you can watch with your mum and she’ll get it. As usual, the most heartbreaking moment is when they talk to people using herb for medical reasons.
Can’t wait to see Druglawed. Also looking forward to getting time to watch Canadian pot doco ‘The Union’, and its recent follow up ‘The Culture High’:
http://www.theculturehigh.com/
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