On April 20th I Watched A Documentary Called Grass

That 1999 Canadian production was seen by me before, albeit a long time ago. The details are below: 

It was only apropos on the night of 4/20 to revisit this Canadian documentary about pot and why the American government was so hell-bent against it for decades, only loosening restrictions in recent years. I believe it was 2003 that I first rented this from my college town's liberal videostore. It is a light documentary filled with licensed popular music, silly graphics and plenty of stock footage, narrated by Woody Harrelson... someone who I understand is more than familiar with Mary Jane.

As explained in the film: while marijuana was already in the United States by the early 20th century, when Mexicans brought it over the border when they emigrated over, they were discriminated against for the usual reasons and their usage of weed was used as a means of prejudice. Yes, even over 100 years ago... jazz musicians in New Orleans and fans of that music popularized ganja as jazz spread across the country; West Indies sailors brought it to the Mardi Gras city and jazz singers brought it to other cities. Harry J. Anslinger-the first drug czar-was struggling at first to get each state to sign anti-drug laws. However, he used the rising popularity of weed in “urban areas” to scare people and it wasn't long before all 48 states (at that time) had stringent regulations against all the hard drugs, along with cannabis.

While of course there's a full story which has much more detail about why marijuana was treated so harshly by the United States government for decades, this does show that racism and prejudice played a key role in bud being viewed so harsly. Anslinger was in power for more than 30 years and several past Presidents declaring a War on Drugs resulted in many prisons being clogged by those who used and sold pot. Attitudes have changed since this has come out and plenty of states have medical marijuana-although some of those only have weed low in THC-and some have decriminalized it altogether. Without sharing how I feel concerning this topic myself, there should be longform podcasts, books, or an entire television series about the history of grass in the United States. Grass the documentary does work at giving a cursory glance at the issue for those that know little to nothing of the topic... and is a slick look which a segment of the audience will classify as audience-pleasing.