Grass

The documentary tells the legal history of marijuana in America: the prohibition decisions, the campaigns, the instructional films, the arrest numbers and how each president approached the subject. Ron Mann works with archive footage, and much of that footage is funny on its own now: educational films about the weed that drives young people mad, news bulletins spreading panic. Woody Harrelson narrates. The film takes a side and does not hide it: its case is that the ban has done more harm than the substance. So it gives no room to the opposing view and largely leaves the health argument outside; research today speaks more cautiously, particularly about adolescent use. Against that, what the film actually shows is not contested: how many times the official account changed over eighty years, and how certain it sounded every time. It won a Genie award in Canada.