SacredPlants

Documentary on the history of the Prohibition of Marijuana

35 years after Nixon started the war on drugs, we have over one million non-violent drug offenders living behind bars.The War on Drugs has become the longest and most costly war in American history, the question has become, how much more can the country endure? Inspired by the death of four family members from “legal drugs” Texas filmmaker Kevin Booth sets out to discover why the Drug War has become such a big failure. Three and a half years in the making, the film follows gang members, former DEA agents, CIA officers, narcotics officers, judges, politicians, prisoners and celebrities. Most notably the film befriends Freeway Ricky Ross; the man many accuse for starting the Crack epidemic, who after being arrested discovered that his cocaine source had been working for the CIA.

AMERICAN DRUG WAR shows how money, power and greed have corrupted not just drug pushers and dope fiends, but an entire government. More importantly, it shows what can be done about it. This is not some ‘pro-drug’ stoner film, but a collection of expert testimonials from the ground troops on the front lines of the drug war, the ones who are fighting it and the ones who are living it.

Documentary from the history channel, a bit Reefer Madness-like in the sense that it is more of a Cocaine Madness movie, but it has interesting information nevertheless.

Rosalda is a small-scaled farmer who has no other option than to grow coca to stay alive. American and Colombian government join effort to fight drugs and insurgent groups by spraying pesticides over Rosalda’s single source of income; her quarter hectare of coca plantation.

War on Drugs (The Prison Industrial Complex) (1999) Dutch documentary on the war on drugs.

***The first few minutes are in dutch, but the rest is in english.

The war on drugs has been going on for more than three decades. … all » Today, nearly 500,000 Americans are imprisoned on drug charges. In 1980 the number was 50,000. Last year $40 billion in taxpayer dollars were spent in fighting the war on drugs.

As a result of the incarceration obsession, the United States operates the largest prison system on the planet, and the U.S. nonviolent prisoner population is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska. Try to imagine the Drug Enforcement Administration erecting razor wire barricades around two states to control crime and you’ll get the picture.

According to the U.S. Dept of Justice, the number of offenders under age 18 imprisoned for drug offenses increased twelvefold from 1985 to 1997. The group most affected by this propensity for incarceration is African-Americans. From 1985 to 1997, the percentage of African-American young people put in prison increased from 53 to 62 percent.

Today, 89 percent of police departments have paramilitary units, and 46 percent have been trained by active duty armed forces. The most common use of paramilitary units is serving drug-related search warrants, which usually involve no-knock entries into private homes.