Jacob Bell
New Member
Weed Wars: Reality series. 10 p.m. Thurs. on Discovery Channel.
National Geographic Investigates: Marijuana Gold Rush: Documentary. 9 p.m. Fri. on National Geographic Channel.
It says a lot about how complicated the national debate on marijuana has become that, even together, two new documentaries airing this week barely cover certain aspects of the topic.
One of the challenges facing the producers of both "Weed Wars," a real-life series premiering Thursday on the Discovery Channel, and National Geographic Channel's "Marijuana Gold Rush," a one-off airing Friday, is that the national debate has intensified in just the past two months. On Oct. 7, the federal government's announcement of plans to crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries sent the billion-dollar industry into panic mode - the collective equivalent of swallowing the roach.
But even the perceived moment of clarity from the feds doesn't really help anyone sort out the issues - moral, financial, legal and medical - - which have only become more complicated since California became the first state in the nation to legalize pot for medical use in 1996. Since then, 15 other states and the District of Columbia have legalized the sale of medical marijuana, but federal law still classifies the plant as an illegal substance, and the Supreme Court has sided with the feds.
The lack of resolution to the debate between the federal government and the states has not only enabled the industry to grow to such an extent that it rivals illegal drug sales, it has also further complicated the debate itself. The longer it continues, the higher the financial stakes become for revenue-starved local and state governments, and the more the quasi-legal medical pot industry becomes further entrenched in the states' economies.
What the two documentaries airing this week have in common is that they are largely about the financial side of the pot debate. "Weed Wars," whose producers, including Chuck Braverman, have filmed four episodes so far and may film more, focuses exclusively on Harborside Health Center in Oakland.
Said to be the world's largest legal dispensary of medical marijuana, Harborside does about $21 million of business annually and is one of the many legal dispensaries in California that contribute to the $100 million in sales tax the state gets from the pot business. And that doesn't count the amount assessed by the city of Oakland, an issue that consumes Steve DeAngelo, Harborside's executive director, and his staff in the first episode of "Weed Wars."
At issue in "Weed Wars" is whether the new tax imposed by Oakland has to be paid "in advance," as the city terms it, or retroactively for the previous year, which is how DeAngelo and his staff see it. When the law was passed, DeAngelo argues, the city promised the tax would not be retroactive. While his argument may have semantic logic, he learns again that you can't really fight city hall, something of which he's well aware after years of working as an advocate for legalization.
While it's enlightening to see how Harborside operates and to meet the people who make it work, like Harborside co-founder David Weddingdress ( he long ago decided he was more comfortable not having to deal with trousers ), the focus of "Weed Wars" is sometimes frustratingly narrow.
Financial aspect
The financial aspect of the pot debate is viewed only through the lens of Harborside having to raise more than $1 million quickly in order to stay in business. Only by implication are we allowed to consider how much legalized pot already contributes to the economy and how much more it could contribute with better regulation. And as further evidence of how quickly the medical pot debate is ramping up, on Oct. 5 Harborside was hit with a $2.5 million bill in back taxes from the IRS, more than twice as much as it has to raise in the first episode of "Weed Wars" to pay Oakland.
Also by implication, though, we can't help but consider the validity of medical marijuana itself.
We could conclude that someone suffering from a chronic, terminal or debilitating illness may seem to have a justifiable reason to get medical marijuana, but we also meet Terryn, one of the Harborside clerks who looks at his nightly joint as a way of unwinding after a hard day's work.
One might argue that it's the same as having a perfectly legal martini after work. Yet, his mother, a psychologist, is still hoping her son will do something more substantial with his life. For his part, Terryn wants to settle down, but somehow he hasn't gotten around to it.
As we learn in "Marijuana Gold Rush," it doesn't take much to get a doctor's OK for medical pot. One doctor attending Mendocino's annual Emerald Cup pot growers' contest proudly announces he's never said no to anyone asking for a prescription.
While the nation debates medical marijuana, let's not fool ourselves into thinking it's only about something for "medicinal purposes," as they used to say with a knowing wink about hooch during Prohibition. The debate is really about decriminalizing marijuana altogether, with one side arguing that pot is no more harmful than booze and, more important in a time of stubbornly enduring recession, legalization can reap incredible financial rewards for all levels of government and even put people back to work.
Prohibition parallels
Coincidentally, as we learned from the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick "Prohibition" documentary this year, economic reasons had much to do with the repeal of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act in the previous century. They could have a similar impact on pot laws in this one.
Written and directed by Marc Shaffer, "Marijuana Gold Rush" is arguably the more informative of the two films because it looks at various levels of the pot business in Northern California to show how many people are actively involved in it as part of the "marijuana green rush." We meet "ganjapreneurs" Dhar Mann and Derek Peterson at the start of the film as they dive headfirst into creating a kind of Home Depot for pot growers called WeGrow. Their goal is to establish a business empire, and the fact that they don't quite pull it off has nothing to do with the commercial viability of their business plan.
We meet Wall Street investors who don't inhale themselves but are ready to pony up for what they see as an industry about to blossom, much as the liquor industry was during the final days of Prohibition. "Marijuana Gold Rush" also takes us to a factory outside London where GW Pharmaceuticals makes $45 million a year manufacturing pain killers like Sativex, created legally from marijuana plant extracts. It's all entirely above board, and the product has been proved to work and is manufactured for one purpose only, and that is to reduce pain. The intoxicating potential of the pot extracts have been all but nullified.
Sativex, a cannabinoid oral spray, could not be manufactured legally in the United States today.
Even if the feds weren't cracking down right now, it's not easy being legally green in the United States, we learn from Shaffer's film. Like any other business, there are taxes, workers' comp, payroll taxes, insurance and all kinds of other things the illegal pot trade doesn't have to deal with. In other words, despite the financial benefits to be reaped by legalization, even leaving aside the federal-state imbroglio, states haven't made it easy for pot growers to thrive.
California focus
Both films focus on California because it was the first state to legalize medicinal marijuana sales and the industry is both larger and more sophisticated than it may be elsewhere in the nation. But in addition to the states that have already adopted some kind of medical marijuana legislation, the rest of the country is already at some level of discussion about the issue. The one thing that's clear from both films airing this week is that there isn't going to be either an easy or a quick resolution to the problem.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2011 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: Submissions & Contributions — SFGate, news and information for the San Francisco Bay Area.
Website: SF Gate: San Francisco Chronicle
National Geographic Investigates: Marijuana Gold Rush: Documentary. 9 p.m. Fri. on National Geographic Channel.
It says a lot about how complicated the national debate on marijuana has become that, even together, two new documentaries airing this week barely cover certain aspects of the topic.
One of the challenges facing the producers of both "Weed Wars," a real-life series premiering Thursday on the Discovery Channel, and National Geographic Channel's "Marijuana Gold Rush," a one-off airing Friday, is that the national debate has intensified in just the past two months. On Oct. 7, the federal government's announcement of plans to crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries sent the billion-dollar industry into panic mode - the collective equivalent of swallowing the roach.
But even the perceived moment of clarity from the feds doesn't really help anyone sort out the issues - moral, financial, legal and medical - - which have only become more complicated since California became the first state in the nation to legalize pot for medical use in 1996. Since then, 15 other states and the District of Columbia have legalized the sale of medical marijuana, but federal law still classifies the plant as an illegal substance, and the Supreme Court has sided with the feds.
The lack of resolution to the debate between the federal government and the states has not only enabled the industry to grow to such an extent that it rivals illegal drug sales, it has also further complicated the debate itself. The longer it continues, the higher the financial stakes become for revenue-starved local and state governments, and the more the quasi-legal medical pot industry becomes further entrenched in the states' economies.
What the two documentaries airing this week have in common is that they are largely about the financial side of the pot debate. "Weed Wars," whose producers, including Chuck Braverman, have filmed four episodes so far and may film more, focuses exclusively on Harborside Health Center in Oakland.
Said to be the world's largest legal dispensary of medical marijuana, Harborside does about $21 million of business annually and is one of the many legal dispensaries in California that contribute to the $100 million in sales tax the state gets from the pot business. And that doesn't count the amount assessed by the city of Oakland, an issue that consumes Steve DeAngelo, Harborside's executive director, and his staff in the first episode of "Weed Wars."
At issue in "Weed Wars" is whether the new tax imposed by Oakland has to be paid "in advance," as the city terms it, or retroactively for the previous year, which is how DeAngelo and his staff see it. When the law was passed, DeAngelo argues, the city promised the tax would not be retroactive. While his argument may have semantic logic, he learns again that you can't really fight city hall, something of which he's well aware after years of working as an advocate for legalization.
While it's enlightening to see how Harborside operates and to meet the people who make it work, like Harborside co-founder David Weddingdress ( he long ago decided he was more comfortable not having to deal with trousers ), the focus of "Weed Wars" is sometimes frustratingly narrow.
Financial aspect
The financial aspect of the pot debate is viewed only through the lens of Harborside having to raise more than $1 million quickly in order to stay in business. Only by implication are we allowed to consider how much legalized pot already contributes to the economy and how much more it could contribute with better regulation. And as further evidence of how quickly the medical pot debate is ramping up, on Oct. 5 Harborside was hit with a $2.5 million bill in back taxes from the IRS, more than twice as much as it has to raise in the first episode of "Weed Wars" to pay Oakland.
Also by implication, though, we can't help but consider the validity of medical marijuana itself.
We could conclude that someone suffering from a chronic, terminal or debilitating illness may seem to have a justifiable reason to get medical marijuana, but we also meet Terryn, one of the Harborside clerks who looks at his nightly joint as a way of unwinding after a hard day's work.
One might argue that it's the same as having a perfectly legal martini after work. Yet, his mother, a psychologist, is still hoping her son will do something more substantial with his life. For his part, Terryn wants to settle down, but somehow he hasn't gotten around to it.
As we learn in "Marijuana Gold Rush," it doesn't take much to get a doctor's OK for medical pot. One doctor attending Mendocino's annual Emerald Cup pot growers' contest proudly announces he's never said no to anyone asking for a prescription.
While the nation debates medical marijuana, let's not fool ourselves into thinking it's only about something for "medicinal purposes," as they used to say with a knowing wink about hooch during Prohibition. The debate is really about decriminalizing marijuana altogether, with one side arguing that pot is no more harmful than booze and, more important in a time of stubbornly enduring recession, legalization can reap incredible financial rewards for all levels of government and even put people back to work.
Prohibition parallels
Coincidentally, as we learned from the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick "Prohibition" documentary this year, economic reasons had much to do with the repeal of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act in the previous century. They could have a similar impact on pot laws in this one.
Written and directed by Marc Shaffer, "Marijuana Gold Rush" is arguably the more informative of the two films because it looks at various levels of the pot business in Northern California to show how many people are actively involved in it as part of the "marijuana green rush." We meet "ganjapreneurs" Dhar Mann and Derek Peterson at the start of the film as they dive headfirst into creating a kind of Home Depot for pot growers called WeGrow. Their goal is to establish a business empire, and the fact that they don't quite pull it off has nothing to do with the commercial viability of their business plan.
We meet Wall Street investors who don't inhale themselves but are ready to pony up for what they see as an industry about to blossom, much as the liquor industry was during the final days of Prohibition. "Marijuana Gold Rush" also takes us to a factory outside London where GW Pharmaceuticals makes $45 million a year manufacturing pain killers like Sativex, created legally from marijuana plant extracts. It's all entirely above board, and the product has been proved to work and is manufactured for one purpose only, and that is to reduce pain. The intoxicating potential of the pot extracts have been all but nullified.
Sativex, a cannabinoid oral spray, could not be manufactured legally in the United States today.
Even if the feds weren't cracking down right now, it's not easy being legally green in the United States, we learn from Shaffer's film. Like any other business, there are taxes, workers' comp, payroll taxes, insurance and all kinds of other things the illegal pot trade doesn't have to deal with. In other words, despite the financial benefits to be reaped by legalization, even leaving aside the federal-state imbroglio, states haven't made it easy for pot growers to thrive.
California focus
Both films focus on California because it was the first state to legalize medicinal marijuana sales and the industry is both larger and more sophisticated than it may be elsewhere in the nation. But in addition to the states that have already adopted some kind of medical marijuana legislation, the rest of the country is already at some level of discussion about the issue. The one thing that's clear from both films airing this week is that there isn't going to be either an easy or a quick resolution to the problem.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2011 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: Submissions & Contributions — SFGate, news and information for the San Francisco Bay Area.
Website: SF Gate: San Francisco Chronicle
