The Culture High confronts the injustice of marijuana prohibition head on and exposes the absurdity, brutality and injustice of our country’s decades-old “War on Drugs.” It begins with actual footage of a SWAT team storming a family home in the middle of the night in the small college town of Columbia, Missouri. Their mission: to arrest a man on a drug charge. As they read Maranda rights to the man under arrest, the man releases an agonizing cry once he realizes that the officers shot his dog in front of his family. The man was charged with possession of trace amounts of marijuana, released hours later and fined $300. Was it worth destroying a family’s life? Only a minute or two later, we learn that gut-wrenching scenes like this happen thousands of times each year in the U.S.. And for what? It was impossible not to be enraged.
It seemed that was the filmmakers’ intent. The shock left us needing to know why. How did we reach such a cultural low?
The Culture High answers with well-researched compilation of historical footage, news clips and factual statistics woven throughout dozens of interviews with marijuana experts, doctors, patients, law enforcers and celebrity advocates like Joe Rogan, Snoop Dog, Sir Richard Branson and Wiz Khalifa. Each offers valuable insight, tackling topics ranging from judicial racism to societal ignorance, politics to corporate conspiracy. Throughout the film, they eloquently bust nearly every popular justification for prohibition, expose the mistruths that have fortified misunderstanding about marijuana for decades and instill a better understanding about why prohibition began and why ending it is so important.
Be prepared to stay put for two and a half hours, although this documentary is well-worth the time. Each eye-opening expose is compelling and provocative. By the time the film ends, it’s hard not to be inspired and hopeful that one day our government will end the war on cannabis and see to it that everyone has an opportunity to benefit from perhaps the most valuable, healing and sustainable natural resources on our planet today.
Produced collaboratively by Score G Productions, BKS-Crew Productions and Sophia Entertainment, The Culture High is an important film and highly recommended. We found it on YouTube thanks to SM3Channel.
