Touches You

Perfect cast and a good story

I wanted to but couldn't!

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Before watching this film, I considered myself politically neutral in the ongoing debate about the benefits and harmfulness of marijuana use. If it's legalized, whatever; I won't use it. If it's kept illegal, I'm not losing any sleep, I thought. One of the debates that becomes nudged into the foreground when discussing marijuana legalization is do laws making drugs illegal escalate the use of said drugs or decrease them? I believe they do. I know more people in my life that smoke marijuana than are bullied at school. I can say with almost complete confidence that marijuana and alcohol use are more of a problem than bullying at suburban high schools. Which brings me to my first question; can the two be helping each other? The Union: The Business Behind Getting High opens with a four minute history of cannabis in America. We learn that cannabis, also called hemp or industrial hemp (the kind of hemp you can not get "high" from), was the largest crop in America up until around 1937. It was the most durable, robust fiber the world has ever known. It was used predominately in paper, medicine, fabrics, and lighting oil, and the very first marijuana/hemp law ever passed through legislation demanded farmers to use it for its commonality and reliability. Even the paper the Declaration of Independence is printed on is hemp paper; the kind of paper that, through centuries, does not yellow and does not destroy or lessen forest-count in the United States.But back to the history of the plant. In the mid-1930's, something called "yellow journalism" began to take effect on the American people. It was right around the time World War II and the Holocaust began to come up, as well, so the form of persuading the public without much substance and factual evidence, also known as propaganda, became more apparent in the life of not only Germany and parts of Europe, but the United States as well. When the 1936, notoriously lampooned film Reefer Madness, a completely heavy-handed and preachy film used as a scare-tactic for teens and marijuana use, was released, the government began acting on the production and use of hemp. The 1937 Marijuana Tax Act made it so using hemp would implement a heavy tax on farmers, to the point where other resources such as cotton were looked at as a substitute. Marijuana prices climbed, you needed a stamp to grow it - which the government wasn't giving out - and thus, by 1948, hemp and marijuana were illegal for almost no reason at all.This brings us to the question of the legitimacy and the success of prohibition of drugs in the United States; does it really work or does it erect greater, more impenetrable problems? When alcohol was outlawed in the United States, speakeasies became more popular, organized crime by several names like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano were turning up everywhere, and the ability to sell alcohol for record prices was astronomical. If one were to do roughly fifteen minutes of genuine research on marijuana prohibition in the United States, the facts are there and the effects are similar. By closing something off to the public, you open a whole new world where crime and lawlessness can take place, and prices can be artificially inflated by the seller, who makes 100% profit on something you were too stupid to see the benefits in.The Union boldly destroys most of the rumors about marijuana use, populated by the ignorant and uninformed, by using cold, hard facts. For example, the idea that marijuana kills brain cells or stunts them in any way is completely false. A study involving monkeys was conducted, where the monkeys ingested marijuana and not only was brain cell loss apparent, but death wasn't too far away either. Why was that? The monkeys wore gas masks and injected with a large amount of marijuana, that smoking several joints at a time wouldn't equate to, to the point where they died of suffocation. The film also brings up the very rational argument of questioning the legality of tobacco/nicotine/alcohol products, substances that have proved to be addictive, lethal, and cancerous, but not marijuana. So, it just leads us to the question that if the U.S. government wants so badly to protect its citizens from doom and uncertain turmoil, why are they paying money to restrict a plant with proved health benefits, untold material benefits, and one that has shown to be relatively harmless compared to legal pharmaceuticals? The simple answer is marijuana's naturalism. Because the government has the pharmaceutical corporations in their back pocket, both institutions are well aware that the legalization of marijuana would lead to record-low profits and a lesser dependency on one of the most profitable divisions in history. Why pay astronomically high prices for ambiguous medicines with side effects quite possibly worse than what you have when there's a natural drug you can grow, without fear of legal trouble or persecution, for pennies on the dollar? The answer is simple and rational and that's exactly what the corporations and the government want to steer the American people away from. Unfortunately, this will likely be a film that is standing inside an empty room with a high-auditory echo, with the only ones picking up its messages being those who do not need to hear old evidence and reiterated points for the umpteenth time. This is a film that will inevitably preach to the choir, the people its already had on its side. Those who need to seek this film out are the on-the-fencers, like I was, and those who have long been socially ignorant to the concept of marijuana, assuming its illegal status is for a justifiable reason.

I was on the edge of my seat the entire documentary. Incredibly well-made, enjoyed the fast pace & entertaining snippets. Loaded with both fun and infuriating facts. Prior to watching this movie, I was already pro-legalization, although a few short years ago I thought marijuana was a very bad drug indeed. I have never tried weed in my life and have little interest in it. However, this documentary really got to me because of the whole governmental conspiracy element, on both Canadian and American fronts. I doubt we will see marijuana legalized or even decriminalized in either Canada or the U.S. in the next decade, ESPECIALLY after seeing this movie!Must-see! You will never forget it.

I really, honestly believe about 90% of the facts quoted in this movie, however, the reason it grated on my senses was due to the background music. It seemed that no matter what topic was being discussed the music that accompanied the topic was some form of synthesized keyboard repetitive "melody" (not really melodic, just annoying repetition of a few notes) that seemed to have been performed by a bored eight-grader using a home computer.I believe the visual production quality was at least as high as most modern documentaries so I cannot understand what happened with the music, only that it may have been an afterthought. My advice: if the music becomes an afterthought then make it nonexistent. I would have preferred to listen to my own chewing sounds, some street traffic or quiet computer hum, rather than an electronic da da da da, over and over while some narrator droned on about how bad everything but marijuana is, which is really true, I believe...just not with that "music".This brings me to the other point of this production: where did you dig up that mock fifties-style narrator? Why parody the thing you hate with the thing you hate? I was so bored listening to those high school documentaries that I nearly always fell asleep in class, and God forbid it would be a warm day - no escaping a classroom snooze. Perhaps some less sanctimony would be appropriate in this type of factual information documentary.

I was pleasantly surprised by this documentary. As a non-user of cannabis viewing what had to be just another pro-cannabis argument, I had low expectations. My expectations were wrong.This documentary has about as much to say about North American Society as a whole as it has to say about the legalization of marijuana. Taken in its greater context, the documentary is about how Society allows limits of personal freedom to evolve. The documentary uses the example of the 1920's Prohibition on alcohol to demonstrate how Society can change to allow something within its perceived bounds of decency, for which it previously tossed people in jail. I have seen in my own lifetime the legalization of homosexuality, which also finds its roots in Canada, initiated as it was by a visionary Prime Minister named Pierre Trudeau. What a less tolerant society once restricted through oppression to dark, secret places, it is now allowing freely, even if it is all still happening in dark, secret places. If Society had finally recognized that these prohibited things could not be eliminated, Society may have also recognized that they would at least not be promoted by legalizing them. Not everyone is happy with either societal change, but the majority are. We are now seeing the evolution of acceptance of cannabis in Society. But that's not the point. To me the documentary is not about cannabis. It is about disparities of freedom.The point is driven home by an exposé on the United States penal system, a system run to a great extent by private corporations who's primary interest, by definition, is to make money. What the documentary helps the objective viewer to realize is America's is not as free a Society as many, if not most, others in the world, and it helps the objective viewer realize, if chillingly, the reason why.