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.

Off the top, let me first say I was very entertained by this film and found it very informative and a little thought provoking. However, as a documentary, it has some issues.First, let me get the 'cons' out of the way. I will say the production values are low, however, some of the best documentaries are shot on shoe string budgets by people that really just have something they want to say! The music can be too prominent, monotonous, and a little irritating at times. It also doesn't fit the subject matter at points. Stock footage is a little over done, and over edited. Also, you really know right off the bad where the film makers stand on the subject matter! It can feel quite one sided at times, and can present some of the street people being interviewed as naive with uneducated points of view.However, all that being said, there were a LOT of well made points that came up! The film makers take you inside the operations, and show you first hand how this world operates. He interviews some big names, and asks a lot of the big questions and covers a lot of areas that we never quite hear about.Even if it's not the best documentary (and I'm not even sure how that standard could even be set...) this is one that you should take in! It'll be worth your time!

This documentary is very informative, just like the documentary it was cloned from -- GRASS, 1999. Its a shame so much of the history of marijuana in The Union (2007) was identical to GRASS. I suppose because it's depicting history, duplication is unavoidable. But the number of identical images, and the progression of the story are too similar for comfort. I saw The Union first, and must say it's more polished, more investigative, more to the point and more informative in many areas than GRASS. GRASS had a fair bit of filler. All the more reason it's a shame The Union couldn't have been more original. I particularly liked the exploration of grow-ops in The Union, whereas in GRASS there seemed to be a lot of rather banal footage about Haight Ashbury and the 'psychodelia' of the 60's and early 70's. The Union was definitely more Canada oriented.

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.