Five Weed Documentaries Worth Binging this Summer

Not sure what to watch this summer? Why not make it a weed-themed documentary? 

Just like marijuana culture has evolved over the years, the same can be said about documentaries, in general. Top streaming platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix have thousands of documentaries that would be perfect for your Netflix-and chill summer days. And if you’re out and about to binge something on cannabis, recreational use, legalization, history, and everything in between, you should stick around. 

Part of the process of becoming a smart stoner is to be aware of how recent years influenced the cannabis movement worldwide. That’s especially relevant in the U. S, the biggest promoter of the war on drugs in the 20th century. To understand this achievement, stoners must understand the social cost it took for us to relish legal cannabis. It’s the result of the battle of millions to provide the healthcare and dignity of their loved ones. It’s a people’s victory!

Whether you’re starting in the weed industry or want to explore the greener, here are five cannabis documentaries to binge on this summer. 

The Culture High

With the legalization of weed in Washington and Colorado and hype elsewhere to follow that path, it might seem that decriminalization’s time has come, but with many entrenched interests at stake.  

The Culture High director, Brett Harvey, who first studied cannabis’s prohibition in “the Union: The Business Behind Getting High,” shares a brief history here. This documentary displays the political popularity of the “War on Drugs” and the consequences that followed. 

The Culture High notes that law enforcement agencies and drug dealers both advocated cannabis’s continued illegality since it gave police their budgets and dealers their business. There are still many interests at stake coming from parties like privatized prisons and the pharmaceutical sector, whose drugs face competition from media organizations and medical marijuana, which clearly profit from Big Pharma publicity.  

Overall, though numerous experts – addiction specialists, law professors, behavioral researchers, and economists – advocate forcefully the legalization of cannabis. The Culture High uses a libertarian tone to make its case do aside in the cannabis debate that often goes unheard. 

Grass is Greener

With the recent Netflix documentary, visual-artist, and hip-hop pioneer Fab 5, Freddy takes an empathic step into advocacy. The movie follows the history of marijuana law in the U.S alongside important developments in black American music from – when artists used terms like “reefer” to covertly refer to cannabis – to hip-hop, arguing that the drive to prohibit the plant was clearly tied to racism. 

Grass Is greener is especially touchy when it reaches the present and delves through racial disparities in the prosperous legal cannabis industry: In the cruelest form possible, the majority of criminal convictions for marijuana use were bequeathed to people of color over the last half-century, but nowadays most of the money from legal cannabis is going to white-owned companies. 

This story sparks Fab 5 Freddy, realizing that people of color have been the most victimized and the first and vociverous activists from then until today. He also realized that one of the most important functions of rap throughout the years was to serve as counter-programming to the government propaganda around cannabis. 

The Union: The Business Behind Getting High

Another piece that is totally worth its place on cannabis documentaries you must see list is The Union. It is one of the 2007 movies that expose the success of marijuana in the U.S. and how the industry continues to flourish. Written and directed by Brett Harvey, The Union: The Business Behind Getting High examines the lucrative business behind this huge drug trade.

Much of the documentary focuses on those who grow, traffic, and sell cannabis to users. Numerous teams of doctors, criminologists, politicians, and growers weigh in on the “not so sensitive today” subject. Brett Harvey attempts to disclose the underlying economic, political, and social reasoning behind its prohibition.

The movie compares current laws against cannabis to the years of alcohol prohibition in America. Drug suppliers and gang members are interviewed to prove just how lucrative the illegality of cannabis has become. The Union suggests that many negative aspects of cannabis use are driven by severe regulations and the ensuing criminal it empowers, and not by actual marijuana users. What’s more, the movie also implies that cannabis decriminalization could reduce drug-related crimes and gang warfare.

Explained: Weed

This Netflix documentary has managed to debunk some of the most concerning myths related to cannabis. Dating back from 2018, Explained series has quickly become a worldwide hit. One of the episodes debunks the origins of cannabis and different usages worldwide, from a recreational drug to a recreational one.

Netflix Explained docuseries had done a great job of resuming the history of cannabis in the U.S without shadowing that one of the greatest causes of controversy and fear surrounding the plant is actually the mediatized war on drugs started by President Reagan.

As a result of marijuana being prohibited, there was a mounting black market where the plant was constantly altered for the great demand for great potency.  

The Marijuana Show

Are cannabis users lazy losers? If you were to watch popular TV shows like Disjointed or Dazed and Confused probably, that would be your very perspective about the stereotypical stoner. However, the Marijuana Show reveals a growing community of engaged, smart, and savvy people pioneering a billion-dollar industry in marijuana products and CBD. The thing is, a great number of cannabis-minded media and entertainment professionals are embracing that very concept.

The Marijuana Show seems to rapidly catch attention as one of the first weed-themed internet reality shows. It focuses on cannabis entrepreneurs of all kinds, from hemp skin-care product creators to companies that provide tracking systems for grow houses and dispensaries. But as with many business-minded contents, the Marijuana Show challenges young entrepreneurs to become better businesspeople – often by guiding them throughout the marketing process. The overall message of the shows is just as critical – that cannabis is an industry worthy of consideration.