The film also investigates why America went from a country which produced vast quantities of the non-narcotic industrial hemp, to the complete ban on hemp production in 1938. This story in particular is interesting, and it points out that the large oilbased industries actually had a key role in the aforementioned ban. Food for thought!

The film places much of the blame for marijuana criminalization on Harry Anslinger (the first American drug czar) who promoted false information about marijuana to the American public as a means towards abolition.

The film follows the history of federal policies and social attitudes towards marijuana, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century. The history presented is broken up into parts, approximately the length of a decade. Each decade is introduced by paraphrasing the official attitude towards marijuana at the time (e.g. “Marijuana will make you insane” or “Marijuana will make you addicted to heroin”), and closed by providing a figure for the amount of money spent during that period on the “war on marijuana.”

The film is completely composed of archival footage, much of which is from public domain U.S propaganda films and feature films such as Reefer Madness made available by the Prelinger Archives. The documentary was narrated, free-of-charge, by actor Woody Harrelson.

He then went on to criticize the government for having outlawed cultivation of this crop, even though “in every other industrialized country, industrial hemp, defined to contain less than 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive chemical found in marijuana, may be legally grown.”

The congressman added that this policy makes it necessary to import all hemp products and materials resulting in “high prices, outsourced jobs, and lost opportunities for American manufacturing.”

In response to Paul’s statement, the sponsors of Hemp History Week, including Vote Hemp and Hemp Industries Association member companies, issued a statement saying they were pleased by his support.

Eric Steenstra, president of Vote Hemp, said Hemp History Week supporters plan more than 100 events focusing on local hemp farming history and the sampling of hemp products, hoping to generate 50,000 signed postcards to the Department of Justice asking to allow United States farmers to grow non-drug varieties of cannabis under existing state laws.