Grass Is Greener
2019
•
1h 37min
• Documentary
GRASS IS GREENER explores America's extremely complicated relationship with marijuana, especially as it pertains to music, race, and the War on Drugs. The documentary follows two threads. The first is the relationship musicians from the 1930s onward have had with marijuana. Jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong were regular smokers and advocated for its legalization, and numerous songs praised marijuana's use. As jazz grew, so did marijuana usage throughout the country, which led to the Beat Generation's praise of marijuana, which inspired its popularity in the counterculture of the 1960s and beyond. From there, hip-hop and reggae artists from the 1970s onward have championed its use and advocated for its legalization. The second thread of the documentary concerns the racist underpinnings of the War on Drugs -- from the 1930s, which saw a flood of inaccurate propaganda about marijuana's alleged negative effects on through the Nixon Administration, which saw the War on Drugs as a way to continue oppressing communities of color after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and also a way to counter antiwar activists in universities. This led to the "Just Say No" campaigns of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, where prison populations began to dramatically spike as "get tough" laws created mandatory sentencing for even trace amounts of marijuana. Grass Is Greener then takes a look at today, where, in states were cannabis has been more or less legalized, a thriving billion-dollar industry is literally growing, while in less progressive states, African American men continue to serve felony sentences for possessing one or two joints.
