Grass, the aptly named new documentary by Ron Mann, chronicles marijuana’s American history over the course of the twentieth century, showing how marijuana has been a subject of controversy and fear since the early 1900s when it was first brought across the border by Mexican immigrants.

The film presents the original marijuana scare as a result of both propaganda and racism against the new Mexican immigrants, followed by Prohibition.  The early history is accompanied by precious footage from newsreels and propaganda films proving the extent of America’s disapprobation regarding the drug.  Such telling moments as when an expert is shown criticizing pot’s addictive quality while smoking a cigarette on television complete this amusing and confounding picture. 

As the film tells it, the early rulings against pot were led by a vigorous campaign by the Commissioner of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger.  With the single-minded megalomania of a McCarthy, Anslinger made it his personal mission to criminalize pot, supporting a tyrannical propagandist program used to influence legislature and public opinion.  Through Anslinger’s efforts and without any medical or scientific proof of marijuana’s ill effects, the plant was tarnished by a criminality that followed it throughout then 20^th century and still holds today. 

The hero of the film turns out to be Fiorello La Guardia, the governor of New York from 1934-45.  La Guardia funded the first medical study of marijuana’s effects, a study that after 6 years found that the side effects of marijuana were negligible at best, and certainly far from what could be categorized as violent or dangerous to the public.  He called for the decriminalization of marijuana, citing the lack of harm caused by it and the public’s disapproval of its illegal status.  La Guardia’s insights, however, fell on deaf ears.  The next major study of the effects of marijuana was commissioned by Nixon and yielded fabulous footage of its participants under the influence.  One participant so enjoyed the study that he agreed to take part in any further studies any day, any time, any place.  Nixon sends the commission’s report to the shredder once it concludes that pot makes people happy, euphoric and friendly. 

In its saddest moments, the movie shows a Vietnam veteran who received a purple heart fighting for his country sentenced to 50 years in prison for possessing an ounce of pot.  And in its brightest, the movie shows the freeing of America’s morals beginning in the 60s when individuals began to stand up for their rights to be free and smoke pot.  The film tallies up pot’s criminality and the ‘war on drugs’ in bottom line numbers, spending for which reached an upwards of $200 billion during the Reagan/Bush era.  The backlash of the Reagan era’s Just Say No mantra is disgracefully realized in George Bush’s administration with absurdly high anti-drug expenditures and the rampant anti-drug propaganda that attempted to brainwash a generation of America’s youth.  Grass shows that the government’s attempts at suppression never worked and never will. 

While Grass shows an insight into the history of pot and American morality, its vigor seems to end with 1985.  It makes no mention of Bill Clinton’s famous “I didn’t inhale” schtick and barely scratches the surface of a major issue today – medicinal marijuana. 

The combination of archival footage, high-energy graphics and narration by Woody Harrelson is full of humor, as a movie about one of the happier drugs should be.  This humor, though, distills  the disturbing politics of marijuana prohibition, making the issues seem of a less serious nature.  The facts are pretty frightening really, from when Gerald Ford orders the US to spray Mexican pot fields with insecticide to the arrest and imprisonment of upstanding US citizens for possession of trivial amounts of pot.  As with “Rules of Engagement,” the excellent documentary regarding the attack on David Koresh and the Branch Dividians, and with “Manufacture of Consent,” a film about the linguist/activist Noam Chomsky, Grass exemplifies the distasteful side of American ‘democracy’ as it has tried and tried again to exercise absolute control over the morality and freedom of the American public.

Marijuana proponents attest the reason they smoke pot is because it makes them happy and they enjoy themselves.  Though Ron Mann’s film does raise consciousness on the issue of marijuana legalization, the ultimate reason to go see the movie echoes those of pot smokers – because it’s fun and you’ll enjoy yourself.  The film’s levity provides a long, strange trip down marijuana’s memory lane that is almost as entertaining as marijuana itself.  Almost.