Evidence from Switzerland suggests that prescribing heroin can reduce crime and increase levels of employment among addicts. While still illegal in the UK, cannabis was downgraded to a category C drug in January 2004. Would drug legalisation really reduce crime overall, and would it make drug use any safer? Based on rigorous research and interviews with experts, the programme hears the arguments for leaving the most dangerous drug of all – crack cocaine – illegal, and examines how a legal and regulated system of drugs would work.
This documentary covers a whole lot of ground. It deals with every historical and contemporary aspect of hemp usage and cultivation (mainly in the U.S.), which turns out to be a lot. From describing the production of a fiber much more durable and economic than wood, the documentary discusses hemps multilateral uses as e.g. food products, as a non-polluting fuel and as a pharmaceutical product with much less grievous side-effects than chemical pharmaceutical products.
Narrated by Colin Friels and produced by Chris Hilton, Afghanistan: Drugs, Guns and Money asks these difficult questions by following the journey of this years opium crops, tracing the drug trafficking routes heading north from Afghanistan through the nations of the Old Silk Road on its way to Europe. The film examines who are the winners and losers as the crop finds its way to market. The awesome beauty of the landscape provides a powerful backdrop for the treachery uncovered each step of the way. Like a cancer, the heroin trade has spread its tentacles through almost every level of society. In Afghanistan there is mass local addiction, local HIV epidemics, an unending cycle of violence and crime, and the corruption of state institutions.
Sacred Weeds was a four part television series of 50 minute documentaries investigating the cultural impact of psychoactive plants on a broad array of early civilizations. The series was filmed at Hammerwood Park by the producer, Sarah Marris, and her production company TVF.
The Reader in European Pre-History at the University of Oxford, Dr Andrew Sherratt, was the series host. Prior to his resignation from the University of Oxford, Sherratt was appointed Professor of Archaeology. Each episode began and ended with Sherratt inscribing his diary with his reflections on the series’ scientific and cultural investigations.
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