
CannaBiz: The Secret Economy of Marijuana
Canada's marijuana trade is worth an estimated $20 billion a year, and this CBC production examines what that scale of money does to a business that operates entirely outside the law. Growers, dealers, and industry advocates describe a system that has outgrown any police force's ability to contain it, even as public opinion keeps shifting toward acceptance. The film treats cannabis less as a moral question than an economic one: a national industry moving billions with no banks, no regulation, and no legal protection for the people running it, which is exactly the condition that invites violence into what looks, from the outside, like an ordinary commercial market. It sits at the point where organized crime and legitimate commerce start to look like the same activity wearing different labels, and asks what happens to a country when an industry that big can no longer be pretended away.