
Clashes Around Cannabis Legalization in Morocco and the USA
Cannabis legalization is reshaping two families an ocean apart. In Ketama, in Morocco's Rif mountains, Mohamed comes from a region where cannabis farming has sustained families for generations. A journalist and activist, he has campaigned for the 2021 law legalizing cannabis for medical and cosmetic use, but his own parents and the region's elders remain distrustful of a plant they associate with criminality and stigma. In Far Rockaway, Queens, Mone't, a Guyanese-American political advisor who has smoked weed since sixteen, now runs a small cannabis business following New York's legalization. Her mother Stachia cannot separate the plant from a family tragedy tied to the illegal drug trade. DW's Us & Them crew follows both households through interviews and home visits, tracking whether Mohamed can win over his father and the Ketama elders, and whether Stachia can move past her fears to support her daughter's new legal enterprise. The film sets Morocco's rural hashish economy against New York's urban dispensary boom without picking a side.