
Swaziland: Gold Mine of Marijuana
Swaziland grows more hectares of cannabis than all of India, despite the plant being illegal there, and Hamilton Morris travels to the kingdom to find out why. He arrives hoping to chemically analyze the local strains, including the sativa known as Swazi Gold, and instead spends most of the episode talking to the growers who tend it. He walks through open fields with farmers who explain how the crop moves from hillside plots to buyers, and hears from users and politicians who still describe cannabis as a cause of insanity even as it props up household incomes. The film sits with the contradiction: a country that criminalizes the plant while depending on it, landlocked between South Africa and Mozambique with few other exports to fall back on. Morris also finds the corruption and economic strain running underneath the marijuana economy, framing the crop less as a vice than as one of the only things keeping some Swazi families afloat. Segments cover the plant's history in the region and the mechanics of growing it at scale.