
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High
British Columbia's marijuana trade has grown into one of the province's largest industries, and this film lays out the numbers behind it: billions of dollars a year, grow-ops tucked into suburban basements, and a supply chain feeding demand across the border into the United States. Interviews run from growers and dealers to police officers, doctors, and politicians, each offering a different stake in what marijuana actually is, criminal enterprise, medicine, or simply a commodity nobody has figured out how to tax properly. The film traces how prohibition itself shaped the market, driving up prices and profits while pushing cultivation into ever more sophisticated hidden operations. Scientific segments cover THC potency and the physiological effects of cannabis, cutting against decades of political rhetoric shown in archival clips. The film builds toward a plain argument: that criminalization created the very industry it was meant to prevent, and that British Columbia's economy now depends, quietly, on a plant still illegal to grow.