Drugs Videos - The Documentary Network

The real cost of the world’s most expensive drug

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 13:13:44 +0000

Soliris is a life-saving drug, with a half a million dollar a year price tag. Patients are fighting for the government to foot the bill, but not challenging the drug company to lower the price.

What happened when Portugal decriminalised drugs?

Documentary.net staff — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 10:49:50 +0000

This film looks at new approaches to drugs policy, from Portugal to Colorado. Decriminalization has removed much of the stigma addicts felt and the fear of presection that stopped them seeking help. 90& of Portugals anti-drug resources are now spent on trentment and prevention, only 10% on policing nd punishing. In the United States it is the opposite. Since decriminalization drug-induced deaths have dropped from 80 in 2001 to just 16 in 2012. Over the same period of time the total number of heroin addics halfed. Portugal's experiment defied the fierce opponents and broke a global policy to boom. But for all its success, the new approach did nothing to adress the supply side of the drugs trade. Those citizens were not being arrested for posessing drugs, the police were still chasing their dealers. Globally criminal gangs and drug cartels continued to dominate the drugs trade worth over three hundred billion dollars. The countries where those drugs originated, continue to pay the price they've been paying for over a quarter of a century. In the Colombian capital Bogota the 1990 polls open with a minute of silence for the three candidates killed during the presidential campaign. It was the culmination of weeks of terror.

The Gangs That Inherited Pablo Escobar’s Drug Empire: Cooking with Cocaine

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 07:09:14 +0000

In Colombia, the heirs to Pablo Escobar's drug empire are conducting business as usual — though with a somewhat lower profile. Today's Medellin drug cartels are highly structured and run much like multinational corporations. But violent gangs operating in the city's slums provide the muscle; known as combos, they’ve carved Medellin into fiefdoms, imposing invisible borders between gang territory — borders that, when ignored, often get people killed. VICE News travelled to Medellin to meet gang members — along with top cartel leaders and assassins — who revealed the inner workings of the city's modern-day cocaine industry.

Jamaican Bud Business

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 17:24:38 +0000

Jamaica's first medicinal marijuana company, Medicanja, launched this year against a backdrop of reinvigorated debate around ganja law reform among leading policymakers. The renowned Jamaican scientist Dr. Henry Lowe, a leader in THC studies for medical purposes, is running the company with the University of West Indies and the University of Technology jointly funding the facility. In addition to studying the scientific benefits of marijuana, Dr. Lowe says the company will produce CBD-based medical products, which fall under legally accepted medicinal use of the ganja plant. Lowe says the plant extract can be used to treat psychosis and severe pain, as well as mid-life crises in men.

Khat Power: The Latest War On Drugs

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 16:04:01 +0000

Khat is a chewable herbal stimulant, popular among the UK's Somali and Yemeni communities. Despite there being little or no evidence that the drug causes harm to its users, the British government is working to outlaw khat. Home Secretary Theresa May says she's worried that without a ban, the UK will become a hub for smuggling it to the US and Europe, where for the most part it is already illegal. Meanwhile, experts warn that a ban might alienate Somalis in the UK and cut off vital exports from Kenya, the UK's largest khat supplier. VICE News followed the khat trail, from the farms of Meru, central Kenya to the suburbs of west London, meeting businesspeople, users and community members all keen to have their say. With exclusive access to a London khat warehouse and khat cafes in the English capital and Nairobi, we explored the industry and the implications of a ban at home and abroad. Smugglers are happy, the youth of Kenya are not.

Stoned Kids

Documentary.net staff — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 08:49:36 +0000

Medical marijuana is legal in 20 states and the District of Columbia, but there are still use cases that are very controversial, like medical marijuana for children. Some claim it's a wonder drug for epilepsy, severe autism, and even to quell the harsh side effects of chemotherapy, while others decry pumping marijuana into still-growing bodies. We went to the small town of Pendleton, Oregon, where medical marijuana is legal, to visit Mykayla Comstock, an eight-year-old leukemia patient who takes massive amounts of weed to treat her illness. Her family, and many people we met along the way, believe not only in the palliative aspects of the drug, but also in marijuana's curative effect—that pot can literally shrink tumors.

The Real Walter White

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 22:30:58 +0000

Getting to know one of Alabama’s most successful meth cooks… When AMC’s Breaking Bad premiered in 2008, one of Alabama’s most successful meth cooks was already knee deep in building a massive meth empire. His name? Walter White. In this documentary, Walter tells us the secret behind his product, how he stacked up thousands of dollars per day, and why his partner is now serving two life sentences.

Buying Guns and Drugs on the Deep Web

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 20:12:08 +0000

Welcome to the "dark net", an unregulated space being used to a large extent to engage in illegal activity, discuss child abuse, search for information on censored topics, organize political action and, more and more, to buy and sell weapons and controlled substances. Of course, by sheer virtue of the dark net's anonymity it's difficult to be certain just who, exactly, you are communicating with, and to what degree offers and posts on various platforms and forums translate from the digital underbelly to the actual physical world. VICE Germany editor Tom Littlewood went looking for where these two spheres come together. Tom speaks to a German weapons dealer about sales and distribution, and about how easy and reliable the system even is. Tom also catches up with cryptology specialist Karsten Nohl, torservers.net founder Moritz Bartl, and Ehsan Norouzi, an Iranian journalist who helps activists communicate safety, on the positive and negative aspects of a virtual space.

Heroin Holiday in the Czech Republic

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 17:20:14 +0000

Every August, while Europe's bankers, lawyers, and other desk jockeys shut off their phones and head to the beach, the junkies of Prague set up camp in the poppy fields outside the city for a vacation of their own. For one glorious month, there are no cops to run from, no dealers to skirt—just acres of vermilion blooms and as much free opium as you can collect before nodding out. This year we joined the junkies on their heroin holiday, to learn how to turn the same poppies that seed our morning bagels into potent injectable narcotics and sample the most all-natural, locally sourced opiates Europe has to offer. If they ask, please tell our moms we went to Majorca

Kings of Cannabis

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 21:00:59 +0000

You might not know who Arjan Roskam is, but you've probably smoked his weed. Arjan's been breeding some of the most famous marijuana strains in the world—like White Widow, Super Silver Haze, and many others—for over 20 years. In 1992 he opened his first coffee shop in Amsterdam and has since crafted his marijuana-breeding skills into a market-savvy empire known as Green House Seed Company, which rakes in millions of dollars a year. He's won 38 Cannabis Cups and has dubbed himself the King of Cannabis. VICE joins Arjan and his crew of strain hunters in Colombia to look for three of the country's rarest types of weed, strains that have remained genetically pure for decades. In grower's terms, these are called landraces. We trudge up mountains and crisscross military checkpoints in the country's still-violent south, and then head north to the breathtaking Caribbean coast. As the dominoes of criminalization fall throughout the world, Arjan is positioned to be at the forefront of the legitimate international seed trade.

Colombia’s Coke-Smuggling Submarines

Documentary.net staff — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 17:18:56 +0000

In the never-ending game of cat and mouse that’s spurring the drug trade’s most ridiculous innovations, this has to take the cake: The new generation of Narco submarines, those sneaky, DIY cocaine-smuggling vessels, is now fully submersible. As Brian Anderson explained recently, subs that once promised a low profile amidst the ocean’s waves can now totally disappear under the Caribbean. That means the DEA and Coast Guard just saw their job get a whole lot harder. In 2009, the film team went to Colombia to hang out with Dr. Miguel Angel Montoya, a nautically-minded former trafficker who led one of the Cali cartel’s first narco sub projects. His early designs, based on torpedos, were unmanned. With radio transmitters attached, the drug-filled tubes would be towed behind the cartel’s towboat of choice. Should authorities hail the vessel, the torpedo could be jettisoned and picked up later by a following vessel tracking the radio signal. Because the huge tube was made of fiberglass, it was difficult to detect with sonar or radar. Since then, submarines have become powered, manned, air-conditioned, and now fully submersible. The narco sub’s speedy development is the perfect example of the old “where there’s a will, there’s a way” adage that’s fueled all aspects of the drug war, and stands as proof that no matter how much jail time is threatened or how many armed guards line our borders, people who want Colombia’s finest are going to find traffickers who can get it.

A Man Who Delivers

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 21:35:24 +0000

An innovative film about the daily grind for a drug dealer. Following a day in the life of a London cocaine dealer, the challenge was to build a narrative without the contributor wanting to appear on camera for obvious reasons. The film is based on a real interview and real text messages. Documentary by Jamie Jessett for Channel 4's Shooting Gallery

The OxyContin Express

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 19:33:13 +0000

Florida has become a pill popper’s paradise and the main source of an illicit prescription drug pipeline. Lax laws and little oversight have led to a booming number of storefront pain management clinics that dispense painkillers, particularly Oxycodone, like candy. A potent narcotic — basically, heroin made in a lab — Oxy is the drug of choice for a growing number of addicts and traffickers. “Legal drug dealers,” one law enforcement official calls Florida’s clinics. Mariana van Zeller follows the pain pill pipeline from Florida, the “Colombia of prescription drugs”, where 85 percent of all the nation’s Oxycodone is prescribed, to Appalachia, where Oxy from the Sunshine State is in high demand. In Florida, Mariana goes “doctor shopping” with Todd, an Oxy addict who has already lost his brother and wife to painkiller overdoses. When Todd is turned away from a clinic, he scores through a dealer, a 70-year-old grandmother who sells pills out of her home. We also meet Todd’s mom, Maureen, as she fights to keep her only remaining son alive and crusades to change Florida’s prescription drug laws. “If Florida had a prescription drug monitoring program,” she says. “I think my kids would have had a chance to make it through rehab.” In the meantime, she gives Todd an ultimatum: shape up or go back to detox for the 16th time. When Mariana takes a hidden camera inside a pain clinic in Ft. Lauderdale, she discovers that many of her fellow “patients” have driven 18 hours and nearly a thousand miles to see the good doctor. “They’re real liberal with dispensing narcotics down here,” says a man from Ohio. Pursuing this lead, Mariana hops a flight on the “Oxy Express,” a low cost airline popular with pill heads and dealers transporting drugs from Florida to Appalachia. In Greenup, Kentucky, Mariana witnesses the devastating impact Florida’s pills have had on rural communities. Everyone has been affected, from addicted mothers serving time in overcrowded prisons to families that both deal and inject Oxy. “We’re drowning in pills from Florida,” says Sheriff Keith Cooper, a a small town lawman taking on a growing national epidemic. “Florida is killing us.” Film from 2009

The Future of Weed

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 16:20:34 +0000

The film heads to Denver--ground zero for cannabis legalization, and home to a booming tech sector in what could be called the Silicon Valley of weed--to inhale the newest high-tech highs. We visit the key players scaling up this new green tech, wrap our heads around all the money to be made, crack open the confusing science of America's No. 1 cash crop, and smoke dabs.

Mexican Vigilantes Stand Up Against Crime

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:14:12 +0000

The state of Guerrero (which means "warrior") is one of the poorest in Mexico and the site of some of the worst violence in the battle between the drug cartels and Mexican authorities. As a result of the violence, hundreds of civillians have armed themselves with machetes, rifles, and shotguns, put masks on, and decided to police their own communities, effectively taking justice into their own hands.