freedom.

Ten years after California voters legalized marijuana for seriously ill patients (the first of currently 11 states with medical mariijuana laws), the federal government still classifies it as an illegal Schedule One drug, with “no accepted medical use.”

“RxCannabis” zooms in on Southern California, ground zero for the recent medical marijuana backlash. In July, 2006, the Feds, invited in by sympathetic San Diego county officials, closed down all marijuana dispensaries in the county. Suddenly thousands of registered medical marijuana patients were driven to the streets to get their medicine. Then in January, 2007, 11 Los Angeles dispensaries got the “visit.”

A story of patients turned activists, “RxCannabis” follows people afflicted with cancer, hapatitis-C, serious burns, spinal injuries, and other conditions, who refuse to be treated like victims. All of them are learning to fight for their right to an herb used medicinally for 1000’s of years. These people assert that the high quality marijuana they use not only combats the side effects of conventional treatments like chemotherapy and interferon, but can replace hundreds of drugs that make the pharma companies billions of dollars in profits yearly.

“RxCannabis” is a metaphor for the entire War on Drugs, a story of ordinary heroes rising to the occasion. It is a an entertaining and provocative look at a complex plant that seems to have often threatened those in power. In 1484 (during a time when witchs used it in their ceremonies) Pope Innocent VIII declared it an “antisacrament”; and in the 1930’s, at the start of our current era of marijuana Prohibition, Harry Anslinger, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, termed it the “assassin of youth.”