I enjoyed watching this film as it is both an academic treatise on the history of drugs and their use as well as a sociological and political study of the Belgian drugs scene. The history of drugs such as the way people chewed coca leaves in the Andes long before cocaine was synthesised and the British opium wars was investigated. Also the way that drugs like laudanum, cocaine and heroin, originally a brand name of a Bauer drug, were legal once is analysed in this documentary.
There are many interviews with drug users and we get to see a somewhat sympathetic portrayal of their love-hate relationship with drugs, though some people come across as less sympathetic, such as the bloke who says that he travelled over to Holland, formed a gang and not only progressed from using to selling but also committed violent crimes, such as mugging people, robbing banks and fighting rival gangs. There is also a remarkably eloquent user who talks fondly, creepily and almost boastfully about mugging old ladies.
This programme makes the point that imprisoning druggies in jails and loony bins and otherwise stigmatising them doesn't work but it doesn't seem to support a medicinal approach either, criticising the use of methadone and it's equivalents, which I think is wrong-headed. It offers no solutions, other than to insinuate that if society were less capitalist there would be less drug use in the first place. I happen to agree with that position but it's foolish to ignore the issue of what to do with those who are abusing psychotropic substances, whether legal or illegal, at the time the documentary is set. It's also a bit too pretentious and philosophical and doesn't provide any statistics for drug use. I think it's fair, due to these minor flaws, to give this an 8 rather than a 10.
There are many interviews with drug users and we get to see a somewhat sympathetic portrayal of their love-hate relationship with drugs, though some people come across as less sympathetic, such as the bloke who says that he travelled over to Holland, formed a gang and not only progressed from using to selling but also committed violent crimes, such as mugging people, robbing banks and fighting rival gangs. There is also a remarkably eloquent user who talks fondly, creepily and almost boastfully about mugging old ladies.
This programme makes the point that imprisoning druggies in jails and loony bins and otherwise stigmatising them doesn't work but it doesn't seem to support a medicinal approach either, criticising the use of methadone and it's equivalents, which I think is wrong-headed. It offers no solutions, other than to insinuate that if society were less capitalist there would be less drug use in the first place. I happen to agree with that position but it's foolish to ignore the issue of what to do with those who are abusing psychotropic substances, whether legal or illegal, at the time the documentary is set. It's also a bit too pretentious and philosophical and doesn't provide any statistics for drug use. I think it's fair, due to these minor flaws, to give this an 8 rather than a 10.
