GROWING POT IN THE B.C. HEARTLAND

Documentary Looks At The Impact Of The Marijuana Industry On A
Small-Town Economy

Marijuana is believed to be a $20 billion industry in Canada. But
most discussion about the drug is centered around the moral issue of
whether to legalize it or not.

Lionel Goddard thought it was high time somebody looked at marijuana
as a business, not a social issue. The result is CannaBIZ, an
hour-long documentary airing on CBC-TV's DocZone tonight at 9 p.m.
Goddard is a former CBC reporter turned documentary filmmaker. He was
approached by the network to do a film on "the state of the marijuana
industry in Canada," which is a broad subject.

He decided he needed to focus on a single community, and chose Grand
Forks, an idyllic town near Nelson. "It's in the Kootenays, in the
heartland of marijuana, where the hippies came in the '60s and
planted the first B.C. bud," Goddard explained.

"I thought if I could focus on one town, rather than try to find a
dealer in Nova Scotia and a cop in Toronto, maybe I could see the
business as it's actually working, and maybe see its connection to
the local economy."

Grand Forks leaped to mind because it achieved national notoriety in
the late 1990s for having the "marijuana mayor," Brian Taylor.

Taylor not only admitted smoking marijuana, he wanted Grand Forks to
become the centre of a new marijuana/hemp industry. He wound up being
defeated in 1999, but was undeterred, becoming the head of the B.C.
Marijuana Party for the 2001 provincial election and campaigning
around B.C. in a "cannibus."

Taylor lost, but kept running for Grand Forks mayor. As luck would
have it, he was running again while Goddard was filming in 2008,
which provided a natural storyline.

Grand Forks turned out to be the perfect place to shoot. Goddard
found a young guy who let him film him planting his crop outdoors,
and an older grower who let him film his much more sophisticated
indoor grow-op.

The RCMP let Goddard film them searching for marijuana fields from
helicopters, and chopping them down when they discovered them. One of
his key subjects was the victim of a "grow-rip," and welled up when
discussing it, perhaps the most poignant moment of the film. The
growers don't come across as hardened criminals, they're more like an
old hippie neighbour who likes to garden. "It's weird," said Goddard.

"There's almost an innocence in the heartland of marijuana, and
there's a sense that something is being lost. There almost is a sense
of pride there, of tradition, that people are mourning.

"I'm not sure if people understood that it existed in the first
place, because [growing pot] was illegal. But it's a counter-culture,
it's a way of life, in that area of the province. And it supports the
towns there.

"We like to drive there as yuppies, to to have these little towns to
drive through and pick up our ice cream and fresh vegetables and have
a bed and breakfast to stay in. But people should realize that town
probably wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the marijuana industry,
or at least be in the shape that it's in."

The loss of innocence is partly due to the fact that marijuana has
become such a big business, gangs and organized crime have moved in.
Cocaine is being exchanged for pot, partly because it's easier to
transport and cash is harder to launder; some growers are even
carrying guns to protect their investment.

"I think [gangs] represent a dangerous trend, but I don't believe
they're at the point where they're taking over the market," said Goddard.

"They represent a small percentage of the marijuana industry, but
they represent a larger percentage of the collateral damage that is
being done as a result of it. People are dying now in the marijuana
industry, whereas that never occurred before."

Goddard thinks his 14-month investigation just scratched the surface
of the marijuana industry.

"I got to see a privileged splinter of this huge world that I think
most people don't have any idea about," he said.

"There is a huge world, an underground economy, worth billions, in
this province. Almost every person must know someone, or live near
someone who's involved."

CannaBIZ is half of a marijuana double-bill Thursday night on CBC. It
will be preceded at 8 p.m. by The Downside of High, an hour-long
documentary on The Nature of Things about new research that finds
teenagers under 16 that start smoking pot are "four times more likely
to become schizophrenic" than those that don't. It focuses on three
young British Columbians who experienced mental problems after
smoking pot at an early age.

AT A GLANCE

CANNABIZ

Where: CBC-TV

When: Tonight, 9 p.m.

The Downside of High

On The Nature of Things Where: CBC-TV

When: Tonight, 8 p.m.