‘The Marijuana Conspiracy’: Quick Recap

It’s not every day a film comes out that tracks how far we as a cannabis community have come. In 2020, a film by director Craig Pryce called ‘The Marijuana Conspiracy’ made waves for grabbing our attention with all-too-real scenarios that women cannabis users have faced over the last few decades. Spoiler alert, here’s our quick recap.

Based on true events, ‘The Marijuana Conspiracy’ takes place in Canada in 1972, where a 98-day study surrounding a group of women looks into how the plant might affect them. While it might seem positive, the entire study was designed to provide sneaky and sly results that show how marijuana could cause laziness, less motivation, and more room for half-assing work. 

The lead researcher is Dr. Barry (Gregory Ambrose Calderone). He explained at the film’s end that while it was somewhat normal for Black and brown people to get caught smoking weed, the government wanted to do something about their kids getting into cannabis, resulting in rigged studies like this. 

But, to the government’s surprise, the women in the study using cannabis actually seemed to be more motivated to do their work, much more than the control group who didn’t use marijuana. In fact, these badass women even took some weed home for themself to get high for science and smoke up to spark needed and relatable conversations. 

Over the course of the 98-day study, Dr. Barry makes several attempts to swing the results in his favor by increasing the THC doses and making it more likely these women will have negative experiences. When the group decides to quit, Barry bribes the women with more money to keep them around.

Dr. Barry is just one example of the movie’s many antagonists, which all seem to be men. Another addition was Adam (Luke Bilyk), who Barry hired to observe the women during the study. An excessive observer, Adam keeps his eye on one member, in particular, Janice (Kyla Avril Young), who continues to wonder why Adam is being quite the creep. 

While two hours might seem pretty long, it’s without a doubt that Craig Pryce utilized every second of this film to showcase how women were inferior and the many attempts to keep them trusting men that don’t have their best interest in mind. Some scenes will fill you with rage, and others are bound to make you laugh, but at the end of the day, who knows what actually happened to the results from the real 98-day study on women and marijuana.