The War on Drugs (2007)

User Rating:

8.1/10   

Director:

Sebastian J.F.

Writer:

Fate (writer)

Release Date:

12 October 2007 (Austria)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

More than three decades have passed since Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs. Today, drug trafficking exceeds 7% of global trade...

Plot Keywords:

Drugs | Colombia | Prohibition | Prison | Drug War

Cast

Sharanda Jones	...	Herself
Richard Paey	...	Himself
Jorge Enrique Botero	...	Himself
Kevin C. Whaley	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Joe Arpaio	...	Himself (as Sheriff Joe Arpaio)
Francisco Santos Calderón	...	Himself
Antonio Maria Costa	...	Himself
John Flannery	...	Himself
James M. Murphy	...	Himself
Ethan Nadelmann	...	Himself
Linda Paey	...	Herself
Jorge Enrique Robledo	...	Himself
Flora T.	...	Herself
Sanho Tree	...	Himself
Kevin B. Zeese	...	Himself

Runtime:

99 min

Country:

Austria

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

Colombia

Company:

Parallel Universe

Quotes:

Kevin C. Whaley: I would not have chosen the slogan war on drugs. The reason I say it was not a good choice: Wars have beginnings and endings. Our struggle with the drug problem will never end...

Soundtrack:

The Blood Stained Banders

Unwrapping another flagrant nexus of power, politics and big money.

The new film from Sebastian J. F., The War on Drugs, finds him purposefully unwrapping another flagrant nexus of power, politics and big money. This time, it's the U.S. government's vaunted battle to control recreational drugs; a campaign that increasingly appears more significant for the government to maintain than to prosecute fully and conclude. The film questions agents of both the government and the underground cartels, and includes lucid analysis of how the self-supporting legal and penal systems in the U.S. complement one another. Then, in a series of interviews with individuals who've fallen prey to long-debunked government principles such as mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses, The War on Drugs hits devastating emotional pay dirt with a young mother sentenced to life, innocent but caught in the crosshairs of a TV star's publicity stunt.

Following his exposé of Internet misregulation, info wars, Sebastian J. F.'s new film takes a sobering look at a U.S. obsession gone wrong. By looking at both the local and the systemic pictures, The War on Drugs indicates that a struggle has been established that wins by losing, and that is creating a new "criminal" class to populate the nation's gargantuan (and increasingly privatized) prison labor system. In the hopes that information is itself a source of power, Sebastian J. F. has tapped into an unnerving and vital story.