(Credits: Far Out / Gage Skidmore)
Wed 19 November 2025 17:45, UK
Oliver Stone has weighed in on the debate about legalising marijuana.
OK, to get the elephant out of the room early, to describe the films of Stone as “controversial” would be an understatement. While no one would deny that he’s a brilliant storyteller with an analytical mind, Stone manages to rile up both film critics and political pundits alike whenever he makes a new film.
Throughout his career, Stone has tackled such divisive topics as the Vietnam War, the Cambodian massacre, the assassination of John F Kennedy, the scandalous administration of Richard Nixon, the 9/11 attacks, and the greed of Wall Street. Even when he’s not actively making new movies, Stone likes to speak his mind about ongoing topics of discussion in order to provide his perspective.
The legalisation of marijuana has been hotly debated in the United States for decades, and it’s even been a component in many of Stone’s films. While he has yet to directly make a film that is centred around weed cultures, characters can be seen inhaling cannabis in Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July.
Stone may have helped to romanticise the idea of American soldiers finding weed overseas while on duty, but he defended his home country’s products in an interview with the Irish Independent, in which he spoke candidly about the route to legalisation.
“There’s good weed everywhere in the world, but, my God, these Americans are brilliant,” Stone told the outlet. “It can be done. It can be done legally, safely, healthy, and it can be taxed.”
Oliver Stone speaking in 2018. (Credits: YouTube Still)
Curiously, Stone made these comments around the time that he was promoting his cartel drama Savages, which follows two cannabis dealers that become caught up within a Mexican drug organisation after their mutual girlfriend is kidnapped. While the film is utterly ruthless in examining the brutality of the cartel, its implication is that criminalising innocuous substances like weed can draw in deadlier organizations that take advantage of moderate users.
Savages wasn’t necessarily the comeback that Stone’s fans had been expecting, as it ended up being a far more routine crime drama than one would expect from such a stylised filmmaker. Perhaps, Stone may have earned more acclaim for the film had he delved further into the consequences of criminalising marijuana, and shied away from some of the more exploitative moments of torture and assault.
While Stone may have missed his chance to say something profound about the legalisation debate, it’s a shame that he hasn’t made a film in nearly a decade. Stone’s last film, Snowden, was an underrated gem that featured a terrific performance by Joseph Gordon Levitt as the famous whistleblower who exposed the United States’ surveillance state under the Patriot Act. While it wasn’t necessarily the breakout hit that it should have been, Snowden certainly proved that Stone had evolved since the disastrous failures of films like Alexander and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
Although the possibility of a 79-year-old director like Stone launching a serious comeback may feel slim, it’s worth nothing that many of his contemporaries have found success in their later years, including Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, David Cronenberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Robert Zemeckis, and Barry Levinson, just to name a few. While there’s no telling what type of controversial topic Stone would be interested in tackling next, it’s pretty much guaranteed that it would at least be interesting.
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