Reefer Madness

Right now, at the end of March, we here in the good ol’ US of A are in the Middle of “March Madness”. I’m not talking about the “Middle East Madness”, the “Muammar Gaddafi Madness” or all the other forms of insanity that we’re dealing with. I’m talking about the NCAA College basketball playoffs, which is called ‘March Madness’. I don’t know why they call it such, maybe because that’s all that is on TV. But then again this Libya Madness has captured a lot of our attention too.

Well, with all this “madness” going on, and I thrive on madness (but not the angry type), I got to thinkin’…..Hey…we’re leaving out “Reefer Madness”.

Reefer madness” was a 1936 morality tale, originally released as “Tell Your children” and financed by a church group. It was quickly bought, re-edited and cut, and released on the “exploitation circuit” as “Reefer Madness”.  Along side such favorites as “The Smut Peddler” and “Curfew Violators”, “Reefer Madness” was about how all these people’s lives turned to shit, after mistakenly accepting a reefer (joint) as a normal cigarette, smoking it, and then in a drug crazed spiral of depravity, go on to kill people with hit and run accidents, manslaughter, rape and mental illness. Sounds like they were smokin’ some good shit to me.

Anyway, this film quickly dove into obscurity, the Prohibition was over, so America resumed it’s love affair with alcohol. It wasn’t until the late 1960’s that the film made a resurgence. That’s because Reefer Madness struck every college campus in the States. And did we take it as a warning about the dangers of drug use? Hell No. It was a joke! And what better way to view this film? than to “get loaded”, totally “fried”, “stoned” and utterly “phucked up”. It was a howl.

Now I got to admit that I tried it, once or twice, back in those days. But watching that film on campus was a total trip, and everybody there was riding high. What did we do after viewing all that antiquated admonishment? Jump in cars and get into accidents, quit school for a life of debauchery, kill someone ? (well only if you were drafted, then you’d actually be taught how to kill people, but only South-east Asians).   Hell no…..After sixty minutes of our own reefer madness, we were running to the coffee shop, cause everybody had the munchies and were craving sweets. Oh the depravity of it all.  We usually went back to the dorm, where we fell asleep listening to Bob Dylan.

Reefer Madness. The ultimate in melodramatic, morality laden bullshit. That’s what we college kids thought. Cause if  “They” were lyin’ to ya about the Vietnam War, what else were “They” lyin’ about?? Well quite a lot actually, and unfortunately, that got a lot of us thinkin’.

Well. I’m not advocating drug use for any one. That would be against the law. And as a former Probation Officer, I had to enforce ‘all laws’. Even the ones I wasn’t particularly fond of.   So I don’t want people to break the law. Here in California we can have our cake (called edibles at the dispensary) and eat it too. Yep, the compassionate people of California, not wanting anyone to unduly suffer, were the first to vote in a medical marijuana law in 1996. No wonder everybody wants to live here.

So…..what’s my last word? If you’re suffering, it’s because you are not obeying All Laws.