Although I enjoyed Reefer Madness for it's wantonly quixotic approach to the pre-War-on-Drugs, and it's misinformed proclivity towards saving the youth of America, I found it disturbing on many levels....one of which was the bad acting and prespammersite scriptwriting.
Was this film as laughable for anyone else as it was for me?
Looks like their unintelligible attempt at pragmatism provided years and years of comic relief for many Americans.

This film comes off about as believable as Santa Claus Conquers The Martians.

Although I enjoyed Reefer Madness for it's wantonly quixotic approach to the pre-War-on-Drugs, and it's misinformed proclivity towards saving the youth of America, I found it disturbing on many levels....one of which was the bad acting and prespammersite scriptwriting.
Was this film as laughable for anyone else as it was for me?
Looks like their unintelligible attempt at pragmatism provided years and years of comic relief for many Americans.

This film comes off about as believable as Santa Claus Conquers The Martians.
Did people back then actually believe this sh*t?!?  ??? ??? ???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMrzGauQJdk

Did people back then actually believe this sh*t?!?  ??? ??? ???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMrzGauQJdk

Heck yes they did.

Think of the times, these are some of the same people who believed the infamous Orson Wells Halloween "War of the Worlds" radio show.

In general, the public was more apt to believe what they saw and what they were told by the "authorities". The movie screen was a powerful medium for the average Joe who spent his 5 cents once a week to go see a flick. The government word was still gold and he followed what they told him to...
I'm sure in this day and age, after the JFK assassination, Watergate & Vietnam, the public is a lot less to believe something as over the top as "Reefer Madness"  ::).

I still get a giggle when I watch an old episode of "Dragnet" when Joe Friday makes a drug bust or speech on the evil of pot and pills, that wasn't too long ago and I still can't see how that stuff even got on the air!  :D

I still get a giggle when I watch an old episode of "Dragnet" when Joe Friday makes a drug bust or speech on the evil of pot and pills, that wasn't too long ago and I still can't see how that stuff even got on the air!  :D


The 60's Dragnet was one of the most unintentionally funny shows ever made.  ;D

Hemp.

Your newspapers were all printed on hemp pulp.  It also made great rope and durable fabrics.  Pulp for paper was the biggie though.  Wood pulp was inferior for paper-making, so they used hemp.

Hemp is the same as marijuana.  Not quite.  Only a few strains of hemp possess enough of the psychoactive agent THC to produce a "high."

No matter.

Enter newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.  Hearst owned gigantic tracts of timber he wanted to harvest for a tidy profit.
Meet Harry J. Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.  It is accepted knowledge, but never definitively proven, that Anslinger and Hearst conspired with the DuPonts to gin up anti-marijuana hysteria.

By the mid-1930s Southern states were already banning "marihuana" because Mexicans smoked it.  The usual xenophobia brought about the idea that smoking reefer drove Mexican and Negro men to lust after white women.  Yeah, some colored jazz musicians also toked up, but that was about it.

It was easy to take fear of the unknown to the public as a criminal menace.  Hearst printed stories of youth mudering their families under the influence of the demon weed, and good the good old story of white women consorting with black men while stoned. 

Neither Hearst nor Anslinger had anything to do directly with "Reefer Madness," (aka "Tell Your Children," 1936) but the film is proof of the success of their propaganda, and it certainly helped their cause. 

Marijuana came under the control of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics with the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act and later was certified as a Schedule I substance on the Drug Enforcement Agency's Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

It is interesting to note that the Marihuana Tax Act did not outlaw pot.  It merely levied a tax for commercial distribution and draconian penalties for violations of the acts provision.  The devil was in the details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Marihuana_Tax_Act