Have you ever seen Reefer Madness.....on weed?

Seriously though, how is Reefer Madness not "political"?

Government issued propaganda films (even when they are insanely comical in their mis-information) aren't political?

lawboy87

While technically Reefer Madness was produced by a church group, it was absolutely government approved propaganda. I own two different versions of the film on DVD.

Harry Anslinger, the original "drug czar" himself was in the film.
Most interesting to me was his response to the high school principal who begged for federal interference in the "reefer" trade. Anslinger remarked that since Cannabis was grown in "every State of the union", it was not subject to federal government control under the commerce clause!

Any true conservative would of course agree with that assertion, it's most unfortunate that, after the Marihuana and Tobacco Tax Act of 1936 had been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Nixon pushed for the Controlled Substance Act of 1970. That act of course led to the current "war on some drugs" in all its glory.

The film "Marijuana:Weed with Roots in Hell" is actually much more titillating, featuring among other things nude girls running and swimming!

As for the intended audience, both were intended to portray what some thought at the time was a serious view of the dangers of the evil weed, but odds are that even then, it was viewed by most as the comedy of errors and misinformation that it truly was.

lawboy87

I'll agree that I mis-typed originally, and retracted the statement in my following post to "government approved". While it was not directly produced or distributed (originally) by the government, it was however based directly on the claims made by Anslinger et al. and even featured Anslinger on the film trying to make the point that individual State governments had to do something about the "scourge" of "marihuana", since the feds had no jurisdiction in the matter.

I'm not aware of any government officials being featured in any of John Wayne's movies, perhaps I am wrong, I'm certainly not a John Wayne aficionado.

If John P. Waters appeared on an "anti-drug" film today I'd consider that goverment approved propaganda as well.

Perhaps it is simply a matter of semantics.

Ooops, that should have been, John P. Walters.