March is a time for basketball madness, but what about all the other kinds of madness? I'm talking about Reefer Madness and, no, I don't mean that time you got a little bit too stoned.
I mean the 1936 film that Google rightfully classifies as a comedy on top of its more intentional designation as a thriller.
The movie is bad. It wasn't meant to be bad, but oh boy is it. It's a truly terrible 1-hour, 8-minute watch, though that is what has made it an enduring classic in the nearly 90 years since its release.
In the film, young people (played by actors who are very obviously adults complete with receding hairlines) lose their minds as the result of smoking what would now be referred to as "mids," or mid-grade cannabis.
In the film, multiple people end up dead because, uh, a few young people decided to get stoned?
The movie is known as an "exploitation film," a genre that takes on niche, not-socially-acceptable subjects and portrays them as exactly that. Reefer Madness shows cannabis users as utterly depraved individuals, wholly resigned to allowing weed to dominate their every whim, even if it means others have to die.
It was a popular genre at the time — Reefer Madness joins the 1938 release of Sex Madness in making modern audiences question whether the Great Depression of the 1930s was an economic problem or if people back then were just taught to be depressed and bored.
Unfortunately, these were more than just bad films meant to fill time at the local cinema.
Reefer Madness played right into the anti-cannabis spirit of its day.
Within a year of the film's release, cannabis was formally made illegal in the United States thanks to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. That law laid the groundwork for the federal prohibition on cannabis that exists to this day.
No, Reefer Madness did not cause cannabis prohibition. But it was certainly part of the groundswell that led to the laws that rule our country to this day.
Nine decades ago there was an audience for this type of film, but this type of film was also made to expand such an audience.
It's a bad movie, though it is a fun watch, which appropriately illustrates the twisted views on cannabis that permeated American society nearly a century ago. Watch it and laugh today, but then think about how its legacy still impacts American cannabis policy in 2024. ♦
