A Different Kind of Reefer Madness

Last night I caught the “420” episode of Family Guy in which the debonair and back from the dead dog Brian goes on a campaign to legalize marijuana in his town of Quahog. Brian isn’t having much success getting people’s attention until baby Stewie informs the dog that he’s going about it all wrong. Rather than deliver rational arguments, he needs to provide a sound-byte spectacle. The two of them then stage a hilarious production number called “Bag o’ Weed” that convinces everyone in town that pot is a necessary part of their life.

 

“Anything That Threatens My Bottom Line Must Be Evil!”

(Words not said but probably thought by William Randolph Hearst, 1906 photo, US-PD)

That’s all good fun of course. Before he starts singing and dancing, however, Brian tries to convey the message that pot was first made illegal not because Reefer Madness would run rampant worldwide but because hemp (to which family of plants marijuana belongs) was threatening the timber and paper business of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and Hearst ran a smear campaign emphasizing the “connection” between cannabis and violent crime. This appears to be true. The DuPonts were also anti-hemp, as was Andrew Mellon. The reason the 1930s version of the 1% were so virulently opposed to pot was that hemp pulp could replace wood pulp very cheaply in the paper-making business and it also threatened the success of the DuPonts’ new synthetic nylon, which Mellon had invested heavily in. (Does all this sound familiar? The more things change…etc.)

One of the really rabid anti-pot people around the time marijuana was criminalized except for medical and industrial use (what?!) by the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger, our first “drug czar.” Here’s what Harry thought of marijuana and those who use it (from his 1937 Senate testimony):

There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others. The primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.

There’s a balanced unbiased argument if I’ve ever heard one.

In “420,” Stewie and Brian succeed in getting weed legalized. The town instantly turns mellow and crime, aha!, goes down. Everything is cool until Stewie’s grandfather Carter begins to lose money in the timber industry (hmmm). Carter bribes Brian to reverse his cannabis campaign by publishing Brian’s terrible novel Faster than the Speed of Love and Quahog returns to “normal.”

Today marijuana is making a comeback in terms of being legalized. One might think that Rupert Murdoch is waiting in the wings to take on the Hearst role and keep pot where it belongs: in the hands of “the degenerate races.” Fortunately, this is the digital age. The timber industry is no longer in danger from hemp. Ah, progress.

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Visit Kim Pederson’s blog RatBlurt: Mostly Random Short-Attention-Span Musings