Reefer Growing Madness episode transcript: How marijuana went from ghastly menace to legalization

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MATT CASEY: A reefer is a marijuana cigarette. I always thought it was slang for just weed. Reefer Madness is an old propaganda film that labels pot a ghastly menace. The movie appeared a year before federal lawmakers criminalized Miss Mary Jane. Reefer Growing Madness — a production of KJZZ’s Hear Arizona — tracks the roughly four-month life cycle of legally grown marijuana from tiny clones to smoke from the plants’ burning flowers.

A warning, dear listener, that you’re going to hear some swearing and cursing at times. And that government funded research has found that there’s a positive link between profanity and honesty… You’re listening to the first episode of the Reefer Growing Madness podcast. I’m your host, Matt Casey.

[SONG PLAYS: “REEFER” MAN BY CAB CALLOWAY]

CAB CALLOWAY: Have you ever met that funny reefer man? Band echo. CAB CALLOWAY: Have you ever met that …

[Record scratches to a halt]

CASEY: Sorry, I got ahead of myself. The song “Reefer Man” — written by J Russel Robinson and Andy Razaf, performed by Cab Calloway — shares a word with the title of this podcast. But let’s acknowledge some truths first.

A century ago, xenophobia of Mexican immigrants led to bogus research saying marijuana caused violent crime by groups labeled racially inferior. Black musicians were stereotyped as marijuana users. Black people and other communities of color have been harmed ever since by discriminatory policing of weed. Then, decades after pot was outlawed, race-baiting President Richard Nixon launched America’s war on drugs.

RICHARD NIXON: America’s public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive.

CASEY: As part of Nixon’s crackdown in the early 1970s, the feds began ranking drugs and classified marijuana the same as heroin in terms of danger, which also toughened criminal penalties for offenders.

NIXON: I’ve asked the Congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to fuel this kind of offensive. This will be a worldwide offensive.

CASEY: Congress during the Nixon era began lengthening prison sentences, which led to the establishment of mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug offenders in 1984. Two years later — and just months after top basketball prospect Len Bias died suddenly of a cocaine overdose — then-President Ronald Reagan rebranded Nixon’s war as a crusade.

RONALD REAGAN: Drugs are menacing our society. They’re threatening our values and undercutting our institutions. They’re killing our children.

CASEY: Sitting next to the Hollywood actor turned commander-in-chief was wife Nancy. She had unique expertise from crisscrossing the country to fight drug abuse.

NANCY REAGAN: Many of you may be thinking, ‘Well drugs don’t concern me.’ But it does concern you. It concerns us all. Because of the way it tears at our lives. And because it is aimed at destroying the brightness and life of the sons and daughters of the United States.

CASEY: The Reagans held hands as they sat on a couch inside their White House residence — not the customary Oval Office. Nancy told the origin story for a pop-culture slogan she had coined unintentionally.

NANCY REAGAN: I was asked by a group of children what to do if they were offered drugs, and I answered, ‘Just say no.’ Soon after that, those children in Oakland formed a ‘Just Say No’ club. And now there are over 10,000 such clubs all over the country.

CASEY: The phrase is one I remember well, also the DARE class, or Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Did that in the sixth grade. The program focused on knowing strategies to reject peer pressure to take drugs. Just Say No is a specific example.

But none of that is part of the criminal justice system … As of 2018, Black people in Arizona were three times more likely to be arrested for marijuana, per the ACLU. This was after voters here legalized medical pot but before they approved adult recreational use in November of 2020.

MARK CURTIS: But this is big. Arizona, the AP is projecting, has just passed Prop 207. The proposition to legalize marijuana. So it goes….

CASEY: Nowadays dispensaries are a common sight and it’s hard to drive metro Phoenix freeways without seeing an ad for weed. Store owners have state licenses through the recreational program that Prop, 207 grandfathered in from the medical setup. Yet most state permits set aside for those overpoliced for marijuana are now held by big companies. Last year, the Arizona Supreme Court gave prosecutors power to appeal expungements of marijuana convictions and weakened a reform in the measure called the Smart and Safe act. Then, a federal civil rights investigation of Phoenix police dating back to 2016 found that officers enforce low-level drug offenses more severely against Black, Latino and Native American people than against white people behaving the same way…

Now with that little bit of history, let’s circle back to Cab Calloway, the performer of “Reefer Man,” who rose to fame near the start of marijuana criminalization. Imagine how high the risks were for pot-smoking Black musicians a century ago.

BLAISE LANTANA: I don’t know how they managed, really, because it was so illegal then you could go to prison.

CASEY: Blaise Lantana has been playing jazz on KJZZ for decades as a radio host. And the classically trained musician spent 20 years performing and composing with blues and jazz ensembles. Lantana describes Calloway as an interesting character and entertainer.

LANTANA: People loved to go to his shows and have fun. And he talked about things that were kind of on the edge, so to speak, like talking about reefer and viper, which is somebody who smokes marijuana, because they made this sound when they would toke on the marijuana cigarette, that was like, and so it was like a snake.

[SONG PLAYS: “REEFER MAN” BY CAB CALLOWAY]

CAB CALLOWAY: Have you ever met that funny reefer man?

[Band echo]

CASEY: Veiled language — not the blunt words contemporary artists use to express their love for marijuana — was how Calloway and his peers put drug references into music.

LANTANA: Many people knew what it meant, but it was still slightly coded so they could get on the radio or play in the clubs .

CASEY: It was tough for Black musicians then to find hotels that would welcome them. So artists with the financial means, like Calloway, traveled by train. Trains were also a safe place to get high.

LANTANA: A lot of the jazz cats played in his band. He got big money because he did kind of a show as opposed to focusing mainly on the music.

CASEY: Calloway had a strict idea on harmony. While jazz musicians had a unique approach for combining notes to form chords and progressions.

LANTANA: And people like Dizzy Gillespie played in his band. And when he did, he might try some interesting things harmonically. And Cab would yell at him and say, ‘Don’t do that in my band. This isn’t that kind of band.’

CASEY: The song that first made Calloway famous during the 19-30s is also about drugs. It’s called “Minnie the Moocher.”

[SONG PLAYS: “MINNIE THE MOOCHER” BY CAB CALLOWAY, INSTRUMENTAL]

CASEY: Calloway had talent to stay relevant for decades after the big band genre peaked — movies, theatre, fashion — he even wrote multiple editions of a jive language dictionary for jazz fans. Performing this hit in the 1980 movie, “The Blues Brothers,” introduced his brilliance to a new generation. The number features him scat-singing, which means using nonsensical sounds to improvise melodies.

[SONG PLAYS: “MINNIE THE MOOCHER” BY CAB CALLOWAY, SCATTING VOCALS]

CASEY: Calloway was tutored in this art by trumpeter Louis Armstrong. Stoner magazine, High Times, once wrote of Armstrong’s devotion to marijuana in a lengthy article, reporting that the weed culture of Black jazz musicians was still alive decades later in hip hop groups like Cypress Hill.

SONG: Hits from the Bong INTO MONTAGE of 90s rap music about marijuana. Tupac, Dr. Dre

[SONG MONTAGE: “HITS FROM THE BONG” BY CYPRESS HILL, “HIGH ‘TIL I DIE” BY TUPAC SHAKUR, “THE ROACH (THE CHRONIC OUTRO)” BY DR. DRE]

CASEY: Today, the ’90s are back — or at least some of the clothes. I too have nostalgia for a simpler time before 9/11, cell phones, digital everything, the Great Recession and the pandemic… Anyway, the recent ’90s revival strikes me funny because I remember our style then as borrowing a lot from the ’70s, which was when NORML started. That’s the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. It was founded by friends and led by Keith Stroup.

KEITH STROUP: I started smoking marijuana when I was a freshman at Georgetown Law School in 1965. And so by this point, I’d been smoking six or seven years, and I wanted to legalize marijuana. And it was … it sounds a little naive when I hear myself say it now.

CASEY: Stroup was introduced to public interest law working for Ralph Nader, a consumer advocate who led a presidential commission on product safety. NORML became a consumer lobby.

STROUP: We approach the issue from the perspective of, how does it impact a responsible marijuana smoker, and our ultimate goal is we want responsible smokers to be treated fairly in all aspects of their lives. Period.

CASEY: In 1972, NORML got a surprising gift in the form of authoritative research supporting its cause. This came from a national commission on marijuana and drug abuse, made up of members appointed by the first president to lead the drug war, Nixon.

STROUP: They didn’t have the courage to urge full legalization, including legal dispensaries, a legal source where marijuana smokers could get their marijuana. But they did recommend that you eliminate all penalties for the private possession and use of marijuana and for sharing it on a non-commercial basis with friends.

CASEY: Around this same time, Stroup’s presentations on marijuana legalization to students on college campuses were launching a counter culture right of passage, thanks to an idea by the head of the agency that booked his gigs to show a movie with the talk.

STROUP: And I said, Well, sure, but you know what movie? I don’t have one. He said, well, but there’s a great movie called “Reefer Madness.”

CASEY: Narrated by the principal of a fictional Lakeside High School, the 1936 movie labels marijuana a violent narcotic, an unspeakable scourge, the real public enemy number one.

DR CARROLL: Let me tell you of something that happened right here in our own city. You probably read about it in the papers. However, I’ll give you the real facts behind the case.

CASEY: The movie’s creators failed to maintain copyrights for the propaganda film, and Stroup bought a copy from the Library of Congress.

STROUP: And I can’t remember how much I paid at the time, but I’m sure it wasn’t more than 50 bucks or something. I got a copy of “Reefer Madness.” And we started going out. When I would give my lecture, I would lecture for maybe 30 or 40 minutes at most, and then we’d take a break. And we’d put on the movie Reefer Madness on and I’d go sit back with the students. And frequently we’d light up a joint and laugh at the movie.

[MOVIE DIALOGUE]: Oh here. If you want a good smoke, try one of these.

CASEY: It’s a dystopian tale of innocent teens lured by drug pushers into weed addiction. Reefer smoking leads to the deaths of pretty much the whole cast by the end. (15 seconds.)

[MOVIE DIALOGUE]: I thought you were a sport. Of course, if you’re afraid, That’s better. That’s more like it. I know you’ll like it. You really will. Just take a puff of that.

CASEY: Stroup calls “Reefer Madness” a bad joke that lasts too long. He even had to edit down the length to keep peoples’ attention. Still, he sees it as giving historical context to the dominant anti-marijuana sentiment that existed when NORML was founded. There’s a scene he thinks encapsulates the film’s premise that marijuana makes people violent and insane.

STROUP: It’s been years since I’ve seen that movie now, but it’s that one point where the piano player’s eyes are wide. He looks like he’s just absolutely crazed. And he’s pounding his fingers on the piano, and there’s a woman, I can’t think there was a woman sitting on the piano bench with him, and there’s some suggestion that they’re about to have an orgy or something.

CASEY: The movie has become a cult classic. I saw it in college. And I felt defiant watching it stoned. Stroup says every day of the first decades of NORML’s existence was an act of defiance. If you look him up on google images, there are pictures of him alongside outlaws Willie Nelson and Hunter S. Thompson. He enjoys having used” Reefer Madness” and made it famous for the opposite reason it was intended.

STROUP: Yes, it was a pleasurable irony that we could turn it around and use it for our purposes.

CASEY: Google also shows Stroup being celebrated with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Emerald Cup. It’s a weed competition started in an area of California that’s part of the Emerald Triangle, which was famous coast-to-coast for cultivating potent marijuana long before legalization. The marijuana plants we follow in this podcast were grown by a company with the most strains ranked in the top 20 of the Emerald Cup’s indoor-flower category last year.

[SONG PLAYS: “REEFER MAN” BY CAB CALLOWAY, INSTRUMENTAL]

CASEY: Next time on Reefer Growing Madness, a production of KJZZ’s Hear Arizona, we’ll make our first visit to Alien Labs to meet the clones. And we’ll have a primer to help you better understand the slew of slang and scientific terms related to marijuana. Now here’s my project partner Tim Agne with a preview of the photo and video online for this episode….

TIM AGNE: So with this prologue you get to see one of the centerpieces of the visuals that we have worked on for this story, which is a time-lapse of this plant from the time the clone was planted all the way to the point where it was harvested. So this was three months that we had essentially a phone camera plugged in on a flexible tripod in place in these various grow rooms at Alien Labs. And it’s just kind of cool to see. We are, I’ve joked quite a bit, literally watching grass grow. Hopefully it is a new and illuminating look at the process. It was a difficult shot to set up so really I hope it just looks cool. I did want to say that one of the challenges in editing this time lapse is that half the time we’re just in darkness. So these cycles, lights are on for 12 hours or they’re off for 12 hours. However they cycle the light to simulate day and night for these plants. And so editing around these frames of just black has been a challenge. One thing you’ll also see this episode is our logo, which includes a picture of Bruno holding one of the flowers from right after the plant was harvested.

CASEY: Reefer Growing Madness was produced and hosted by me, Matt Casey. Tim Agne is our digital editor. Assistant News Director Lindsey C. Riley is our project editor. To see photos and other media from this episode, be sure to check out our website: R-G-M-dot-kjzz-dot-org. Thanks for listening.

[SONG PLAYS: “REEFER MAN” BY CAB CALLOWAY, INSTRUMENTAL]

“}]] A reefer is a marijuana cigarette. Reefer Madness is a 1936 propaganda film that labels pot as a ghastly menace. This prologue for Reefer Growing Madness explores marijuana’s foothold in the U.S. — from cultural expression to anti-racial propaganda, then outlawed substance to eventual legalization in certain states.  Read More  

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