Shh, Or Get Off The Pot

Cheech and Chong

A breakout star is getting its moment again for the first time.

I’m talking about pot.

Dangerous, dubious pot.

Since 1936’s after-school special gone wrong “Reefer Madness” warned us about the not-so-wavy-gravy consequences of taking a toke, marijuana has appeared mainly as a dichotomy in film: It’s portrayed as both an innocuous weed and a forbidden fruit. The list of stoner cinema is spotty at best. (For every “Dazed and Confused” there’s a “Half Baked,” for example.)

But for the most part, what these movies have in common is their subject’s depiction of community. No one on-screen gets behind the wheel of a car and slices into a crowd; there are no alcohol-fueled bursts of poor decision-making like violence or glazed promiscuity.

In recent years, the glut of pot-plotted films has reached a zenith. Harold and Kumar ran afoul of Guantanamo Bay, Ben Kingsley sucked on a glass pipe in “The Wackness” and in “Pineapple Express,” Seth Rogan and James Franco tangled with a corrupt legal system focused on weed.

But the movies aren’t the only sounding board for the topic.

The Beltway has been abuzz, particularly after openly gay congressman Barney Frank and openly libertarian representative Ron Paul spearheaded a proposal to legalize the possession of weed last April. With the Obama administration’s recent medical marijuana legislation changes, it’s time once again to ponder: Do we or do we not fear the reefer?

I spoke with Frank as well as openly humorous actor and comedian Tommy Chong and documentarian Josh Gilbert about the impact of altered laws on the United States economy and legal system, as well as pothead cinema’s growing popularity and societal significance.

What a Drag

When an evaluation by federal agencies in 2001 justified the government’s decision to tightly regulate marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act, it felt like Prohibition all over again. In 1999, a study by the Institute of Medicine, which is a unit of the National Academy of Sciences, deemed taking the pot acceptable if it were done so in the spirit of bettering one’s physical health.

In the study, the institute didn’t endorse sparking up doobies at the first sign of a cold, but it did mention that the active ingredients of marijuana were viable treatments for pain, nausea and the severe weight loss associated with AIDS.

In 2006 that all went up in smoke.

The FDA dismissed the medical benefits of marijuana; it was likened to a placebo instead of a panacea. Even more damning, it was alleged that pot smoke contains more toxins than tobacco smoke, and was therefore detrimental to the smoker’s health.

Congressman Barney Frank

“I’ve felt for a long time that policy regarding the prohibition of marijuana was wrong,” said Congressman Frank, who cited the organization NORML as a viable source for education on marijuana and its health benefits and risks. According to the group’s Web site, nicotine “promotes the development of cancer cells and their blood supply,” while “cannabis smoke — unlike tobacco smoke — has not been definitively linked to cancer in humans, including those cancers associated with tobacco use.”

Tobacco’s legality is only the tip of the hypocritical iceberg, according to Chong.

“Not only does the government allow people to smoke what they want people to smoke, but they also promote the use of truly dangerous drugs every day,” he said. “Pharmaceuticals are the ones we should be putting on trial. They are not necessarily the healthiest for you. Hemp has been around for 5,000 years. It’s medicinal. But the legalized ‘wonder drugs’ that you see on television at night, those are harmful to you. Pills that make a fat person thin, pills that help you eat, help you get hard, help you feel good.”

Governmental pursuits of relevant cannabis research have heretofore been stifled. Brief, dismissive statements have proven less difficult to issue than funded research that might undermine an administration’s inflexible opposition to the medical use of marijuana.

Doobie or Do Not: There Is No Try

Current laws targeting marijuana users place arbitrary burdens on law enforcement resources, punish ill Americans whose doctors have prescribed the substance and unfairly affect minorities, maintains Frank.

“The vast amount of human activity ought to be none of the government’s business,” he told reporters in last April. “I don’t think it is the government’s business to tell you how to spend your leisure time.”

Chong also views government prohibition of marijuana as race-driven.

“It’s the last racist law in the books. It began in the ’30s, and it’s still enforced today,” he said. “It was an excuse law enforcements used to arrest people of color. Even the name that ended up being used is racist. We don’t call it cannabis or hemp. We call it the Mexican name, marijuana, which heightens the cultural stereotype.”

On the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Web site, the agency has stated, “Smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science — it is not medicine and it is not safe. The DEA goes on to say that legalizing pot “will come at the expense of our children and public safety. It will create dependency and treatment issues, and open the door to use of other drugs, impaired health, delinquent behavior, and drugged drivers.”

There have been 20 million marijuana-related arrests since 1965, and 11 million since 1990. Today, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 38 seconds, a rate that suggests the officer making each arrest gets his wings.

“The decriminalization act of 1973 was major,” said Frank. “But the national political climate wasn’t conducive to pass it. There are times when the public wanted it to pass, to make the policies better. But the policy made by the politicians didn’t back the people up.” His proposal to end federal penalties for Americans carrying fewer than 100 grams of cannabis (almost a quarter-pound of the substance) is sparking controversy and considerable public interest.

“Ron Paul and I have made sure that this subject gets its due,” he said. “His run for president addressed it. He gave speeches on it.” Not that Frank’s trying to seek notoriety. “I’m one of two openly gay congressmen. Trying to get more attention is the last thing I need. I’m doing this for the purpose of filing the bill.”

Chong is less enthusiastic than Frank and Pauk, but similarly optimistic. “What Frank and Paul are doing is a step,” he said. “I mean you can’t get anymore left wing or extreme than those two. But their proposal is like placing a band aid on an open wound.”

Putting the “Can” in Cannabis

Frank likens pot’s illegality to the slowly building burn of global warming. “By the time it actually takes a profound toll on us, I’ll be dead,” he said. “But making movements in the right direction now forces us look ahead, so we can address and reverse the problems. It gives us our freedoms.”

Tommy Chong

Chong doesn’t fully endorse Frank’s sentiment. “Pot laws today are better than they were years ago, and the upside is that when you create laws like these, you create a black market system without accountability,” he said. “The money spent on pot is under the table, but it still circulates. It’s a thriving business and it stimulates the American economy regardless.”

The star of several cannabis-themed flicks, including “Up in Smoke” and “Still Smokin’” was charged for his part in financing and promoting Chong Glass/Nice Dreams, a company started by his son. He came to a settlement with U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan’s office in which he admitted to distributing 7,500 bongs and water pipes on the Internet. His pothead celebrity intensified the sentence. Chong spent nine months in federal prison.

“[The pot laws] are all corrupt,” he said. “The DEA and the Justice Department create a criminal organization that’s licensed to take over someone else’s property. It’s like bouncers at a night club who start a fight so that they can keep their jobs. If there’s no real crime being committed, then make one up and oppress people with it.”

Among the paraphernalia seized in the 2006 raid was documentary director Josh Gilbert’s chronicle of the Chongs’ battle with the DEA, “a/k/a Tommy Chong.” Buchanan deemed the DVD a “masking product,” which is a sort of DIY cheat-sheet used to pass employer drug tests. Gilbert has gone on record trumpeting his star’s argument with the government’s stepping in on even a tertiary product of the pot industry.

“They follow the money trail,” he said. “So many U.S. agencies have a stake in [pot's] illegalization. The DEA’s budget is 80 percent marijuana.”

After two years of litigation, his DVD was released last year. Gilbert and Chong both consider Frank and Paul progressive but perhaps not enough. “Look, legislating morality is a fundamentally conservative thing to do, especially when it makes a scapegoat out of a countercultural comedian from 30 years ago,” said Gilbert. “[Pot] needs to be normalized. But Frank and Paul are definitely moving in the right direction. They’re what make elections so vital.”

Frank argues that he and Paul will include people in politics, should their proposal have legs. “It will make us individuals,” he said.

Chong concurs. “Illegality keeps the demand high. But legalizing it brings it out in the open. It puts a tax on [pot], for one thing. Keeping it under the table, the law makers can get bought out. Appeasing and placating the ‘powers that be’ is the American system.”

He and Gilbert also contend that Hollywood is also taking a bold step by promoting and producing movies that depict the psychotropic as a uniter, not a divider. The films are popping up like, well, weeds.

“Look at the movies that are coming out right now, the pot movies,” said Chong. “They’re good. They’re true, true in spirit. They show people who are good and gentle and all about community. They’re all about the force that trumps all, love.”

Is there a moral of this morality tale?

Tommy Chong puts it simply. To demystify and de-vilify the properties of pot in American politics and American pop-culture, “America needs to become a pothead.”