Reefer Madness

How a plant was turned into a menace. The 1936 exploitation films, Harry Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, the newsreels and the press campaign, and the anti-drug advertising that ran from the fifties through DARE and the frying egg.

Part of Marijuana

50 moments in this segment.

1. 1919 - Demon Rum and the drug monsters, 1919. Oliver Herford editorial cartoon of 1919 showing Uncle Sam beset by Demon Rum and a train of drug monsters including hashish, an early image of American drug panic.
2. 1936 - Reefer Madness, the full 1936 propaganda feature. The complete cautionary film, made as Tell Your Children and later recut for the exploitation circuit, in which cannabis drives high-school students to manslaughter and insanity. Posted by Shout! Studios.
3. 1936 - Marihuana (1936) original trailer. The theatrical trailer for Dwain Esper's Marihuana, restored in high definition from the Kino Lorber release.
4. 1936 - Reefer Madness trailer, Coolidge Corner Theatre revival. A repertory-cinema trailer for Reefer Madness, framing the film's reefers, hot jazz and induced insanity.
5. 1936 - Marihuana: The Devil's Weed, the full 1936 exploitation feature. Dwain Esper's 1936 exploitation picture, in which a young woman's first joint leads her to pregnancy, prostitution and dope dealing. One of the era's most lurid anti-cannabis films.
6. 1936 - Mary Lane in Reefer Madness. Actress Dorothy Short as Mary Lane in Reefer Madness (1936).
7. 1936 - Reefer Madness poster, 1936. Poster for the 1936 exploitation film Reefer Madness, originally released as Tell Your Children, the best-known artefact of anti-cannabis propaganda.
8. 1936 - Reefer Madness film still. Still from the 1936 propaganda film Reefer Madness, which depicted cannabis as a cause of insanity and violence.
9. 1936 - Reefer Madness (1936). The full anti-marijuana exploitation feature, originally released as Tell Your Children and directed by Louis J. Gasnier, in which teenagers are driven to murder and insanity by reefer.
10. 1936 - Marihuana (1936). Dwain Esper's exploitation feature in which a young woman's first joint leads her step by step into drug dealing, a companion piece to Reefer Madness.
11. 1936 - Reefer Madness: Original Trailer. The original theatrical trailer for the 1936 anti-marijuana feature, promising the drug's 'soul-destroying' effects.
12. 1937 - Assassin of Youth 1937 trailer. Period trailer for the 1937 anti-marijuana feature, promising a warning about the drug menace among American youth.
13. 1937 - Assassin of Youth, 1937 scare film part two. The second reel of Periscope Film's preservation scan of the 1937 anti-marijuana exploitation picture.
14. 1937 - Marihuana Tax Act revenue stamp. The one-dollar revenue stamp issued under the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, the law that made cannabis effectively illegal in the United States.
15. 1937 - Assassin of Youth (1937). Elmer Clifton's anti-marijuana exploitation feature, preserved by an archival film collection, taking its title from Harry Anslinger's own magazine article.
16. 1938-03-24 - US-Canada marihuana control talks, 1938. Harry Anslinger and Canadian narcotics chief C. H. L. Sharman meeting in Washington on 24 March 1938 to coordinate cross-border marihuana control.
17. 1938-03-24 - Harry Anslinger, 1938. Harry J. Anslinger, first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the architect of American cannabis prohibition, photographed in Washington in 1938.
18. 1939-07-08 - Reefer Madness theatre ad, 1939. Newspaper theatre advertisement for Tell Your Children, better known as Reefer Madness, from 8 July 1939.
19. 1950 - The Narcotic Story, a 1950s police-sponsored propaganda film. A feature-length 1950s anti-narcotics film produced with police co-operation, dramatising addiction and enforcement for public audiences.
20. 1951 - Drugs: The Terrible Truth, a 1950s Cold War anti-drug film. A Cold War era short arguing that a single marijuana cigarette leads inexorably to heroin addiction, delivered by a hardboiled narrator in red-scare register.
21. 1951 - Drug Addiction, 1951 classroom scare film. A black-and-white 1951 educational film warning students that marijuana is a gateway to heroin addiction, in the era's standard escalation narrative.
22. 1951 - The Dangers of Marijuana Addiction, 1951. HISTORY channel presentation of a 1951 scare film warning that marijuana turns an all-American boy into a dope fiend.
23. 1951 - The Terrible Truth (1951). Sid Davis classroom scare film from the Prelinger Archives arguing that marijuana is the direct road to heroin addiction.
24. 1955 - Assassin of Youth: 1950s Narcotics Education Film. A later classroom anti-drug film of the same title, produced by the Narcotics Educational Foundation, distinct from the 1937 exploitation feature.
25. 1955 - A 1950s Anti-Drug Educational Film. Full period classroom film on narcotics and marijuana, typical of the American anti-drug education output of the 1950s.
26. 1956 - Narcotics: A Challenge to Youth, 1956 teachers' film. A 1956 colour educational film made for teachers, presenting cannabis as the first step in an inevitable slide into narcotic addiction.
27. 1956 - The Dangerous Drugs, 1956 Narcotic Educational Foundation film. A 1956 film from the Narcotic Educational Foundation of America on barbiturate and amphetamine abuse, part of the same classroom-film apparatus that carried the marijuana message.
28. 1962 - Narcosis, an early-1960s drug education scare film. A colour classroom film dramatising heroin and marijuana use, produced by Golden State and dated by the archive to the early 1960s.
29. 1962 - Anslinger hands over the FBN, 1962. Harry Anslinger transferring command of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to his successor Henry Giordano in September 1962, ending 32 years in the post.
30. 1967 - Narcotics: Pit of Despair, 1967 anti-drug film. A 1967 colour scare film following a teenager from a first joint to heroin addiction, widely shown in American classrooms.
31. 1967 - LSD-25, a 1967 educational scare film. A 1967 colour educational film on hallucinogens and California hippie culture, made in the same production tradition as the anti-marijuana classroom films.
32. 1968 - Marijuana: The Great Escape (1968). Period anti-marijuana dramatised short in which a young racing driver's experiment with cannabis ends in disaster.
33. 1970 - Parents Guide to Marijuana, 1970. Cover of a Seattle-published pamphlet, Parents Guide to Marijuana, from 1970.
34. 1971 - Weed (1971). Encyclopaedia Britannica educational film surveying cannabis cultivation, its legal status and claimed effects at the height of the early-1970s drug panic.
35. 1986 - Just Say No PSA With Clint Eastwood. Period public-service spot pairing Nancy Reagan with Clint Eastwood for the Just Say No campaign.
36. 1986-09-14 - The Reagans Address the Nation on Drug Abuse (1986). The full televised address of 14 September 1986 by President and Mrs Reagan launching the national campaign against drug abuse.
37. 1986 - Nancy Reagan Introduces Just Say No. Public-domain recording of the first lady's September 1986 anti-drug address, the launch of the Just Say No slogan.
38. 1987 - I learned it by watching you, 1987 anti-drug commercial. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America spot in which a father confronts his son over a box of drug paraphernalia and receives the era's most quoted retort.
39. 1987 - This Is Your Brain on Drugs (1987). The Partnership for a Drug-Free America spot in which an egg is cracked into a hot pan, the single most recognised anti-drug advertisement in the United States.
40. 1991 - Brain on Drugs PSA, 1991 Canadian version. A 1991 Concerned Children's Advertisers anti-drug spot, the Canadian counterpart to the American frying-egg campaign.
41. 1993 - DARE Officials Concede Failure, 1993. Period news item in which DARE programme officials acknowledge the programme's poor results.
42. 2014-07-22 - Anti-Marijuana Television Ads Through the Years. The New Yorker's montage of American anti-marijuana advertising from the mid-century to the 2010s.
43. 2018-03-27 - A 1950s Classroom Marijuana Scare Film. Filmmaker David Hoffman presents and reflects on a 1950s high-school scare film showing a teenager driven mad by marijuana.
44. 2022-04-25 - Harry Anslinger, the architect of cannabis prohibition. A legal history of Harry Anslinger, first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and the press campaign he ran to secure the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act.
45. 2022-05-29 - The story of Harry J. Anslinger. A long-form biography of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner, his gore-file press clippings and his role in shaping American drug policy for three decades.
46. 2022-10-17 - Did DARE actually increase drug use?. A research-based retrospective on the evaluation literature that found DARE ineffective and, in some studies, counterproductive.
47. 2024-04-08 - The history of DARE. A history-podcast episode on Project DARE, launched in 1983 by LAPD chief Daryl Gates with the Los Angeles Unified School District, and the research that found it ineffective.
48. 2025-07-19 - How DARE Was Built and Why It Failed. Long-form investigation of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education programme, its expansion across American schools and the research showing it did not reduce drug use.
49. 2025-08-08 - The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 and its St Louis connection. A local-history presentation on Congressman Thomas C. Hennings Jr and the 1930s legislative push that produced the federal Marihuana Tax Act.
50. 2026-08-10 - The 1937 hearing that criminalised cannabis. An account of the brief 1937 congressional hearings on the Marihuana Tax Act, including the American Medical Association's objection and the contested testimony on which the law was passed.