Pubdate: Wed, 02 Jan 2002
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2002 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Vanessa E. Jones, Boston Globe
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

FILM, MUSIC REFLECT MIXED SOCIETAL VIEWS ON MARIJUANA

Sniff. Sniff. Smell that? It's the pungent odor of marijuana wafting in the 
air as the music, television and film industries inhale a lungful of pot 
culture:

Marijuana use is touched on in the television series Once and Again, in 
which Eli Sammler, portrayed by Shane West, is arrested for pot possession 
and fired from his job. On the cover of High Times magazine, Aaron Lewis, 
lead singer of the rock group Staind, proudly clutches a bong and a handful 
of weed. Afroman had a novelty hit song this year, Because I Got High, that 
had nothing to do with altitude.

On ABC's Once and Again, the eldest son passes a joint to his teen-age 
stepsister, while on NBC's The West Wing, the surgeon general floats the 
idea of decriminalizing marijuana.

Cannabis also gets a starring role in two winter films. The recently 
released comedy, The Wash, pairs producer, rapper and now actor Dr. Dre 
with one of hip-hop's most notorious smokers, Snoop Dogg. Rappers Redman 
and Method Man have also puffed their way into theaters with How High, in 
which the pair smoke magical pot that gives them the smarts to get into 
Harvard University.

"People are not proud to say they do coke, but marijuana -- it's been a 
trend for years," Redman says. "It's a movie star in its own self."

Blame the revival on a generation of baby boomers working in film and 
television today who came of age during the pot-smoking era of the 1960s 
and 1970s. Add to that teens and those in their 20s who are creating what 
the Department of Justice ominously calls "the New Marijuana Epidemic" by 
making ganja their drug of choice. Combine these two generations with an 
ongoing public push to legalize marijuana and suddenly it seems we've 
jumped into a time machine and gotten off in the 1970s, the heyday of 
Cheech and Chong.

All of which is enough to make organizations such as the White House Office 
of National Drug Control Policy want to spoil pop culture's high. We are, 
after all, still in the midst of a war on drugs.

"We have decided as a society, or at least as a legal system, that there 
isn't anything called responsible drug use," says Donald F. Roberts, a 
communications professor at Stanford University who has worked on studies 
examining drug, alcohol and cigarette usage in music, television and film 
for the National Drug Control Policy office. "That being the case, one 
would hope you would portray it in ways that make people not attracted to it."

The darker side of marijuana use is clearly delineated in the news. A conga 
line of celebrities has been arrested for marijuana possession this year, 
including Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing; Snoop Dogg; and former 
Dallas Cowboys lineman Nate Newton, who was caught twice in the past two 
months. And the Los Angeles Clippers' Lamar Odom was suspended for five 
games for smoking it.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, about 10 million people 
use marijuana and 69 million people older than age 12 have smoked it at 
least once. The drug trails only alcohol and cigarettes in popularity.

So it's hardly noted that the lead singer of the rock band Nickelback wears 
a marijuana leaf T-shirt onstage and calls for the legalization of the 
drug. Or that a spate of high-quality films -- Eyes Wide Shut, American 
Beauty and Wonder Boys -- feature characters smoking weed as casually as 
they'd light a cigarette or drink a glass of wine. It's a subtle shift from 
the past, when, according to Steven Hager, editor in chief of High Times, 
pot users were depicted as destructive people with dead-end lives.

"I don't think marijuana is treated as badly," says Mark-Boris St. Mourice, 
managing editor of Heads magazine, which, in another indication of 
marijuana's increasingly popularity, is battling with High Times and 
Cannabis Culture for dominance in the pot publications genre.

"It's more levelheaded," continues St. Mourice, who likens the drug's more 
casual treatment to how homosexual lifestyles have increasingly gained 
acceptance in pop culture. Take Tommy Chong's recurring role as the stoned 
owner of a photo lab on television's That '70s Show.

"He isn't denigrated; he's just another one of the characters," St. Mourice 
says. "The young characters are smoking pot on a regular basis on that 
show. That's a big deal, too. Yet they still happily go on with life and 
don't end up cutting their mom's head off with an ax."

Once and Again, which focuses on the second marriage of two parents who 
both have children, kicked off its season with the eldest child, 
18-year-old Eli, being arrested for pot possession. A recent episode 
started with him being fired from his job for arriving late one too many 
times, possibly because of his ongoing drug use. It ended with Eli 
introducing his 16-year-old stepsister, Grace, to pot -- at her request. 
"We're showing a fully dimensional, complex person who has a lot of great 
qualities who's smoking pot a lot -- maybe to his detriment -- and it 
really isn't spelled out," says Winnie Holzman, an executive producer for 
the show. The story line developed out of the experiences of Holzman and 
her co-executive producers, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, the pair 
behind thirtysomething and My So-Called Life.

"In our generation it was very common to smoke pot," says Holzman, who's in 
her 40s. "It's an issue now because we're all raising teen-agers."

On the other hand, we still live in an era in which television and movies, 
such as the teen flick Dude, Where's My Car? and last year's Saving Grace, 
use goofily doped-up characters for laughs.

"One of the problems with illicit drug use is that it gets portrayed 
sometimes seriously and responsibly in the sense that, 'Gee, this guy used 
marijuana, and it did reduce his reaction time driving the car -- and that 
cost the kid his life,' " Roberts says, "but the next film is a comedy. ... 
There's not much consistency there." And anyone who's raised a child, he 
adds, knows how important consistency is in affecting behavior.

When the script writers began building How High around Redman and Method 
Man, the duo had two requests. The action had to take place on a college 
campus, and "we wanted to be smoking a hell of a lot of weed," says Redman, 
who's also known as Funk Doctor Spot, or Doc for short.

"People in hip-hop know we smoke," he explains. "How we going to do a movie 
and not have a tremendous amount of weed? It wouldn't have been right."

And indeed, many scenes show the characters shrouded in billows of smoke. 
The filmmakers brush off any suggestions that the film, which is rated R, 
encourages drug use among the teens who will inevitably sneak into theaters 
to see their musical heroes.

"I don't think the film at all says, 'Go out and do drugs and you'll do 
well,' " says Pamela Abdy, executive producer of How High.

Adds Redman, "I'm not promoting it to a younger crowd. But if you've got to 
hear it from us not to smoke weed and your parents are not telling you, 
there's something wrong."
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