"The Marijuana Conspiracy" and The Research Dodge

The Canadian film "The Marijuana Conspiracy," released in the US on 4/20, illustrates in part the absurdity and politicization of research into marijuana's effects. The film, based on a study that happened in 1972 in Toronto, begins with footage of politicians (all old, white men) railing against marijuana use. We then meet an old, white male addiction researcher downing a martini who hires an unscrupulous hippie-type researcher out for fame and fortune who recruits young women pot smokers for a study aimed at discovering marijuana's harms. 

The women were locked in a building for 98 days, with no escape to take a walk outside or see their friends or families, while being constantly observed by researchers. Even the joints they were given to smoke nightly couldn't counter the effects of this strange, unnatural setting and the film (and doubtlessly the study itself) devolves into melodrama. Like many rats put in a cage, the women were pointlessly overdosed with pot. Yet, they remained productive and experienced no ill effects, although some members of both the smoking group and the nonsmoking control groups had difficulty assimilating after their isolation. The results of the study were never publicized due to political reasons, and it took decades for Canada to finally legalize pot (the US still hasn't done so). 

Abbie Hoffman: Steal This Urine Test

There's a great scene in the new Aaron Sorkin / Netflix movie "The Trial of the Chicago 7" where Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) of Students for a Democratic Society says to Yippie! Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), "My problem is that for the next 50 years, when people think of progressive politics, they’re going to think of you and your idiot followers, passing out daisies to soldiers or trying to levitate the Pentagon. So they’re not gonna think of equality or justice; they’re not gonna think of education or poverty or progress. They’re gonna think of a bunch of stoned, lost, disrespectful, foul-mouthed, lawless losers. And so we’ll lose elections." 

I know this to be true because I campaigned for Hayden when he ran for Governor of California in 1994. I would talk to young people, saying, "You know Tom Hayden, the Chicago 7?" Only when I said, "with Abbie Hoffman" did the bells of recognition ring. (Hayden lost that election, and Abbie remains enduringly popular.) 

The credits of the movie mention Hoffman's bestseller "Steal This Book" but not its 1987 sequel, "Steal This Urine Test" in which he blows the lid off the bogus urine testing industry that discriminates against marijuana smokers by detecting inactive metabolites that can stay in the body for weeks after use. 

Hoffman wrote of NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) chief Dr. Robert DuPont's evolution from a somewhat liberal scientist to a zealot-like proponent of urine testing:  

Spartacus's Wife: The Woman Behind the Revolt

Jean Simmons with Kirk Douglas in "Spartacus" (1960).

It was sadly fitting that on the Day our Democracy Died we also lost Kirk Douglas, who helped break the Hollywood blacklist by hiring Dalton Trumbo to write the screenplay for the 1960 film "Spartacus," telling the enduring story of the 73BCE Gladiator/slave revolt against the Roman empire.

I rented the movie, and was struck by the depictions of the communal nature of the former slave army: people pulling together, women making candles and weaving, etc. I was also struck by the lack of power among the women in the film: Spartacus's love Varinia (Jean Simmons) is a slave forced into submissive prostitution who ends up back in Roman clutches in the end. Simmons appears nearly naked in a bathing scene.

The herstorical facts are different: Spartacus, who came from Thrace, was married to a priestess from his tribe who inspired and aided in the revolt. According to history professor Barry Strauss writing in The Wall Street Journal:

Neither her name nor the name of their tribe survives. Only one ancient source mentions her existence, but he is Plutarch, who relied on the (now largely missing) contemporary account by Sallust. In his "Life of Crassus," Plutarch writes: It is said that when he [Spartacus] was first brought to Rome to be sold, a serpent was seen coiled about his face as he slept, and his wife, who was of the same tribe as Spartacus, a prophetess, and subject to visitations of the Dionysiac frenzy, declared it the sign of a great and formidable power which would attend him to a fortunate issue. This woman shared in his escape and was then living with him. (Plutarch, Crassus 9.3) 

Plutarch, and Strauss, pin her as worshipping Dionysus, the god of wine and liberating "frenzies"; but long before his cult appears, the snake was a symbol of the goddess religions. Scholars think the wines of ancient times may have contained entheogenic plants as well as alcohol.

Rights of Passage: Miley Cyrus, Amanda Bynes and Marijuana

Miley Cyrus's new look in V Magazine  

Filmed in 2010 but not released until 2012, LOL starring Miley Cyrus has an rather interesting take on marijuana—until it gets preachy. And like her recent photo in "V" magazine (left), Cyrus doesn't quite let her pants down in the film (now viewable on Netflix).

In one scene from LOL, two teens and four grown ups get together for a dinner party. The teens (Cyrus as Lola and Jean-Luc Bilodeau as Jeremy) make an excuse to go to his room instead of eating with the old folks. "We aren't interested in your senior conversations," Lola says. A bit miffed, one of the adults responds, "We aren't interested in your teenage conversations." Notice that the two groups aren't communicating.

After the kids leave, the Dad—whose nod to hippiedom is a beard and a friendship bracelet—lights a joint and passes it to his three female companions, starting with Demi Moore. Moore's character emphatically states that her daughter doesn't smoke, and that she has never smoked in front of her. As for Jeremy, his mother says, "Don't worry, Jeremy hates drugs." Cut to: Jeremy in his room with Lola, exhaling a bong full. He wears a chunky hemp necklace, but Miley's character neither wears nor smokes hemp.

Demi Moore accepts and tokes a joint in LOL

Knowing that the ONDCP has had input into network TV shows, one can only imagine what Hays Code-style forces hatched this LOL subplot: Moore meets a hot narcotics officer, who gives an anti-pot talk at Lola's school. Flashed on the screen are pictures of brains supposedly representing the effects of long-term marijuana use, from a bogus organization called Organization for a Drug-Free World. Another slide claims that those who are heavy users of cannabis at age 18 are 600 times more likely to develop schizophrenia(!) After the talk, Moore's hypocritical, pot-puffing mom admonishes her daughter to take heed of the scaremongering, and the cop asks (or rather, demands) that Moore have a drink with him, in the middle of the day.

A possible sly commentary on the brain slides, coupled with the old PDFA "fried egg" ads, is contained in the amusing sequence showing the kids being served strange foods by French families on a field trip. "It's a pity, she hasn't even eaten her brain," one French mother says. Later, the parents' pot-smoking dinner party scene is reprised, with the cop sitting at the table as the joint is passed. "I only use it for my sciatica," the Dad lies, as though that makes him virtuous.

Slide from an anti-drug assembly in LOL

LOL saw limited release and grossed only $10 million worldwide, with a budget of $11 million. Wanna bet it would have made more money had Cyrus toked herself in the film, and it was released the year it was made, when she was in the news for smoking "salvia"? This may be the most scandalous interference in a career over marijuana since Spiro Agnew personally called radio stations and asked them not to play Brewer and Shipley's song "One Toke Over the Line."

Being a child star entering young adulthood is a tough gig. Just watch Inside Daisy Clover or observe the latest antics of Amanda Bynes, who allegedly threw a bong out of her New York apartment building window after someone called the cops on her for smoking a joint in the lobby (she denies the charge).

Parents these days can be as stupid as kids: A 9/11 call was placed from Moore's home in January 2012 after she went out partying with her daughter and smoked "Spice," a foolish thing to do, especially in combination with Adderall and Red Bull, as she reportedly did. The latest news is that she's back to yoga and has another young boyfriend.

Are we ever going to grow up about pot? Or will parents just continue to pretend they never smoked it, and let their children learn the worst possible behaviors around it from their peers, who know that the government is feeding them bullshit, but aren't always able to find the way to a higher truth on their own?

UPDATE 6/19/13: Cyrus says she's happy to live in California, "a place where you can be what you want to be" and calls alcohol "way more dangerous than marijuana" in an upcoming edition of Rolling Stone. A forthcoming edition of Marijuana is SAFER: So Why Are We Driving People To Drink? ought to spark more of a debate.