ZadekpediaReefer Madness is a film of the 1930s invoked repeatedly on The Bob Zadek Show as a symbol of anti-drug propaganda and of the racial anxieties that shaped early drug law. Bob Zadek calls it an old 1930s movie and mandatory watching, and recommends that listeners rent and watch it Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016). Guests across episodes treat the film less as entertainment than as evidence: a document of what the country believed about drugs, and a starting point for tracing how those beliefs became law.
The film as a window on 1930s attitudes
Bob Zadek introduces Reefer Madness to his audience as a way to see what the country thought of drugs in the 1930s, describing it as a great movie for that purpose Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016). He returns to it at the close of the same episode, urging listeners to rent and watch it and predicting they will get a kick out of it Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016). The recommendation frames the film as a period piece: not a cautionary tale to be believed, but a record of the propaganda that prohibitionists produced and that later generations inherited.
Doblin: propaganda and the psychedelic counterculture
Dr. Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, tells Bob Zadek that his own path began in 1972, when at 18 he first tried LSD and realized the propaganda he had been raised with—that the drug would make you crazy, that taking it more than about five times left you certifiably insane, that it caused chromosome damage and birth defects—was false Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016). He describes reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, a book a friend told him was written partially under the influence of LSD, and finding in it a story about individual liberty against an oppressive system Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016).
Doblin connects that awakening to a broader political orientation: psychedelics, and to some extent marijuana, break down us-and-them barriers and serve as an antidote to dehumanization, projection and scapegoating Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016). He recalls being a draft resister during the Vietnam War, reading Martin Luther King and Thoreau on civil disobedience and preparing to go to jail, and notes that 60,000 people never registered for the draft and nothing happened Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016). The pardon of draft resisters on Jimmy Carter’s first day in office, he says, started him thinking that his life’s work and psychedelics might achieve growing integration with society rather than repression Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016).
On MDMA—methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as ecstasy or Molly—Doblin says the drug was invented in 1912 by Merck, later picked up by the CIA’s MKUltra program in 1952, and independently developed by underground chemists who did not know of the earlier patent Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016). Nixon, he says, criminalized these drugs under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016). Doblin argues for full legalization of all drugs and for harm reduction, criticizing the RAVE Act—Reducing America’s Vulnerability to Ecstasy—which he says Biden passed while in the Senate and which used the crack house statutes so that knowing about illegal drug use at an event made the organizer a criminal subject to asset seizure Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016). He points listeners to maps.org, describing MAPS as a 30-year-old organization funded entirely by donations Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016).
Miron: prohibition, not drugs, produces violence
In a 2017 episode responding to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ push for stricter enforcement, Bob Zadek calls the War on Drugs the most flawed policy in American history and says that any war on a noun is doomed to fail Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017). He describes Sessions as a self-described drug warrior who wrote an op-ed complaining that soft drug sentencing means more violent crime Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).
Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist and senior fellow at Cato, tells Bob Zadek that Sessions has it almost precisely backwards: it is rare that consuming drugs induces violence, and the correct connection is that drug prohibition induces violence Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017). Banning a good does not eliminate supply and demand but drives the market underground, where disputes cannot be resolved with courts and lawyers, so the obvious substitute is violence Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017). He illustrates with an employer in the drug trade who wants sellers to believe that stealing the product will bring the boss to break your kneecaps, and with fights over territory and contracts resolved violently Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).
Bob Zadek ties the opposite belief—that drug users per se commit violence—to American mythology reaching back to Reefer Madness, which he places in the 1950s and before Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017). He argues that the link between drug use and violence does not exist, and that violence fills the void because drug commerce is forced underground Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).
Tanner: the racial origins of drug law
In a 2020 episode on anti-racism, Bob Zadek asks Michael Tanner about the wave of 2020 news coverage of white police violence against black suspects, including George Floyd, and about the claim that such events prove systemic racism Towards a Libertarian Theory of Anti-Racism (2020). Tanner answers that study after study at every level of the criminal justice system shows African Americans fare worse, and that many of the things made illegal—in the war on drugs, the war on sex work and other victimless crimes—were explicitly started for racial reasons Towards a Libertarian Theory of Anti-Racism (2020).
Tanner cites Reefer Madness directly, describing it as the 1940s film on how terrible marijuana was that led to a lot of marijuana laws, and summarizing its plot: it makes white college girls smoke pot and then they run out and dance with black men, which the film presented as one of the terrible things marijuana might do Towards a Libertarian Theory of Anti-Racism (2020). He distinguishes individual racism from systemic racism, saying that very few police officers go out today intending to beat up an African American, but that police training, stereotypes about the black thug, and portrayals in Hollywood and TV leave impressions that shape how officers react to young African American men Towards a Libertarian Theory of Anti-Racism (2020). He argues against leaping from individual acts to systemic racism and then to defunding the police or declining to arrest people who commit crimes Towards a Libertarian Theory of Anti-Racism (2020). He adds that police unions have far too much power, blocking reforms and the removal of racist officers, and that civilian review boards are generally impotent Towards a Libertarian Theory of Anti-Racism (2020).
Across episodes
The episodes show no development in the treatment of Reefer Madness: it appears as a fixed reference point in the 2016 Doblin episode, the 2017 Miron episode and the 2020 Tanner episode, each time as shorthand for anti-drug propaganda, with Tanner adding the specific claim that the film’s imagery of white women and black men fed the racial origins of marijuana law.