12/29/25: Saagar Reviews REEFER MADNESS 'Most Important Film of the Century"

Summary

Podcast Summary: Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Episode: 12/29/25 — Saagar Reviews REEFER MADNESS 'Most Important Film of the Century'
Original Air Date: December 29, 2025

---

Overview & Main Theme

In this holiday special, Saagar Enjeti is joined by guest Griffin to deliver an in-depth review of the infamous 1936 film Reefer Madness. The episode lands just as Trump is set to reschedule marijuana—a policy backdrop that fuels their discussion. The hosts dissect the film’s narrative, artistry, famous scenes, cultural legacy, and its controversial claims about marijuana. With Saagar championing the film’s arguments on weed’s social harms, and Griffin bringing a cinephile’s critical perspective, the two engage in a lively (and sometimes contentious) exploration of one of history’s most memed moral-panic movies.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background & Historical Context

• Production and Legacy

  • Reefer Madness was produced in 1936 as a morality tale, funded by a church group, and directed by Louis J. Gasniere. Duane Esper later repackaged it for exploitation cinemas. Rediscovered in the 1970s, it became a cult hit and unintentional comedy in cannabis culture. (Griffin, 06:04)
  • The term “reefer madness” has since morphed into a meme to mock the hyperbolic fears about marijuana.

• Modern Relevance

  • Saagar asserts the film is “one of the most important films of the last hundred years,” claiming that its core warnings about marijuana have only become more prescient today, given legal changes and increased youth use. (Sagar, 03:59)

2. Film Critique: Artistry and Tone

• Cinematic Structure & Pacing

  • Both hosts comment on the film’s brief 68-minute runtime, silent-era storytelling techniques, and “vignette” structure—distinct scenes that feel loosely stitched together. (Sagar & Griffin, 09:37)
  • Griffin likens the film to a “dystopian zombie movie” if you view marijuana as the “zombie infection” corrupting a community. (Griffin, 10:48)

• Memes & Misunderstandings

  • Griffin discovers a viral meme moment in the film is contextually different than internet culture would have you believe—a playful running motif throughout the review. (06:04)

3. Plot Breakdown & Character Analysis

• Setting Up the Tragedy

  • The film opens with a dramatic scrawl, warning of “violent narcotic… the real public enemy number one… ending often in incurable insanity.” (13:56)
  • Dr. Carroll, the stern authority figure, calls on parents to lead the fight against marijuana, emphasizing personal over governmental responsibility. (15:51, 18:22)
    • Quote:
      “It is only through enlightenment that this scourge can be wiped out.” — Dr. Carroll (15:51)

• Character Arc: Bill & Mary

  • Bill, the “jocular” teen, and his girlfriend Mary are painted in Edenic innocence—Griffin likens their early scene to “Adam and Eve before the apple.” (13:02)
  • Bill is lured into the cannabis “flophouse” by bad influences and corrupt adults, paralleling industry push towards youth in Saagar’s policy analogy. (14:24, 23:32)

• Early “Weed” Scenes

  • First use of marijuana appears around 13:40, shown ritualistically, especially within the music scene—a recurring motif in the film and jazz subculture critique. (29:46, 30:08)

4. Debate: Legalization and Social Harms

• Saagar’s Stance: The Film Was Right

  • Saagar insists that marijuana’s harms—violence, psychosis, increased youth use, and links to traffic deaths—are empirically verified and that the film’s arguments, ridiculed for decades, deserve renewed respect. (25:53, 34:15)

    Quote:
    "Almost every single thing they claim in this movie is unambiguously correct." — Saagar (03:59)

• Griffin’s Counter: Regulation vs. Bootleggers

  • Griffin counters that the dangers in the film mostly stem from the illegality of drugs and dangerous underground dealers; legalization with regulation would be preferable. (24:24, 51:57)
  • He contends that situating weed in regulated shops would avoid much of the film’s violence.

5. Major Plot Events & “Horror” Elements

• Key Scenes

  • Accident After Smoking (31:42): Jimmy unknowingly smokes a marijuana cigarette, drives while stoned, and kills a pedestrian—parallels drawn to modern statistics on THC in traffic fatalities. (32:07-34:15)

  • Marijuana and Sexual Assault: Scene includes sexual assault after “drugging” a girl with weed, followed by a deadly scuffle and a murder—escalating the film’s hysteria about marijuana. (49:09-50:05)

  • Framing & Courtroom Drama: Bill is framed for murder, leading to a court scene where Dr. Carroll breaks confidentiality to testify, a moment the hosts debate in terms of ethical justification. (53:15)

    Notable Quote:
    “He had to speak up. He saw the evil drug had rot this woman, an innocent life was taken and he had to speak up for her. And he did. He didn’t know what he was doing was wrong. I think Dr. Carroll did the right thing.” — Saagar (53:31)

  • Noose Visual in Jury Scene: Striking image of a noose in the jury room, interpreted as one of the few avante-garde flourishes in the film. (54:46)

  • Paranoia & Madness: Iconic meme-scenes of characters in weed-induced paranoia, including the “Faster, faster!” piano moment and wild laughter fits. (58:54-59:04)

6. Science Versus Satire: Modern Cannabipanic?

• Saagar’s Evidence Blitz

  • Throughout the second half, Saagar references a slew of studies and headlines:

    • Cannabis use’s link to decreased IQ, increased ER visits from “scromiting,” psychosis, suicide, and violent crime (“Mass shooters and weed”).
    • High THC potency today allegedly vindicates the film's more hysterical claims.
    • Criticism of medical marijuana as unsupported by current research. (66:20-70:43, 90:14)

    Quote:
    “Every claim that I’m making here is backed up by multiple scientific studies. It is empirically and statistically now proven that long-term marijuana use, especially when started young, dramatically by almost 5 points reduces IQ in the middle to long term.” — Saagar (66:22)

• Balance & Context

  • Griffin pushes for nuance, challenging causality in the mass shooter statistics, and calling for marijuana policy to follow patterns akin to cigarettes: regulated, labeled, and restricted, especially to youth. (73:25, 88:49)

    Quote:
    "Doesn't even seem like the regulations that you're asking for are that massive... essentially asking for us to treat it like cigarettes.” — Griffin (88:49)

7. Where Do We Go From Here? Policy, Culture, and Solutions

• Regulation, Not Prohibition

  • Saagar calls for strict THC caps, transparency, bans on youth-targeted products, public use restrictions, and even nonprofit or state-run sales—insisting today’s “wild west” is failing consumers and children alike. (83:30-85:11, 88:54)
  • Both agree on the need for cultural pushback against stoner-chic, noting that “stoner culture” has diminished in popularity and prestige. (92:52)

• Restigmatization and Social Norms

  • Saagar’s project is, in his own words, to “re-stigmatize weed, porn, gambling,” pushing for anti-vice messaging and a sharp cultural reversal from the film’s memetic legacy. (73:25)

    Quote:
    “That’s my major goal: to stigmatize it. It is to re-stigmatize weed, porn, gambling. I want these things to be thought of in the same way that we think about all other vices...” — Saagar (73:25)

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Cultural Parallels:
  "It’s almost become like Star Wars. Even people who haven’t seen the film know about the film." — Saagar (03:59)

• On Artistry:
  “If I'm tackling and viewing the film as a dystopian universe...I found the film kind of fun and interesting on that level…almost a zombie film.” — Griffin (10:48)

• Film’s Infamous Opening:
  “The motion picture you are about to witness may startle you...Marijuana with an H is that drug...At first effect is sudden, violent, uncontrollable laughter. Then come dangerous hallucinations…” — Saagar, reading film’s opening (13:56)

• Saagar’s Thesis:
  "Almost every single thing they claim in this movie is unambiguously correct." (03:59)

• On Policy & Parenting:
  “It’s not the government that’s going to save you, it’s the parents that are the last defense.” — Dr. Carroll (18:22)

• On Weed-Induced Driving:
  "High driving kills. And what unfortunately happens is that he drives away, he loses control of his faculties, and he unfortunately ends up killing a pedestrian..." — Saagar (31:42)

• Iconic Paranoia Scene:
  "Faster, faster!" — Ralph, famously demented after smoking weed (58:54)

• Societal Solution:
  “We are going to live under a capped amount of THC per product...nonprofit or state-controlled...like we do with liquor in Virginia...” — Saagar (88:54)

---

Major Segments & Timestamps

• 03:08–08:18: Film history and meme status.
• 13:54–15:18: Hilarious reading of the film’s opening crawl and the Dr. Carroll PTA address.
• 24:24–25:44: Legalization debate—Saagar vs Griffin on industry and children.
• 31:16–36:52: The “high driving kills” subplot, evidence and crash statistics.
• 49:09–50:59: The murder and court drama, ethical debate on Dr. Carroll and framing.
• 58:44–60:55: The “faster, faster” meme, and weed’s portrayal as inducing madness.
• 66:20–73:25: Saagar’s research rundown connecting modern science and the film’s claims.
• 83:30–88:54: Policy recommendations, restigmatization, and societal enforcement.
• 92:52–94:27: Cultural portrayal of weed, waning of stoner “cool,” and closing thoughts.

---

Final Verdict & Ratings

• Griffin: Enjoyed it as unintentional horror-comedy, found artistry and memes engaging, ultimately critiques it as “making the case for harm of prohibition more than the danger of weed itself.” Rates it as “one big bong rip for Saagar.” (96:12)
• Saagar: Sees it as prescient cautionary tale, relevant in the era of high-potency marijuana, overhyped only in its sexual panic elements. “3.5/5 for cultural impact, 2/5 as pure film.” (96:16)

---

Recap & Closing Thoughts

Reefer Madness remains a remarkable artifact—its hysteria and style both lampooned and (per Saagar) vindicated in a fentanyl-and-dispensary era. Both hosts find contemporary lessons in its extremes: a warning about unchecked vice industries, debate over the balance of regulation vs. prohibition, and the enduring potency of propaganda.

Saagar’s Bottom Line:
“Stay off the weed. That’s the point of this movie.” (94:27)

Griffin’s Takeaway:
Regulate weed with seriousness—and learn from both the film’s caution and its errors.

---

For More

Links to referenced studies and further readings are available in the show notes.

Transcript

[Sophie Cunningham]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Trashy Ad Voice]

Guaranteed Human decluttering is everything. It clears your space, your mind, and it can give you shopping power. With Trashy Just buy a trashy bag, fill it with clothes and shoes you no longer need, then ship it free and earn points instantly. Build your points by shopping exclusive Trashee offers and redeem for gift cards to brands you love or donate them to charity. It's time to make space for what's next. Start decluttering [e-mail] this that's T R A S H I E I O.

[Sophie Cunningham]

This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

[IBM Ad Voice]

So you're telling me that the AI that's meant to make everyone's job easier to manage just adds more to manage? On top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages? Funny how that works. Any business can add AI. IBM helps you scale and manage AI to change how you do business. Let's create Smile to Business IBM.

[Sagar]

Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[Trashy Ad Voice]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for.

[Sophie Cunningham]

The future of this show.

[Sagar]

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[Trashy Ad Voice]

So if that is something that's important, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our.

[Sophie Cunningham]

Full shows unedited ad free and all.

[Trashy Ad Voice]

Put together for you every morning in your inbox.

[Sagar]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see [e-mail].

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

Faster. Faster. Way faster. Plate master.

[Sagar]

Hello everybody. Happy Holidays. Griffin and I are very, very happy to present you all with a review. I will remind you all that Griffin himself is was an attendee of NYU Film School. So we have a real film film critic here with us in addition to just an amateur, an amateur auteur like myself. Not auteur, an amateur auteur.

[Griffin]

Cinephile.

[Sagar]

Cinephile like myself here. We are going to conduct here a review of Reefer Madness. Uh, this is, uh, Griffin, to make this a true and a proper movie review. Uh, why don't you break us down? Break down for us this film, what year it came out, a little bit about it and some of its cultural legacy, because we're Almost certain almost 100% of you have not seen it.

[Griffin]

Yes, I bet some people in the audience have pleasure to be here. Happy holidays to everyone in the audience. I will have to note here at the top that we're recording this now. It's coming out over the holidays, but we're recording this on the eve of Trump's rescheduling of marijuana.

[Sagar]

That's right.

[Griffin]

Which is kind of a personal 9, 11 for Sagar and Jetty. Sagar, in this moment. How are you feeling? And does that bring any context to the film?

[Sagar]

It brings a lot of context to the film. This film has never been more relevant. It's never been more important. Personally, I think this is one of the most important films of the last hundred years. And I think that's a really funny thing maybe that people will say, and maybe even as we get into the movie. But that's because this movie has almost become like Star Wars. I mean, it's one of those things that's entered the cultural lexicon where even people who haven't seen the film know about the film. The very term Reefer madness itself became a Moniker in the 1970s, which we're going to get to here in a little bit, where people who were stoners at the time would screen the movie while they were getting high. And I think what's really important about the movie is that the name itself has taken on to be almost be derogatory to anybody who raises concerns about the dangers, in my opinion, of. Of this drug, of. Of marijuana. And one of the. My goals here throughout the review of the film, beyond just appreciation, I think, for the film, for the way that it's all done. And we. We'll get into some of the problems, I think, with the messages here of the movie. But it. It is striking to me, almost 89 years later, of watching this movie, how many of the core claims of the movie are unambiguously true. And it really just gets to some of the wisdom of some of the filmmakers that were behind this. We can get a little bit more into that. But, yeah, I. I think at this moment, this film has never actually meant more to me because it shows culturally what we're up against. Is that people think that this movie vastly exaggerated the effects of marijuana, when in fact, almost every single thing that they claim in this movie is unambiguously correct. And we will get through what I think. Why I think the film has become what it is, especially unfortunately throughout the 1990s and 2000s when people in the DARE program were ridiculed for, for bringing up, quote, reaper madness and all of that. And this film is far, far be ahead of its time. And I think that's what really struck me about it.

[Griffin]

So Sagar will be covering some of the facts and I will be covering the feelings. I am going to be tackling this film from a creative standpoint. Did the film make me feel something? What did it make me feel? Did it accomplish its goals as a piece of art? And so that's how I will be tackling the film. I did want to get Sager's general reaction to having watched the film. I've actually watched it just for the first time. And I do want to kind of maybe seed something that. It will be a big surprise later in this podcast that there is a heavily memed moment that I knew as a meme that in the context of the film is completely different. I don't know if you know which one I'm talking about. We'll keep it a secret for now. But it was a, it was a, it was a total aha moment where, uh, I was very fascinated. There's a whole other context to this popular meme. Um, but yes, before we get into any of those reactions to the film audience, for those who aren't as familiar, let's get into a little bit of the history behind Reefer Madness, which was originally titled Tell youl Children Now. The film was produced in 1936 by mainstream independent filmmaker George Hurliman. It was financed by a church group and intended to be shown to parents as a morality tale about the dangers of cannabis use. Directed by silent era pioneer Louis J. Gasniere, it featured a cast of mainly little known actors. In 1938, exploitation film producer Duane Esper purchased the film and recut it for distribution to exploitation houses catering to vulgar interest while escaping censorship under the guise of moral guidance. Esper retitled the film Reefer Madness. Now, Reefer Madness was rediscovered in the early 1970s and it became an underground hit on college campuses. It gained new life as an unintentional satire among advocates of cannabis policy reform. Critics have called it one of the worst films ever made and it has gained a cult following within cannabis culture. It is in the public domain in the United States due to the film carrying an improper copyright notice.

[Sagar]

Which is. Which is definitely to our benefit. So that we can.

[Griffin]

Which is to our benefit. We'll be playing some of the clips today.

[Sagar]

Which is. Which is exciting. Yeah. I mean, what's your reaction to.

[Griffin]

I mean any of the history react to that. But also like, have you watched this film before?

[Sagar]

I'd never watched a film before me, I've never seen clips of it.

[Griffin]

This is my first time too.

[Sagar]

Well, this is my first time sitting with this film. Right. Like the whole thing. And here's the thing, it's a short movie. The runtime is only 68 minutes. It's not a long movie. And actually reading the Wikipedia like you were earlier originally, it's tough for me. So this is just pure like in terms of cinema. Watching older movies is hard. Not just in terms of the pacing, but a lot of the things that we all take for granted are a product of the post 1970s like cinema. You know that most. Yeah. Especially driven that you and I are very, very used to. So putting it in the context of a silent film director is really important. This film is told almost exactly like a silent film. I'm sure you probably noticed that it's a chapter by chapter film. As in we don't have a lot of different scenes that cross cut in terms of time. Each thing is kind of told in its own vignette. Each vignette is actually very. It's tightly composed. As in like the scene itself. The way that it sets out, tells one portion of the story, goes on to the next one. Each one is kind of its own type thing that doesn't necessarily connect. Some of the jump cuts can get a little bit confusing. The accents are hilarious. You know, some 80, 89 year old. Yeah. Their vernacular and the way that they talk. I am by the way, wearing this jacket in. In honor of our titular main character, Bill, who has a big redemption arc. Bill, who was a victim of marijuana and was pressured into this as an impressionable teenager. So he is our main character, the hero, if you will, of our film.

[Griffin]

I'm wearing a suit because I believe that you should wear a suit when you go to the movies. I'm kind of like Sean Duffy for. For airports. Like I think you should be wearing a three piece suit when you're going to see Five Nights at Freddy's too.

[Sagar]

Absolutely.

[Griffin]

So. All right. Well on that note, you know, we want to get into a little bit the plot of this film. My general reaction, having never Seen it before and only knowing it through memes was, and I'm tackling this just from an artist perspective is, you know, if I'm tackling and viewing the film as a dystopian universe where there is a drug known as marijuana that has, with.

[Sagar]

Very specific spelling, with an H, that.

[Griffin]

Has almost a zombie infection level of intensity to it, that sweeps over a small town and it is ultimately a tragedy. Well then I found the film kind of, kind of fun and interesting on that level. If I'm approaching it from there now. I don't know about extrapolating that to the, to the real world lessons, but just maybe as a, as a silent film era. But there's talking, it's a talking film. But you know, I, I, I think I found it a little boring at times, but ultimately effective as almost a zombie film.

[Sagar]

Yeah, it drags definitely, which is kind of crazy to say for 68 minute film, but there are a couple of scenes which don't really make a whole lot of sense and, and easily. It could have been tighter. I actually think it could have been a 45 minute senator if we, if it really wanted it.

[Griffin]

There's some fat, there's a cup.

[Sagar]

I mean look for its accomplishment. We have our main character, Our main character is Bill. Bill is this impressionable teenager. He has this quasi like girlfriend, I guess he would say Mary. And him and Mary are that like. I really like that scene, the Romeo and Juliet scene where he's playing Romeo and Juliet to her and it's very sweet and it's like young love in 1936. And, and they, they share a kiss and Mary's mother walks in all embarrassed and, and he follows her. That was that. Oh, they accomplished that in like two minutes. And I was like, I get this guy, it's Bill, right? He's this really nice jocular guy and he's got this crush on girl named Mary. And like very quickly, kind of what we learn is that Bill is kind of ens. Snared in this plot by one of his friends. Is his name Jimmy? Is that right? Jimmy his friend.

[Griffin]

Well, Bill and Jimmy are both victims. Semi, the main, I guess the, the main, the main evil. There's two evil adults that run a flop house named May and Jack. And then they have two bad kids under their semi employ named Ralph and Blanche. And they're sort of the bad kids that ensnare young innocents like Bill and Jimmy. But I, but, and we'll get to that scene that, that Romeo and Juliet scene. But yeah, the Imagery to me was Adam and Eve before the apple.

[Sagar]

Oh, that's smart. Yeah, you're definitely right.

[Griffin]

They're in a garden, it's idyllic and they're angelic, and it's before they've consumed sin.

[Sagar]

Oh, that's very smart. You're really. You're absolutely right. I didn't pick up on that. But. And I was wondering. I said, yeah, why are they. Because at one point in the scene, he falls into a fountain, like, of water. And I was like, oh, that's a very interesting courtyard, you know, kind of design for a house in the 1930s. You're absolutely right. That is what they were getting at. You know, this. It was just the picture of innocence. That was the picture of innocence before being corrupted.

[Griffin]

And water represents a transformation or change. So him getting wet means he's about to change. So let's get into. We're going to bring you guys into the plot of this film, but it's. It starts with an opening scrawl, sort of like a Star wars, like you said earlier. So, Sagar, could you prepare your best transatlantic, like, 1930s accent for us here?

[Sagar]

I've got it all for you here.

[Griffin]

Give us a review.

[Sagar]

How's the film open here is this. Here is the opening scrawl of the film. The motion picture you are about to witness may startle you. It would not have been possible otherwise to sufficiently emphasize the frightful toll of the new drug menace which has destroyed the youth of America in alarmingly increasing numbers. Marijuana with an H is that drug a violent narcotic, an unspeakable scourge? The real public enemy number one. At first effect is sudden, violent, uncontrollable laughter. Then come dangerous hallucinations. Space expands, time slows down, almost stands still. Fixed ideas come next, conjuring up monstrous extravagances, followed by emotional disturbances, the total inability to direct thoughts, the loss of all power to resist physical emotions, leading finally to acts of shocking violence, ending often in incurable insanity, in picturing its soul destroying effects. No attempt was made to equivocate the scenes. The incidents, while fictionalized for the purposes of this story, are based upon actual research in the results of marijuana addiction. If their stark reality will make you think, will make you aware that something must be done to wipe out this ghastly menace, then the picture will have not failed in its purpose. Despite the dread, marijuana may be reaching forth next for your son or daughters or yours or. Or yours.

[Griffin]

Or yours or yours.

[Sagar]

Recommends 1936.

[Griffin]

Incredible. Bravo. Yes. Applause, applause. Riveting much like Star Wars. And again, I'm gonna make this comparison a lot, a lot like a zombie film describing the infection that spreads across the nation. So we open with our character of Dr. Carol. Now, Dr. Carol is sort of a Greek chorus character in this film. He opens at this PTA meeting, which I'll just play a few sections of, but he is the one who is telling a parent teacher conference about the evils of marijuana. Let's take a quick listen.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

It must be stopped. You and all other school parent groups about the country, and you must stand united on this and stamp out this frightful assassin of our youth. You can do it by bringing about compulsory education on the subject of narcotics in general, the dread marijuana in particular. That is the purpose of this meeting, ladies and gentlemen, to lay the foundation for a nationwide campaign by you to demand by law such compulsory education. Because it is only through enlightenment that this scourge can be wiped out.

[Griffin]

Okay, so that's Dr. Carroll. For those just listening. Audio wise, I would describe him visually as like the. He looks like the bad guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Like, give me the artifact, Dr. Jones. Oh, you're muted. Sagar. Sagar, unmute.

[Sagar]

Yes, he. That's a. That's a good comparison. He's got a double breasted suit, very stern, small, like rounded pair of glasses on the face. And he's looking directly into the camera. Right. And he's lit. Do you see the way that he's lit there too? I. I don't know if that was intentional necessarily on their own part, but he's very. Yeah, it is that classic kind of staring into the PSA in a stern way. And that's immediately kind of how the film starts off, which I. I don't know about you. I definitely thought it was necessary. Narratively, it does make a little bit of sense, but it is kind of jarring to go from the scrawl directly to the this before jumping into the plot of the movie. It becomes more relevant when we see him later on and his interactions with the cast, which makes sense why he's doing this psa. And I think it could have been accomplished a little bit better.

[Griffin]

It's a. It's like a double expositional address, but it ends up paying off later because you realize he's actually a character in the story as well. So he goes on, he talks a lot about other drugs too, and then he talks about marijuana and he says, don't believe me? Well, actually, one point he makes is really important is he makes a Point where he says it's not the government that's going to save you, it's the parents that are the last defense. What are you. What did you make of that, Sagar, as a policy? Because, you know, I feel like you would want weed to be illegal or what?

[Sagar]

Well, okay, so this is, this is the difficulty of all of this. When do you say legal? What do you mean by that? And when I say illegal, that's also kind of. So to presume that I think people should go to jail for smoking marijuana is ridiculous. But also for people to presume that saying legal, legal has all kinds of different definitions is they're going to do the Canadian model, at least in some places where it's nonprofit and state run. Even saying alcohol is legal is not really the same. Right. So I live in the state of Virginia. We have state run liquor stores. Whereas in Nevada, for example, you can literally go to a gas station and buy whiskey. And so just like with gambling, everybody thinks, I think that gambling should be completely illegal. I've never said that. I said that if gambling is going to be legal, people should be. Have to go and to do it in person and it should be highly regulated. Now, presumption here is that by, quote, keeping it illegal or descheduling. This is much more of a policy question, Griffin. My objection is that the way this is being rolled out is the wild, wild west, where we have, number one, no societal norms. Which is what Dr. Carol is correct. This does come down to parents and to education. We'll get to some of the detriments, especially to teen and to children in a little bit. When we're talking about how the claims of the movie are obviously correct. But from a pure policy level, Dr. Carroll actually nails it in the beginning where he's like, this ultimately is a plant that's grown in all 50 states. He's like, there's not a lot that we can do to keep it out, you know, of America. So he's trying to educate people about this story. For what we eventually learn is his knowledge of Bill and the downfall of Bill and. Yeah, and Jimmy as well. And using their story to show his shocking descent into violence, into murder. There's rape involved. It's a very. It's a very emotional film, actually. So were you expecting that? You know, just a side note, I was shocked by the rape scene. I was like, oh, my God. I mean, this is, this is harrowing.

[Griffin]

So the sexual assault scene came out of nowhere. Yes, it was, it was, it was harrowing. And there's a, there's a lot. There's like multiple crazy things that happen in that sexual assault scene that, that we'll get to. But there's also sexual assault mentioned as a side effect of marijuana. In the middle of the film, there's a story, an anecdote told about a woman who's loose with men. Okay, so he does the doctors here. He's at the PTA meeting, and he's like, don't believe me? Well, I'll tell you the story of May Coleman. And we, we fade into May and Jack's like, jazz flophouse. So it's, it's, it's like a flop house where they're like, they're very random. They don't really seem like a couple. They kind of seem like feds. To be honest with you, it was a bit strange.

[Sagar]

This was a weak point for me. I was like, who are we opening on? Who are these people? And this is actually Griffin. It, I, I, I come to understand this is much more of the moment. The people who were watching this at the time, they got it instantly. Ralph is a scumbag. She's putting on her stockings, quote, unquote, Loose woman. They're not married. Right. Like, these are all not scandalous things that immediately hit home to you and I. But in the time would have immediately clicked and made sense. And the film, I thought that was kind of interesting.

[Griffin]

The film refers to them as unmarried and living in sin. Yes. Yeah. Which is how they refer to it back then. But yeah, yeah, this, this idea of a, of like a, of a weird house you go to, to kind of like do these proclivities that it's like not semi, it's like semi a business, but it's not, it's like under the, under the table kind of stuff. So anyways, these really weird couple talk about bringing more people over to the flop house. Now Jack wants to ensnare children. And May says, why can't we just get adults into the flop house? And he says, well, kids are better kids, Kids are easier to trick or what have you. And then we're introduced to our, our protagonist. And what, what, Sagar is dressed like Bill and Jimmy here, who are. Let me see if I can get them. But they're, they're like two nice boys. They kind of look like, you know, like little nerdy dweebs.

[Sagar]

Yeah, exactly. And they're high school. One is in high school and one is in college. And so that. What, I what, so Ralph or Jack. I mean, yeah, there he is. That's our. That's our boy. So Jack is almost like a cartoonishly evil drug dealer. But. And I think we'll get to this in a little bit. But what we eventually find out is that he kind of has this boss, right? And his boss is pressuring him and others to sell to children. Or at the very least, he has no qualms about selling to children. And what I like about this is this captures two things. Kind of the evil of the individual store that may sell marijuana, but also the industry, the boss itself, which is indifferent entirely as long as we're making money while peddling this. And ultimately, you know, the core claim here about marijuana use amongst children and how it's skyrocketed since legalization is correct. And in fact, many of these, you know, products that they sell at these cannabis distributor distribute, these cannabis dispensaries, you know, like weed soda, lollipops, candy. I mean, this, this is obviously targeted towards children. Like many of the claims they used to make about Juul being targeted towards children. This is by 10 to 100 times X being used by the marijuana industry. They have very few safeguards or anything like that in place. And they know that children are using their products. And so, you know, if we look at it thematically, the drug dealer working for the man like his boss, their lack of compunction selling to children, they're driven by greed, representing the marijuana industry, that captures it nicely, I think, together.

[Griffin]

And see, I guess my only pushback there, and I have. I want to double. I want to kind of stretch this point out over the course of the film. But to me, it read as the dangers of if we don't legalize it, then you're going to have random drug dealers in flop houses who put your kids in dangerous positions where those kids could have just gone to a store and bought weed and then a lot of the events that occur in the film wouldn't happen. And I think it's actually the individual enterprise of drug dealers that is actually the real threats that I view from, from this film. Right, but we'll get more into that.

[Sagar]

Yeah, that was, that was, that's. Look, those were claims that were made pre legalization. They're just not true. Marijuana use amongst children has gone up, especially in states where there's been legalization. So this theory of legalization and how it would put more regulation and make things safer is just not true. Marijuana is more dangerous than it's ever been before. It's much more. It's much more potent in terms of THC is causing all kinds of crazy illnesses. This, this, there's been too much evidence now at this point that legalization has increased the amount of use and has. There's been no regulation in terms of potency. There's been very little scrutiny. People then, then of course the pushback is always like, well then that's why they need to federally legalize it. And it's like, well, that will only create more of a permission structure.

[Griffin]

I'm just saying in the context of this film, the dangers are sexual assault and murder, which I think are avoiding.

[Sagar]

Multiple murders, which I think are, I.

[Griffin]

Think are a product of the individual drug dealer system as opposed to having stores. I don't think that you would be assaulted in the store.

[Sagar]

We will get to marijuana's users and their links to violence, to mass shootings, to murder, to psychosis, to suicide. We forgot to mention suicide, suicide warning here. There is also a suicide, marijuana induced suicide here in the film.

[Griffin]

I, I would argue it's actually not marijuana induced.

[Sagar]

Is it guilt induced?

[Griffin]

Yeah, that was, blew my mind because I always thought that it was, it was marijuana induced from the weed.

[Sagar]

I think the weed made her go crazy at that point. Once you've gone crazy, that is, a.

[Griffin]

Lot of people are, a lot of people are about to go crazy. Like any good horror zombie film.

[Trashy Ad Voice]

Yes, cleaning out your home is everything. It clears your space, your mind, and it can give you holiday shopping power with Trashy. Trashy is the easiest way to tidy up for the holidays. Clean out and donate what you don't need and make room for stuff you'll actually enjoy. Just buy a trashy bag, fill it with anything you no longer need, any brand, any condition. We take everything, then ship it free and earn trashy cash points instantly guaranteed. Keep earning points when you shop exclusive trashy deals and redeem for shopping wherever you want, or even donate them to charity. It's simple, it's satisfying, and it's sustainable since 95% of what you send gets reused or recycled. So those pants you love but never wear, instead of your closet or a landfill, they could wind up hugging someone else's butt while also unlocking a little festive shopping power for you. Buy your bag and clean out for the [e-mail] that's T R A S H I E I O.

[IBM Ad Voice]

So let me get this straight. Your company has data here, there and everywhere, but your AI can't use the data because it's here, there and everywhere? Seems like something's missing. Every business has unique data. IBM helps Your AI access your data wherever it lives. To change how you do business, let's create Smile to Business. IBM.

[Sophie Cunningham]

This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at. Don't sleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lily, a medicine company.

[Griffin]

Okay, so you said there's these guys that are kind of these, like, creepy drug dealer. I'll pull up again. On the left here is Jack, who's like, the adultery drug dealer, and on the right is Ralph, who's kind of like the bad kid ensnarer. And, you know, not only is this film, you know, worrying about weed, but it's warning about people like Ralph who are college dropouts that still hang out with the high school kids.

[Sagar]

Yes.

[Griffin]

You got to stay away from those guys. Those guys are bad news, okay? And I 100% agree with the filmmakers on that. They're. They're not good. So they go to the. They take the kids back to this jazz flop house or what have you. People are, like, having fun and.

[Sagar]

And.

[Griffin]

And. Oh, this might actually be at, like, a restaurant or something like that.

[Sagar]

Yeah, that was. It was like a restaurant.

[Griffin]

Yeah. They're trying to, like, ensnare the kids and, like, bring them back to their apartment. And then, you know, eventually. It takes a while, but I noted here, 13:40, it takes 14 minutes almost for the first weed to be presented on screen.

[Sagar]

Yes.

[Griffin]

And it's from the piano man at. At this restaurant. And. And he is. He's. He's making him. It makes him wild, but he doesn't. He doesn't kill anyone or anything. He just, like. He just has a good time and is kind of starts just shaking and kind of like sneaking it. So that.

[Sagar]

That's the.

[Griffin]

That's our first instance of weed, Right?

[Sagar]

That's our very first view of weed here in the film. What it does capture is the long fetishization of musicians of marijuana and how they're always claiming that it makes them better at music. And so, in fact, this is one of two piano weed sequences that we will see here in the film in which it seems to enhance their musical performance.

[Griffin]

So I would say, yeah, that's a.

[Sagar]

Trope that, that carries through the film.

[Griffin]

Yes. Something like, almost as if, like it's the devil's siren call or music that's draw pulling them in. So this is where we're starting to see people smoke for the first time. And it takes kind of a long lingering time of them, like, trying to ensnare these teenagers. We get a little bit more here of this, of the Piano man just kind of tweaking out. And then we get our first kind of like time cross cut scene where we have both our, both our good boys, Bill and Jimmy are in different areas and about to both smoke weed for the first time.

[Sagar]

Yes.

[Griffin]

Now Bill smokes weed and like, ends up, like, making out with a girl. And they just kind of have fun and dance around. It seems okay with Jimmy. Jimmy is at in his car and he asks Jack, the drug dealer for a cigarette. And Jack gives him a marijuana cigarette and it makes him high. And then what happens, Sagar, after that?

[Sagar]

It's a very unfortunate and in fact, in one of the most important messages of the film, high driving kills. High driving kills. And what unfortunately happens is that he drives away, he loses control of his faculties, and he unfortunately ends up killing a pedestrian, which is one of the dangers that we have right now.

[Griffin]

My God. Wow.

[Sagar]

Tragic, tragic, tragic.

[Griffin]

Very, very tragic.

[Sagar]

Little did they know. Little did they know what the horrors that we would live to see in the year 2025. Actually, Griffin. Yeah. Because I want to put up some of the stuff about the film. That's correct. I have in the links that I sent you about deadly driving. Can you put my tweet up there on the screen just so we can show all of you? Unfortunately, not nearly enough data is released because they don't want us to know the truth. Everybody talks about drunk driving. That's great. I, I, there's nothing wrong with warning about drunk driving. But as you guys can see there, new study out of, I think it was the state of Michigan owed that 40% of drivers who died in motor vehicle collisions tested positive for THC in their system, and the average blood levels for exceeding those were considered to cause impairment. Now, a lot of people have said, oh, they could have smoked in the last 30 days. Those people lack reading comprehension, including amounts that could have caused impairment. Nearly 40% of the people who died in a motor vehicle crash, now 40% of people dying with a level of THC in their blood that could cause impairment. That fundamentally is one of the core One of the core claims of this movie is that it impairs your judgment, that it makes you go crazy, that it causes violence specifically, can also cause violence and impairment that will harm others. And that was the first instance, I think that we see, you can correct me if I'm wrong, of a death related to marijuana on screen, which again, you know, this became ridiculed in later years. But as I just showed you, all from the data, unambiguously a correct claim. And so that was the first of many horrors that we would live to see.

[Griffin]

I, I, I agree and disagree with you on this point because I think that it is true that people are smoking more weed and driving and becoming worse drivers, but in the movie it makes him speed up. Weed drivers are slowing down.

[Sagar]

I think that's a meme. I think that's a meme.

[Griffin]

They're in the left hand lane, like in the fast lane, going like 50 in the 65, like, and, but like they're still getting in crashes and doing bad turns. Like they're still doing bad driving. And I hear him in la, I'm actually Waymo pilled now. I think people are so bad at driving, they've lost the privilege. Like there's no, should be, no more driving allowed. Should just be waymos because everyone's on their phone or, or high and, and I'm sorry, but I'm losing too much of my personal life to, to poor driving out here.

[Sagar]

That's fair. I mean, look, at the very least, they may not, they may have showed it incorrectly by going too fast, but their core claim that it will cause death, especially behind a motor vehicle, is correct. It was absolutely correct.

[Griffin]

And I wish they presented it as because, because he's secretly drugged. I think the, the sin here is you shouldn't drug someone before they drive, like unknowingly. And it's like this happens multiple times in the film where someone asks for a normal cigarette and then they are drugged with a marijuana cigarette, which I think was also like a big fear they were trying to push at the time. You got to really check your cigs. So that, that happens. The hidden run happens and then Jimmy kind of has his first moment of like being dementedly high a week. When we cut back to him. I've got it right here at the time code 26 minutes. But the, the film starts to have these ghastly demented faces when people are high to, to, to kind of show their transformation. Oh, wait, sorry. This is Jimmy coming home. So Jimmy's coming home and he's paranoid because he just hit someone and he's kind of high. And Mary, the, the sister, the angelic innocence, is worried about him and can tell something's wrong. So then we're treated Back to our Dr. Carol here who returns again in the middle of the film and he is talking to someone else about the horrors, horrors of marijuana. Essentially there's a few different horror stories and he mentions one woman who was caught having sex with five men. That's, that's essentially this scene. Any, any thoughts there?

[Sagar]

This will be one of the few.

[Griffin]

So I did look for that.

[Sagar]

I did look whether it causes sexual. You play it, play it.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

All right, all right, let me show you something. In 1930, the records on marijuana in the Washington office of the narcotics division scarcely filled a small folder like this.

[Griffin]

Okay, this part's good too.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

Today they filled cabinets.

[Griffin]

Yep, look at the cabinets. He's got cabinets of weed.

[Sagar]

I mean it's shocking.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

It used to be a folder devoted to marijuana records.

[Griffin]

They're being. The system is over overrun, overwhelmed.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

A 16 year old lad apprehended in the act of staging a holdup. 16 years old and a marijuana addict. Here is the most tragic case. Yes, I remember just a young boy under the influence of the drug. He killed his entire family with an accident. Then there is the most vicious type of case here in Michigan. A young girl, 17 years old, a reaper smoker, taken in a raid in the company with five young men. Here is a particularly flagrant case. Yes, I remember the newspapers.

[Griffin]

Ah, yes, of course. I'm a real head. Dr. Carol's a real head. He's seen every one of these stories.

[Sagar]

Look, that was the, one of the few claims in the movie that was not correct. It does not cause sexual privacy, which is obviously was a moral panic I guess at the time. But the ax murderer, one that tracks, that tracks going crazy and killing your entire family. That's definitely something which marijuana induced psychosis and violence as particularly causing a violent schizophrenic break. It's exactly something that could happen. And we've seen certain instances of that already here in the year in the 2020s, especially post legalization. But yes, I will admit that one thing. The film does seem very obsessed with sex, Griffin. And I think that was the Christian funding and also because that was obviously was something that they were trying to hammer home at the time, the history that we learned about the film too, about how they were trying to play it in the exploitation houses and others as kind of a draw for titillation almost, you know, for, at the time. I did think at a few instances I'm like, this is kind of a risque film for 1936. You know, I've seen what I'm trying to think of. There's that film, the Best Years of our lives from 1946. That's probably the oldest movie I've seen that I actually really love. And I do remember thinking, I'm like, oh, wow, you know, it's very conservative even. There were a few scenes even in that. But this was a much more risque film and this was made 10 years earlier than that one. But it does make sense given the, the Christian funding and eventually how it ended up playing in some of these places. Not just for titillation, but for entertainment. So it did kind of make sense in that way. The, the film is obsessed with sex in a very weird way.

[Griffin]

I think a lot of that is rooted back to. And again, something that this film doesn't really take a swing on. Like, I thought this film was going to be a lot more racist because ultimately, like a lot of the film, a lot of the anti, Well, I mean that is kind of racist in its own sense. But like the, the anti marijuana stuff in the early days was like, don't let your like white daughter smoke weed with black or Mexican guys because they're going to be loose with them. Is like a pretty popular.

[Sagar]

Was that. Yeah.

[Griffin]

You never heard that before?

[Sagar]

No, not at all.

[Griffin]

I, I, I a, I think we.

[Sagar]

Grew up in Texas. Like 40 of the people around us were met, were Latino, you know.

[Griffin]

Right. And I don't imagine your parents telling you that, but I, but I, but that is, that is a trope. And there was also this, if I'm not mistaken, them putting the H in and changing from Mara J. Juana to marijuana was some sort of attempt to make it sound Mexican or Spanish really. Because there was a large attempt to associate marijuana as all coming from Mexico.

[Sagar]

And that, well, to be fair, at that time that was true, or the vast majority of it actually was coming from Mexico.

[Griffin]

So they were trying to connect even just the actual phrase, the wordology of it, to Mexico in those senses. And I have heard about the other stuff, the sex stuff, but again, this film doesn't really take a ton of swings in that racial direction that you impurify your white daughters or what have you. So then we get to, after this, Dr. Carol enters the plot and sits down Bill because he's worried about Bill. And you know, I had to say, I wrote down in My notes here. I was like, I kind of got some respect for Dr. Carol after this scene.

[Sagar]

He's looking for his pupils.

[Griffin]

He's looking out for his pupils, and he says the right things here.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

There seems to be something wrong. What is it? You were always a fine student. You always had excellent grade. Well, I guess the work is getting a little harder, Dr. Carroll. No, no, it isn't that. Bill, I'd like to help you, but of course, I can't unless you let me.

[Sagar]

Me?

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

You're undermining your help. Well, there's nothing, Dr. Carroll, really, there isn't. I'll study harder. Honest. Honest. If you were being honest with me and honest with yourself, I'm afraid you'd tell me an entirely different story. Bill, I'm. I'm going to ask you a straightforward question, and I'd like to have a straightforward answer. Yes, sir. Isn't it true that you have perhaps unwillingly acquired a certain harmful habit through association with certain undesirable people? Well, no, Sir, I haven't, Dr. Carroll. Well, that is. You see, I'm worried about something at home. All right, my boy, we'll just have to let it go at that. But remember, if you ever want to confide in me, no one will ever be the wise.

[Griffin]

See? That was really nice.

[Sagar]

It was nice. It was sweet. That's great.

[Griffin]

He's great. He's been a great adult role model figure in his life. He's trying to be honest with him, and he says, you can come clean. And then he has a lot of grace and says, you know what? My door is always open to you.

[Sagar]

Yeah, I think that look, it captures. Again, it captures marijuana behavior correctly. Griffin, you and I, at the very least, you'll admit this. We all know a guy who was normal, started smoking weed. Weed became his entire personality, or a girl, whatever. It's just definitely both genders, and. And they just, you know, they completely drop. They become demotivated, lazy. All the tropes are true, you know, sitting around.

[IBM Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

I mean, it can.

[Sagar]

It can be running around with an old. With a. With a bad crowd. Right. I mean, that. That's ultimately what happens to our hero, to Bill, who was on drugs.

[Griffin]

And it can be that with any addiction. I think that I feel just as bad for Disney adults who go to Disneyland 15 times a year.

[Sagar]

Well, you know, my g. You know, my jihadi adults. I agree. I. It honestly could be even more expensive. It could be even more expensive.

[Griffin]

It's sick. And I'm ready to reschedule the Drug of Disney.

[Sagar]

I'll be there. I'd be right there with you, brother.

[Griffin]

I'm fine with that. So we, we keep moving on. And now we're getting to another famous meme moment. So, you know, Bill doesn't take Dr. Carroll's advice, goes back to the flop house and we get some of our. A big first, demented smoking weed. And they're having sex.

[Sagar]

Yeah, it's crazy.

[Griffin]

Everything's. Everything's getting wild. And then we've got his crazy laugh. I think he does a crazy laugh here. Okay, this is the, this is the, this is the shot. Yeah, it's almost a pained laugh. It's demented.

[Sagar]

It's a tough laugh.

[Griffin]

Yeah. It looks like he's in pain, but he is getting laid. He's getting chicks. So it's kind of. You're kind of torn. You're like, he's getting chicks, but it seems like he's in physical pain. And then we get another meme moment here. Another famous moment I wrote with Ralph in the chair in the piano here. So they're both playing the piano. It seems like they're on crack. And then here's he going, he's paranoid in the chair, just blasting.

[Sagar]

It's tragic. It's tragic.

[Griffin]

Yeah. Now, have you witnessed these behaviors from someone smoking weed saga?

[Sagar]

Well, I mean, Griffin, I, I unfortunately am in the era where I just had to witness a bunch of men playing FIFA all the time.

[Griffin]

But, you know, I could imagine that's even sicker. That's more.

[Sagar]

Oh, by the way, way worse.

[Griffin]

Sorry. Way worse.

[Sagar]

Way worse. I would have much rather been enthralled by piano dancers, the flop house. But look, I mean, what it captures this part of the film, which again is it's obsessed with sexual promiscuity. This is a setup for impairment, for sin, which will lead to our first tragic death, or, sorry, our second tragic death. And a marijuana induced violent death, unfortunately, and which ensnares our beautiful. What. How did you call her? Our Eve character.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Sagar]

And our, our unwashed, Our. Our like untainted character, innocent lamb, who is killed in an unfortunate marijuana related accident.

[Griffin]

So this. I'm going to, I'm going to skip forward to that scene because it's crazy and there's a lot to break down.

[Sagar]

But essentially it's a crazy scene.

[Griffin]

Essentially, all of the kids are at this party now. All of the. Everybody's there and Ralph is very clearly flirting with the innocent Mary here. And once again, when someone asks, Mary asks for a cigarette and she's handed a marijuana cigarette instead and doesn't know it's weed. So once again, like, I think it's like, yeah, it's bad. It's bad to drug people. It's bad to secretly drug.

[Sagar]

Bad to drug people.

[Griffin]

And I almost wish drugs. I almost wish the characters chose to smoke weed as as opposed to being secretly drug again, though.

[Sagar]

That. That is a metaphor for the marijuana industry. For the industry which is constantly pushing this stuff on you. All of the. Advertisement. All of the. You know, my wife and I, we watched Knocked up recently. Great film, great film. Love the film. But the weed propaganda is unbelievable. Just like the stoner worship. And it's shocking to think, like people, we were all just taking that in in 07.

[Griffin]

Pineapple Express.

[Sagar]

Yeah, Pineapple Express. Like, oh, just look at these chill, hilarious, fun stoners. Nothing ever goes wrong in their life. By the way, if you watch it, it's a very subversive pop film if you're looking for it. I actually think that's one of the most anti weed and pro life films ever made. Like, by far next holiday season. It's shocking to watch it. It's actually. Wow. I think it has been almost 20 years since that movie came out. It was. It was an 07. But what does she immediately do? This. This is a huge pivot to Knocked Up. She's like, you need to stop smoking weed. He had to stop smoking weed to become a father, to be a good companion to grow up. And so. But anyways, the point of it around, this is about the propaganda kind of that surrounds convincing you that smoking weed is cool. And that is what both that film and this film kind of combined together. So it's a string of nearly 70 years that. That you could see.

[Griffin]

Wow. From Reefer Madness to Knocked up spiritual sequel. So, okay, we got to. We got to break down this scene. I don't want to show a lot of the. A lot of the imagery, but essentially what happens is Ralph starts to trick Mary into smoking weed. Mary gets high, and then Ralph begins to sexually assault her, like, violently too. Like, nowhere.

[Sagar]

Yeah, like truly. It's like crazy.

[Griffin]

He's like, fighting her. And then it gets even crazier because Bill comes out and. And Bill comes out. Bill comes out after that. And Bill misinterprets the sexual assault as consensual because he's so high, which is like, exactly a crazy extra layer I didn't think I needed for the moment. But. So he's misinterpreting it as consensual, but he still breaks it up. Because he's jealous.

[Sagar]

Exactly.

[Griffin]

And he's like, get off of her.

[Sagar]

Even though he just cheated on her with Blanche, who is.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Sagar]

Has not been. Blanche has. Right.

[Griffin]

Oh, my God.

[Sagar]

Yeah, I know. I mean, that is the very 1930s of it all, is that even though he just cheated on her, he's very upset that she's cheating on. Well, he thinks that she's cheating on him even though she is being, like, violently sexually assaulted. But it leads to one of the climaxes here of our film.

[Griffin]

Yeah, he's. He's honestly like, his. Him having sex with Blanche is kind of like how in midsommar, the boyfriend gets drugged and everything. It's.

[Sagar]

It's great. It is that. I didn't think of that. You're absolutely right.

[Griffin]

So he pulls Ralph off of. Off of Mary after misinterpreting his consensual. Then Jack comes in to break up this fight that's going down. Brings out his gun. Hits. Hits him over the. Over the head. Here, let's take a watch. Wow. Now, I have to say here on the cinema angle, I did right here. Why didn't they have any music for any of these actions? Great call.

[Sagar]

You're totally right.

[Griffin]

There's just no music here, and you can really feel it. Let's take a listen. Oh, my God. No, it's Mary.

[Sagar]

That pain shot, that killed me. When I saw that, I was like, oh, my God. When that happened, I, I. They got me. I was shocked. I was totally shocked when she was killed. So she was tragically killed in this. In this scuffle when he pulls out the gun. And so, yeah, we had. I mean, a violent sexual assault just lead to a misunderstanding, lead to a murder, all within a minute and a half. And, yeah, it just shows you how. How things can quickly spiral out of control when you're on weed.

[Griffin]

And. And again, I would say that I think the part that there. That is the most connected in the film is somehow that he smoked weed and then became kind of rapey. I think that part's connected. But again, I think the murder has to do with the fact that they are in an illegal storefront for weed.

[Sagar]

Whereas, well, people smoke weed everywhere now. It does. Like, this could lead to. This leads to violence out in public as well as in private.

[Griffin]

But because of its illegality, they're resorted to being around unsavory characters that have guns and can kill them. And so I think that the murder is related to independent drug dealing, which is what happens when it's illegal. So that all happens and then it's about to get way crazier because now Jack is going to try to frame our protagonist Bill for the murder. And Bill is so high, he thinks he killed Mary.

[Sagar]

Marijuana induced psychosis.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[Sagar]

So forgetful memory.

[Griffin]

So he like pours some water on him and basically is like, you kill her. And he totally buys it. Very tragic.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

What happened. You killed her.

[Griffin]

You killed her. Oh, okay. All right. So now they have framed poor Bill. And there is this whole long thing with this trial. During this court trial, Dr. Carroll shows up and rats on Bill.

[Sagar]

Yes. And.

[Griffin]

And all of my goodwill that Dr. Carroll had earned in the past scene where he said, you can come to me. You can tell me anything. He breaks his doctor's oath of confidentiality and rats Bill out in court for being addicted.

[Sagar]

Mary was killed. She. He didn't know. He was protecting her legacy. He had to speak up. Up. He saw the evil drug had rot this woman, an innocent life was taken and he had to speak up for her. And he did. He didn't know what he was doing was wrong. I think Dr. Carroll did the right thing.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[Sagar]

Wow.

[Griffin]

That's a good T shirt. So now there's a lot of drama. You know, there's some. There's some jury stuff. It's all kind of boring at this point.

[Sagar]

It was a bad stretch of the movie. The. The trial didn't make a lot of sense, especially the jury part where they have this part where we won't bore you with it. But there was a reluctant juror.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Sagar]

And it wasn't really explained why.

[Griffin]

It's like 12 angry men in like 15 seconds.

[Sagar]

Yeah, exactly. It was. It was just a bad part of the story. Like it didn't. It didn't fit. And he ends up caving and voting. Anyways. So anyway, yeah, we. We get through the trial where Dr. Carroll reveals Bill's marijuana use and kind of his distrust. But then that takes us back to our unsavory characters who are continuing up their shenanigans.

[Griffin]

Yes. And we're about to get to that. I did have one question for you in the jury scene. Sagar, did you notice the noose imagery in the jury scene?

[Sagar]

I did not.

[Griffin]

Okay, I'm going to play right here. But here's what happens. They're talking in the jury scene, and then there's this hanger for a light, like a pull down string light here. And it turns. Turns into a news.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

That wasn't the first time he was there.

[Sagar]

Oh, wow. You see that Yeah, I did.

[Griffin]

It's, it's the most artistic.

[Sagar]

Creepy.

[Griffin]

It's creepy, isn't it?

[Sagar]

That is creepy.

[Griffin]

It's the most like avanguard moment in the film. And I was, I was struck by it. I was struck by deeply.

[Sagar]

I, you know, that I, I, I, I, I noticed it, but it didn't, I, it, it didn't even stick like it, I wasn't like, oh, yeah, it's a. But, oh, makes sense. Makes sense. Well, I think it shows you the stakes of the jury decision there, of finding him guilty, which they were gonna hang. They're gonna hang him when they do find him guilty.

[Trashy Ad Voice]

The holidays are about giving. Even your closet deserves to feel lighter. Here's the thing. Cleaning out your closet is one thing. Actually getting those bags out the door into a drop off spot, that's where it falls apart. Well, not this season. Trashy Unlimited members for a limited time get $10 dollars off the courier delivery option in the Uber app to have their take back bags picked up right from home. Here's how it works. Fill your take back bag with clothes you're done with. Register your bag, claim your $10 off discount, then schedule a pickup from your door. A courier will take your bag straight to UPS for you. No loading up the car, no waiting in line, no I'll do it after the holidays. Wishful thinking. Just get schedule, hand it off and you're done. It's closet cleanout without the errand. It's the gift of space without the guilt. Skip the trip. Clean out without going out. Limited time. Only terms apply. Learn more@trashyio.

[IBM Ad Voice]

So you're telling me that the AI that's meant to make everyone's job easier to manage just adds more to manage? On top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages? Funny how that works. Any business can add AI. IBM helps you scale and manage AI to change how you do business. Let's create Smile to Business IBM.

[Sophie Cunningham]

This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at. Don't sleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lily A Medicine company.

[Griffin]

Okay, so now we're getting to like the dark night of the soul part of the, of the film here essentially. You know, the, the bad kids, Ralph and Blanche are still hanging out at the flop house. They're worried that they're going to get called into court or what have you. And the drug dealer Jack is talking to his boss and his boss essentially is saying, hey, why don't you silence and kill all these kids so that no one can, can talk in court? Is that essentially what happened?

[Sagar]

Is that fair to say? That's a good, good, yeah.

[Griffin]

So there, there, there's again, I wrote, I wrote no music in these scenes, which is weird. But there's also two iconic moments here that are constantly referenced. There is this like more demented paranoia. Like Ralph is really losing his mind here as we can see.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

I've gotta see Jack. We can't let that kid hang.

[Griffin]

They do more piano. And this is the famous piano scene.

[Sagar]

Yeah, this is a wild scene where.

[Griffin]

He goes, he goes faster, faster. Which again, not something you typically hear a stoner say. Like again, now listen, I've been around.

[Sagar]

Psychosis hits people in different ways.

[Griffin]

Yeah. I just from my own experiences. This reminds me of some, some more cocaine related incidents. Now that is probably one of the most iconic images in, in the history. Like one of the memes that you see is this guy so covering his face, freaking the out. You'll just see that all over the place. Yes. All over the Internet. He's grabbing his face. He can't, he can't. He doesn't even know what's going on anymore. And then of course we get to the drug dealers who are coming in. It gets really, it gets really convoluted. So we're not going to hit every moment of it. But the drug dealers come in, they try to silence Ralph and then Ralph ends up beating one of the drug dealers to death with a stick.

[Sagar]

Yes, he beats Jack to death with a stick. Which is like a moment of karmic justice because Jack was actually the person who shot Mary. And Ralph wanted to rat Jack out and didn't want Bill ultimately to swing. But it was pretty violent. Like it was a violent death that he beats him there on the camera. And it tries to find redemption ultimately with what's her name? Is it May? With May. The police all bust in after the death and May decides to tell the police that actually Bill did not kill Mary, that it was Jack. And she has a tearful kind of moment where she confesses the truth. But then as she's consumed by her own guilt.

[Griffin]

Play the moment.

[Sagar]

Yeah, we'll play the moment. All right.

[Griffin]

She's consumed by her own guilt and begins walking down a hallway in probably one of the most famous scenes in cinema history. Let's take a watch. The good times are flashing by. Just going through the whole film again. I think it's pretty beautifully shot. Yeah.

[Sagar]

The window and just how. How we get to that window is crazy.

[Griffin]

W. And I love the reaction from the lady there.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

The.

[Griffin]

The two hands.

[Sagar]

Ah, a little ham fisted. But, you know, very of the moment for its time.

[Griffin]

I thought now my entire life knowing the film only through memes. I thought that the film was insinuating that she got high and it made her jump out a window.

[Sagar]

Right? No, exactly right. It's not true.

[Griffin]

Guilt.

[Sagar]

It was the guilt. Although as we've said, I do believe it was a marijuana induced.

[Griffin]

A residue. A residue.

[Sagar]

She had gone crazy. And because of that she could not handle the consequences both of her actions. And she had marijuana induced psychosis which caused her to commit suicide. Which by the way, tragically, and we can get to this later on when I put up some of the links, is actually something that has been medically and scientifically proven to be real marijuana induced psychosis leading to suicide. Tragic. By the way, you know, suicide hotline and all of that. If anybody is struggling right now, do not use ChatGPT as we cover on our show. But yes, I would say what that that's. That's the real. That's the. The last big moment before the film ends.

[Griffin]

Yeah. And we do ended by Dr. Carol as the end of the Greek chorus where he gives the final line and breaks the fourth wall. Let's take a final listen to that.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

My favorite possibility of averting other tragedies. Like we must work untiringly so that our children are obliged to learn the truth. Because it is only through knowledge that we can safely protect them. Failing this, the next tragedy may be that of your daughter or your son or your.

[Griffin]

Or yours or your. Tell your children. Tell your children.

[Sagar]

Perfect.

[Griffin]

We're telling them. We're telling them right now. I think.

[Sagar]

Yeah, if you guys have kids, you should tell them.

[Griffin]

So my. We'll get. I want to get into your facts. My big picture takes from this are. It was a little boring at times, but it was also. I felt like if I'm approaching it as a sci fi zombie horror movie. I think there are some beautiful shots. I think there are some bizarre acting befitting of a horror movie of like a Zombie infection that fits for that time period. So on those merits I kind of enjoyed more of the elements of the film than I expected. But ultimately I think the argument the film accidentally makes, and maybe it was just for its time, but that to me the criminalization and the lack of a, of a storefront or government operated, operated space for people to safely purchase and use marijuana leads to murder, sexual assault and, and all the other things.

[Sagar]

I think that's a fair point. This. First of all, let me just wrap like, like you said, It's 68 Minutes, a short film. It's kind of crazy to have a 68 minute film which drags. But I think also again though I want to be fair, people cannot conceive of how pre phones a lot of movies were long or they just included stuff which made not a whole lot of sense. Have you ever watched the Deer Hunter, Griffin? Yeah, yeah, I watched A Deer Hunter recently. Oh my God, man, it drags like for a, for a classic film. There are some long lingering scenes which I'm like yo, this easily could have cut. I think it'd be 2 hours and 20 minutes and it would have ripped. But that's not, that's not the point of the film and that's fine. My point is just that, you know, in, especially at this time when a lot of the reason people even went to the movies was just a kill an hour. They didn't have television. All they had at home was books. They had nothing radio. Right. And so they wanted to be visually entertained. The stuff that drags for us doesn't, didn't necessarily drag for them. But yeah, in its time I think it was probably better at its time more appreciated. But for us in the moment, there are definitely times when I wouldn't say it's nearly that successful capturing your attention which is ultimately, you know, to be entertained. Like that's the purpose of a film. Now again, and I want to put some of these facts up here. You already put the one up there about driving, but let me.

[Griffin]

Oh, which one you want next?

[Sagar]

I think they deleted.

[Griffin]

I got them. Which one you want next?

[Sagar]

Okay, the next one that I wanted to put up here is. So one of the central themes about it was Billy, his he becomes stupider, he becomes less reliable. Let's put the one up about marijuana reduces iq. I just want to say that every, every claim that I'm making here is backed up by multiple scientific studies. It is empirically and statistically now proven that long term marijuana use, especially when started young, dramatically by almost 5 points reduces IQ in the middle to middle to long term. And as they say there in middle, in midlife, you can see it whenever you're controlling even for other factors.

[Griffin]

The second thing just on this article right here, important point. The average content of THC in smoked whole plant products has risen from 1% to 4% in the 1970s to 15 to 30% today's cannabis dispensaries. And that I think is like actually a pretty, for lack of a better word, potent argument.

[Sagar]

Yes, I mean this, this is, look, the film may have dramatized, you know, what would have been smaller reactions. You wouldn't have seen it as much at the time. But in the age of high potency thc, that's why I'm like this film is more relevant than ever. Almost everything they say is actually even more relevant to our lives today in relation to societal use of wheat. The second thing I do want to show you is about the crazy behavior. Can you put the one about high THC products and ER visits? So there's this new thing called Scrom Scromming which I haven't tried it yet. Yeah. So you can see ER doctors sounding the alarm on a fast growing cannabis illness. Cannabis induced violent vomiting. It leads, it can lead to multi day stays in the hospital. This is absolutely a result of high potency THC but also of teenage youth which again is up especially in states where legalization has happened. The next one that I do want to put up here is it causes violence and suicide. So put the scientific American up there just about. The link between cannabis and psychosis in teens is real. Which you know one of the reliance of this film is that it does cause people to go crazy. It's literally in the name reefer badness. Yeah, it's, it's empirically correct like Reefer madness is a proven phenomenon, a medically proven known now phenomenon where it can induce not only psychosis like temporarily but it can cause literal psychotic breaks and especially induce people to become schizophrenic. The suicide and mental illness rate of course, or violence rate of course also with that population is dramatically higher than the rest of the general population. I've got the suicide risk one there next Griffin, if you want the suicide risk that, that it's labeled. This is a PubMed study which came out about the increased risk of suicide especially with high potency THC marijuana use. So yep, you can go and you can see it in first episode psychosis. You can go, you can read all of these, we'll put links down in the study to all the studies there for yourselves. And finally, this is one where about the cause of like mass violence that this drug has induced upon us. You can put my tweet there, but I mean you can go and fact check this if you would like put the one called mass shootings about all of the mass shooters just in the last five years who are linked to Merrill or seven years, I guess I should say. So the Parkland shooter, Nicholas Cruz, I will remind you all, he testified in open court that he was quote, smoking a lot of weed at the time that he conducted his shooting. The Texas church shooter was not just positive for thc, positive for very high levels of thc. The Minneapolis shooter who we saw recently, this was the transgender one what blamed vaping weed in their own journal and also worked at a weed store. And then finally this most recent ice shooter was a self professed weed and gaming addict. Okay, so I just want to show again some of.

[Griffin]

Let's leave leave gaming out of it.

[Sagar]

Please leave gaming. We will not leave gaming out because weed and gambling or sorry, wheat gaming. Yeah, weed and gaming go together like this. As I noted about the FIFA comparison earlier, it's all about numbing the senses about cheap dopamine. But ultimately I think that, yeah, I mean the core film, like as somebody again, who's. So who's. Who's dug so deep into all the dangers of weed, it. Other than the sexual promiscuity, every single claim that they make is backed up by science. And if. If anything is even worse today than it would have been back in the 1930s. And that's why ultimately it's a tragedy what happened to this film. Because this film became satire. Right. As you said in Wikipedia, it became Reefer Madness became a joke. Anybody warning about we. I can't tell you how often I get this. If you warn about weed. Oh, Reefer Madness. I'm like, well, we all just went through it. Reefer Madness is correct. Like its core claims are correct. Now, Griffin, I think you have a fair point about legalization and about regulation. But. And by the way, even my. Our good friend Ryan Grim will admit this. Ryan was a decriminalize all drugs guy. Ryan agreed with me that the way that legalization has rolled out, especially in a place like Oregon where we had decriminalization at one point of even hard drugs was a enforcement and societal disaster. It led to.

[Griffin]

For what reasons?

[Sagar]

Well, because all of the promises of legalization did not end up happening. People said we would have more regulation. False. Instead, what's happened is the Wild west high potency THC advertising linked and targeted towards children. No societal norms that exist around alcohol. And instead, you know, what's the message? It's chill. It's not chill. It's just simply not. This is a drug with a lot of trade offs. We don't have any, any societal enforcement like even around cigarettes. If you smoke cigarettes around children universally, everyone's gonna say you're an asshole. For some reason though, in any public park in this country or on the streets of, excuse me, in New York City or anywhere else, if you smoke weed, it's chill. You're, you're, you're such a prick if you say anything about it. And that's why our cities reek of weed. And of course weed is also leads to antisocial behavior, which is why becomes even more and more normalized and you end up smelling it everywhere. It also smells bad. That's a subjective thing, but it does smell bad.

[Griffin]

Weed smokers should be more courteous with.

[Sagar]

But they're not. It's inherent to their condition. It's inherent to their condition that they're not.

[Griffin]

They used to smoke cigarettes in restaurants. Now cigarette smoking is kind of something you do off in the corner or 100%.

[Sagar]

No, you're right, Griffin. And, but that's, but that gets to my point is that juxtaposition is that everybody treats it as not that big of a deal. And unfortunately this film was a big part in its, you know, revival from the 1970s, 1980s. I remember hearing this in Dare, like, oh my God, these are all lies. You know, this is just Reefer madness. This is just Reefer Madness talking points. And yeah, I mean, one of the goals in my review was just to show you like, no, everything they said was right. Almost, almost everything that they said in this movie was right. And so now that Trump, this gets kind of to the policy, perhaps part of our show. Trump wants to reschedule marijuana schedule three. This just is going to pour gasoline on the fire of everything that I, you know, there's going to be. Everyone's like, oh, then we'll regulate it. Nope, not happening. Instead, he's giving massive tax breaks to multibillion dollar companies which sell weed all over America. Venture capital, Wall street, the pharmaceutical industry, they're salivating, salivating over the rescheduling of marijuana. They want to pump billions more into this industry, sell you as much as possible, make you addicted. Right now, daily weed use outpaces daily alcohol use. And yeah, I mean we've, and and, and listen, I mean, again, to get to society, if you drink every single day, you're an alcoholic. Everyone agrees with that. You have a problem, dude or gal, if you drink every single day. If you cannot go a day without having a drink, you have a problem. If you smoke weed every day, it's fine. Oh, that's chill, normal, just taking the. No, you have a problem. You are addicted to weed. And unfortunately, again, like all vice industries, the, and everything, every single thing I'm saying here can be fact checked. Marijuana, in particular, its users, the highest amount of users are daily users. That might make sense, but what I'm trying to say is it has a much larger portion of the marijuana user base are daily users than people who are, quote unquote, casual drinkers. There is something about this drug which in particular leads to a heavy reliance on it by the people who use it and who end up consuming it on a large basis, which is very profitable to these companies. And that's their ultimate goal. And Trump's ultimate goal now is to vastly enrich the scum who. It's not just weed, it's gambling. It's all vice, you know, related industries. And, you know, to get back to the alcohol point, we do not have the same norms around weed that we do with alcohol or even cigarettes. I mean, you can't advertise cigarettes. And yet you can advertise. You can't, you know, you can't advertise or, you know, the Marlboro man commercials and all that stuff that existed, but you can do it for gambling and, and even on marijuana. No, no, but what part of what I'm getting at here with weed is that. But even today, you know, what we're seeing is this billion dollar industry just create as many ways as possible to make you high all the time. Weed soda, weed gummies, weed this, you know, lollipops. It's different strains, all of the craziest. I mean, at one point in Colorado, there were more weed shops than McDonald's or subways, right? There was like a weed shop on every other corner. And this is actually the case where in more rural areas, down market areas, we talk about the dangers of Dollar Tree or any of these, you know, payday loan lenders, alcohol, you know, but yeah, you, that's, it's funny, people think I defend alcohol. So alcohol in a poor neighborhood, you're scumbag. I, I'm happy to say that. But also, if you sell weed in a poor area, you're also a scumbag. And. Or Lottery tickets or any of these other deeply exploitative things. But the thing is, is that with almost all of those, most people can agree that those are bad behaviors. It's only weed that we seem to have this carve out on. So if anything, like I. That's my major goal is to stigmatize it. It is to re. Stigmatize weed, porn, gambling. I want these things to be thought of in the same way that we think about all other vices that we know are horrible for you and not saying you should be locked up without.

[Griffin]

Disagreeing on any of the individual negative things that you are connect to marijuana. Like, I think part of the reason why people have a more negative view of heroin or alcohol is because people get drunk, come home and beat their wives. People like drink and drive and crash their cars probably at a higher rate than they smoke weed and drive.

[Sagar]

Well, that's. That's not yet proven, Griffin. Unfortunately, it's not statistical wide data on that.

[Griffin]

And people are drinking less too, so that actually might shift.

[Sagar]

So high driving might actually be more dangerous than drunk driving.

[Griffin]

So I think societally it makes sense that like, people have experienced larger negative effects than some of the more invisible things like, oh, he's depressed and doesn't work as hard now, or whatever.

[Sagar]

Yeah, but that's not the only thing I just noticed. So you talked about people and it's also.

[Griffin]

And the lethality of the drug. So for instance, you can drink enough to die. You, you can start to get there with like the article you brought up where, you know, it is having people go to the hospital. Yeah, we're getting there with like a few cases, but those are like, those are not the, the large majority in the terms of science that we. Okay, but let's be fair then you like. But anytime you drink like X amount, you know you're going to the hospital. That's not necessarily true for everyone with wheat.

[Sagar]

Yeah, that's true. You can get alcohol poisoning. It certainly can. But the number of people who drink themselves to death is a statistically very, very small portion of the people who drink. Right. So that's the same type of argument. I mean, if you line it up, I've just showed you it can lead to mass psycho. It can literally lead to millions and millions of people. Not literally lead to. It already has led to millions of people going crazy and committing violence. Like this is happening. It already is happening on the shooters.

[Griffin]

You pulled up, so you named the four shooters there. And my instant thought was, okay, that's four people. Someone there's a shooting every day.

[Sagar]

Like to me, I said mass shooters specifically. Okay, first of all. Right, well, okay, let's let me borrow from your left frame is everyone's like, yeah, but nobody ever wants to talk about young white men who commit these shootings.

[Griffin]

No, don't make me woke. I'm not woke.

[Sagar]

I'm just saying. I'm just saying watch out. The leftists always like to do that when we're talking, talking about crime statistics. Like, well, there's something in particular about young white. I'm just pointing you out. It's not just that they're young and white, it's a lot of them smoke weed. Okay, look, it's not just that.

[Griffin]

I can find four of them. Four of them.

[Sagar]

We don't have a huge sample size of mass shooters.

[Griffin]

There's so many shooters. What are we talking about?

[Sagar]

Okay, well no, no, I said mass shooters.

[Griffin]

But what's, what's mass? Like Las Vegas.

[Sagar]

But fine, fine, fine, fine. Let's then.

[Griffin]

Because to me, I'm like, oh, they all also had cereal that morning.

[Sagar]

Okay, it's like, okay, but, but that's not causal. That's not causal. Especially whenever it comes to violence and to that. But if we want to go down that road, let's go look at crime statistics that involve marijuana. It is a hu. Like in the same way that you said alcohol can lead to beating their wife. Marijuana is involved in an unbelievable amount of crimes. 20 to 25% just of drug related crimes are involving marijuana. Now drug obviously is usually connected to violent. They don't release that means in their.

[Griffin]

Blood system like that's in their, it's.

[Sagar]

In their body or how they classify it, what they're saying, what's related.

[Griffin]

Because it sounds like this is like a, an antibiotic incident in New York related.

[Sagar]

Then what's alcohol related? Right, so that's what I mean. If somebody drinks drunk, beats their wife, maybe they were an. It was going to do it anyways. Are we going to blame it on alcohol? I'm happy to. Okay. Especially if alcohol is involved. I have no problem with that classification. But then I'm going to borrow that same classification over here for myself. Unfortunately, we don't release it whenever it comes just to violent incidents. But we definitely know that with drug related incidents it's going to be connected. Now the same thing though gets to, you know what you were saying there about shooting. I mean I just gave people the statistics about psychosis and it is an empirical fact that people who unfortunately are going through psychotic episodes are Dramatically more likely to commit murder and violence. I mean, we've more recently had that, the stabbing of that girl that was on the train by somebody who was schizophrenic. All right. I mean, this is unfortunately, you know, is a characteristic in some cases of violent schizophrenia. This is something that is a well documented thing. Now if we're going to have a.

[Griffin]

Drug, I'd agree with that. And I think that our main point of agreement that is that weed has changed. I don't, I don't think that like the level of THC and weed when this film was made was important enough to do a scare campaign. And I don't think they knew that it was going to be like five times as powerful back then. But now I do think that they're like, the weed is probably too strong. It's like almost like a different drug than even what I did back in like high school and college or whatever. So I do buy that there are like new, new cases of psychosis and that the conversation like is evolving and changing because of the strength of the drug. But then I think the question always comes to like, what are, what should be done about it? Like, what are your solutions that are, are fair? And is it really just like this, the sense of the film to just tell your children, like, is that as far as you would want to go?

[Sagar]

No, absolutely not. Again, I'll meet the liberals halfway. You guys want legalization. You're not ready for the regime under which we're going to live under. Then we are going to live under a capped amount of THC per product. We are going to live with none of these bullshit products which peddle to children lollipops, drinks and all of this other ridiculous nonsense. We are going to live with taxpayer funded, funded specifically like addiction clinics and others which is going to monitor any of that? Yeah, no, but, but this. No you may. The people who buy weed bitch and moan. Anytime somebody actually taxes it, they don't want it. Like at the end of the day, what we've witnessed with weed and gambling legalization is ultimately the way that it all falls is no regulation wild west and that the users themselves become so addicted they turn into lobbyists for the industry. So for example, and you know, I guess I'll call out barstool here, but I saw multiple personalities, even though I have some friends over there who were lobbying against gambling taxes. The whole point was, yeah, we were going to legalize gambling so we could tax it, but no, even taxing it is something that they began to revolt Against. And this happens with weed. If we move to the regime that I just talked about, where. And also if, by the. If you smoke it in public, you're getting a ticket. They get a couple more. Just like with drunk driving, you get a couple. You're going to jail. I support that 100%. You should get an infraction. You cannot disturb the public peace by constantly just going around and smoking. And then we need the societal.

[Griffin]

I don't object to that either.

[Sagar]

Right. So. But that's what I'm trying to say is.

[Griffin]

And I think, I think when people hear criticisms like yours, they think of the war on drugs. They think of, like, all of those failures, and they think that you kind of want to recreate it. But that's not what I'm hearing.

[Sagar]

No, not at all. I'm saying I, I will meet you all halfway. I've even said this about drugs, hard drugs. I go, okay, fine, but if you get shot, if you're shooting up, if you have a needle in your arm outside of my house, which happens, you're going to jail. You are going to jail. If you have a needle in your arm. If you are on a public bench.

[Griffin]

And you're like a rehab. What about a rehab center?

[Sagar]

Well, but, no, but that's. That's kind of what I'm getting at, is you're. You. This is like the Portuguese model. You are going to mandatory rehab. And not the bull. Not the bullshit rehab we have in, In America where it's only 30 days. I'm talking about one to two years. You're going to. You are going to rehab. In this case, I'm talking about heroin and fentanyl, which has one of the highest recidivism rates of all time.

[Griffin]

Really? Two years, That's a, That's a long rehab. Two years.

[Sagar]

Long time to rewire your brain. It's unfortunate. That's why you shouldn't use this shit. But what I'm. What I'm getting at, that is fine. Like, we can legalize it if you guys want to, but we are going to live under a very strict regime about how this all works. And unfortunately, what we have seen with the mass libertine culture that we live in is that what ends up happening is legalization with none of the enforcement. And that's why I think we're living in the worst of all worlds. And by the way, this is what I want to say. The public is on my side.

[Dr. Carol (Character)]

It.

[Sagar]

Because it was only three years ago that we had almost 80% for support of Legalization of marijuana. The most recent Gallup polling shows a 13% drop just in one year for legalizing weed from last year just amongst Republicans and already falls with Democrats and with independents. As we continue to see what I think the hellscape, you know, that we all live in, you're just going to see that number continue to go down. You're seeing the same thing with sports, gambling. I mean, and this is why, again, people think, I want to ban all gambling. I want to ban weed. I've never said that. I think if you want to smoke weed in your house, as long as that smoke is not going into other people's homes and is not, you're not violent and you're not psychotic.

[Griffin]

I'm ruminating with Sagar. I'm ruminating with Sagar and I'm blowing it under the door.

[Sagar]

It's a truly private experience. So be it, I guess. Although I still think it's bad. But, you know, it's a free country.

[Griffin]

I think those people wouldn't disagree with a lot of that.

[Sagar]

Yeah, but they do, though, see this Operationally, they do. People riot when you say, no, you can't smoke weed in public. No, you can't smoke weed around children. That's the other thing. Be designated things around children, around where children gather. I. You know, where I live. Oh, my God, you'll walk your kid. You're gonna smell weed down at the park.

[Griffin]

Park.

[Sagar]

It happens all the time. It ha. Every nat. You and I know that national parks. I love my national parks. There's always some of them smoking weed out on a trail or something. It's just one of those things where for some reason we all seem to think it's fine. So I would want massive enforcement, massive regulation and, and changes to our society. But I know the country that we.

[Griffin]

Live, but doesn't even seem like the regulations that you're asking for are. Are that massive. You're essentially asking for us to treat it like cigarettes, where you can buy cigarettes, but there are warnings. Kids can't do it. It can't look like a candy lollipop and it can't be advertised to people. And there's a social taboo or a legal to actually smoke in parks. Is that as far as you go?

[Sagar]

Yeah, that's. That's that. I really don't.

[Griffin]

Wait, then I think the battle is over.

[Trashy Ad Voice]

Raw.

[Sagar]

I forgot. I forgot the. I forgot the last part. Nonprofit. It has to be nonprofit or, and, or government controlled, state controlled, like we do here about liquor in Virginia. You cannot allow for Profit industry, which is the backstop of all of this, is the pri or we can, but then the profit margin is going to be capped and there's going to be price control completely across the board. Nonprofit is the only way to keep the grubby hands of the Wall street venture capital, which is what's happened right now. Like I said, this is a multi billion. One of the things that weed people like to say is that big pharma and all these people are lobbying. No, they're not, you idiots. They will do anything to get you addicted. If you're so dumb that you think that medical marijuana is a thing, they'll, they'll sell it to you at a, at a high price. Oh, should we go into that one? That's the last one. This one that just came out. A massive new study. I'll send you the link about medical marijuana, which of course we've been hearing for years about all of the, the medicinal benefits. And one time we heard a story about a guy with seizures and weed just happened to stop it. Well, everyone that's. There's this thing called evidence. There's this thing called evidence.

[Griffin]

I want to be in the room where they're like, let's, like the guy's having the seizure and they're like, let's, let's get him high.

[Sagar]

And unfortunately, you know, for people, what has now come out from jama, one of the most respected medical. Medical. What's it called? One of the most medical journals that exists. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. Oh, oh. Review of Medical Cannabis Use finds little evidence of benefit. Researchers found a chasm between the health reasons for which the public seeks out cannabis and what the gold standard science actually shows about its effects. For those who say, I need weed to sleep. Sleep. False weed makes your sleep. False weed. I use weed to make my anxiety go down. False weed increases the amount of your anxiety. By the way, can I say this about alcohol too? The amount of people who are always talking about, I just need a drink to take the edge off. The evidence is in now. Your anxiety that you're trying to cure with alcohol will actually increase beyond where it was previously as a result of you using alcohol, all drowning or trying to smoke your problems away or shooting up your problems away is a fool's errand and it doesn't work. And that's. Look, you know, there's a lot. There's so much evidence about different lifestyle things that you can do. You don't have to turn to medication. I Don't even want people to turn to medication. You know me. Exercise alone is dramatically more proven to decrease anxiety to even More so than SSRIs for depression. So what I'm just trying to show you all is that this culture that we live in is just all about make multi billion dollar industries. They're trying to sell you something, they want you addicted. The more anxious you are, the more weed you smoke, which more anxious you are, which is the more weed that you smoke. And they're the ones that profit. And that's why, you know, the solutions that I laid out. I would love to live in a country like that, but I, I just don't think it's going to happen because operationally in America that's not how it goes. We legalize, you know, we legalize, we make it a for profit business. Massively exploitative. This is what happens with gambling, this happens with weed, it's happening with pornography, happened with alcohol for many years before we did anything about. It happened with, with cigarettes, you know, as well. And it took, I mean, Jesus, it took decades, you know, really for the public and for, for laws to all kind of come together and actually try and move in a different direction. So yeah, I mean, I think I will get there. Yeah, go ahead.

[Griffin]

I mean, sit, sit like into the culture point or what have you. I think this, this might be a rise for optimism for you, but I think that in cinematic media culture around weed, weed is actually not as cool now. Like the, like the early days of like the stoner comedies are kind of like lame now and it's like if weed is your whole thing, like it's actually kind of, kind of lame. Like it's not like, like if you're obsessed with weed and have like a Rick and Morty bong and like it's what you're all about. Like that, that, that has a, that has kind of like a cultural shelf life in my opinion currently. Like there used to be like, you know, on Broad City, they used to be smoking weed all the time. You don't really see that in like the, the more current modern culture. So maybe that's a sign that like once it became more legal, it became less cool. I specifically remember on an episode of Bill Maher, it was either Bill Maher or like CNN or something, but Zach Galifianakis like pulls out a joint and like smokes it on tv and it was like a big crazy moment that was like, whoa, he just did that. If he did that today, I think people would stun on him.

[Sagar]

You're a lo.

[Griffin]

Think they would, they would make fun of him for doing that. So that is a sign that culture. Culture changes.

[Sagar]

Perhaps it's less, but Stephen Colbert, when he just quit cbs, did a splashy magazine cover where he was smoking a joint at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

[Griffin]

We can both agree that guy's to smoking too much weed.

[Sagar]

Yeah, he's in particular.

[Griffin]

He's.

[Sagar]

He's much weed.

[Griffin]

He's in a psychosis.

[Sagar]

So, yeah, that's my, my final plea. Stay off the weed. That's the point of this movie. I'm surprised.

[Griffin]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm surprised that I think I. After sussing stuff out, I think a lot of the audience would probably agree with you that it should be regulated closer to cigarettes that people shouldn't do in the parks, and that it's preferable for it to be heavily regulated than illegal, like we see in the film. And have there be drug guys lurking around high schools.

[Sagar]

Yeah, well, I think that's ever present, unfortunately. I think that will always. But there will always be an undesirable element at high schools.

[Griffin]

So what do you, what, how do we rate the film? Let's. Let's end this movie review. What, what would you rate this film.

[Sagar]

Purely as a film?

[Griffin]

On, on the letterbox? What are you giving it? Maybe, maybe for. Because, you know, films are. Aren't just the, the content itself, but its impact.

[Sagar]

I get 3.3.5 out of 5.3.5 out of 5. Only because of the impact. If I was grading it purely, like, as a movie, I'd probably give it like a two. Two out of five. Just because so many of it, so much of it drags and it can be a little bit convoluted. But I guess we have to grade it on a curve, like I said. I mean, this, like, learning that it was done by a silent film director actually made it click where I'm like, oh, that's why it's so choppy at times. You know, it doesn't flow necessarily, but, you know, you got to cut people a great break. This was almost a hundred years ago that this film was made, so. Yeah, but that, you know, in the modern era, I don't think it holds up as a film necessarily, but it definitely has. It definitely gives us something to think about, like in terms of the themes that. And the, the problems that it tries to highlight and its major cultural impact. Okay.

[Griffin]

And I, I didn't know what star to give it. So, folks, if you've made it this far at the end of this interview. This one's just for the. For the deep cut fans. I'm giving it one big bong rip for Sagar.

[Sagar]

All right, all right. I like it. I like it. Not that I know what any of that means. Thank you guys for watching, whoever watched this. Seriously, thank you. We, at the very least, we're doing this for us because we enjoyed the hell out of it. Griffin, we should do more. We should do more movie reviews Knocked up next year.

[Griffin]

I'm excited to do Knock up next year.

[Sagar]

I'm telling you, it's a good film. It's. It's good. It's good. It holds up. Yeah.

[Griffin]

After 20 years, folks, all the links to Sagar studies will be in the video description here. And we hope that you are all gathering around the correct tree. The Christmas tree.

[Sagar]

That's right.

[Griffin]

This holiday season.

[Sagar]

That's right.

[Griffin]

Happy Holidays.

[Trashy Ad Voice]

Decluttering is everything. It clears your space, your mind, and it can give you shopping power. With Trashy. Just buy a trashy bag, fill it with anything you no longer need, then ship it free and earn rewards points instantly. Earn points even faster when you shop exclusive trashy deals and redeem them for gift cards to brands you love, or even donate them to charity. It's never been easier to turn clutter into shopping power. Get started today at Trashy IO that's T R A S H I E.

[Sophie Cunningham]

I O this is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or osa, in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snore loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company at CVS.

[Trashy Ad Voice]

It matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need us, day or night, and we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded. It matters that CVS is here to fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and, yeah, healthy snack. At cvs, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So Visit [e-mail] or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location.

[Sophie Cunningham]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Trashy Ad Voice]

Guaranteed Human.