Through the years, Hollywood has had a combined relationship with hashish. Portrayals have run the gamut from weed because the satan’s lettuce, in a position to break your life and destroy your thoughts after only a single puff, to a useful, life-giving MacGuffin.
As a result of American audiences have such wide-ranging attitudes in the direction of weed— in line with the Pew Analysis Middle, 57% of adults suppose hashish needs to be legalized for each leisure and medical use, 32% suppose it needs to be legalized for medical use solely, and 11% suppose it shouldn’t be legalized in any respect— screenwriters can regulate the way in which they use it as a story machine.
“Dazed and Confused” will get it proper by treating hashish as morally impartial and only one a part of a full life. However most of the time, they get it very, very incorrect. Right here, we’ve rounded up a number of the most unrealistic depictions of hashish in popular culture. From Emilio’s bender in “The Breakfast Club” to that iconic episode of “7th Heaven,” maintain studying for a number of the most outlandish weed-centered storylines to make it to the display screen.
“7th Heaven” or the Seventh Circle of Hell?
Let’s begin with the Seventh Heaven episode burned into each millennial’s mind: Season 2’s “Who Knew?” On this episode, a random faculty acquaintance fingers Matt (Barry Watson) a joint. Matt doesn’t smoke it, however he brings it house. Eric (Stephen Collins) finds it, sparking a full-blown investigation into which Camden baby is “involved in the drug scene.” Annie (Catherine Hicks) ultimately breaks down in tears and admits to Eric that she smoked pot “once or twice” in school.
We’ve a number of factors of challenge with this episode. First, folks aren’t working round giving weed to digital strangers who aren’t actively in search of it out. The very concept that Matt would simply be handed a joint in the midst of a faculty hallway by an individual he solely is aware of in passing is fairly preposterous.
Then, there’s the affect that this single, unconsumed joint has on the complete household. The third-degree Eric provides to each one among his children, the thinly-veiled divorce threats that come when he finds out his spouse indulged years in the past, the way in which Simon (David Gallagher) decides he hates his brother for daring to return in touch with some hashish, are all fully over-the-top reactions.
Certain, we get mother and father having considerations about their minor kids consuming hashish. However to behave like merely coming in touch with weed is similar as full-blown homicide is simply extreme and fully unrealistic in our opinion.
“The Breakfast Club’s” Wild Bender
On the opposite finish of the spectrum, there’s the smoking scene in “The Breakfast Club.” As a substitute of a white-knuckle aversion to marijuana, the detention-bound excessive schoolers are all fairly desirous to indulge. A lot in order that they gentle up proper in the midst of the varsity library, simply steps from the principal’s workplace. And it’s not only a fast puff or two subsequent to an open window, both. They smoke a lot that they hotbox a small secondary room off the library. This alone earns a giant “yeah, right” from us.
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It’s not simply the openness about weed consumption in “The Breakfast Club” that’s completely unrealistic. Jock Andrew Clark’s (Emilio Estevez) excessive additionally had us scoffing in disbelief. It’s far more in keeping with that of a tough drug than hashish. There’s shadowboxing, some off-kilter gymnastics, and, in fact, a glass-shattering scream. Which simply leads us to query, what sort of weed have been these screenwriters smoking when crafting that scene?
READ: Our Favourite Tv Episodes About Hashish
The Highway from Doobie to Lifeless is a Quick One in “90210”
“Beverly Hills, 90210” struggled to painting hashish use and its results precisely. In Season 7, the present launched Dick Harrison (Dan Gauthier), Clare’s love curiosity. After we first meet Dick, he’s a rower on the Beta Gamma Beta group, and a reasonably upstanding man. Finally, he begins smoking weed as a strategy to blow off some steam, and ten episodes later, he’s lifeless from a heroin overdose.
These episodes painting weed as a gateway drug and blame it as a lot as heroin for Dick’s overdose and loss of life. In actuality, analysis finds that far lower than half of lifetime hashish customers ever go on to strive different illicit medicine. The probability, due to this fact, of somebody progressing from substance-free to occasional hashish use to hooked on heroin within the area of simply a few weeks is extremely unlikely.
This episode isn’t simply unrealistic, it really spreads fairly a little bit of dangerous misinformation about hashish use. Much more folks discover hashish useful, in that it helps them expertise ache reduction or quiet anxious ideas, than discover it to be a gateway drug prefer it was for Dick.
The Insanity of “Reefer Madness”
In fact, no record of this kind can be full with out “Reefer Madness.” Launched within the late Nineteen Thirties, the feature-length movie is a couple of group of highschool college students who’re pressured to strive hashish by some pushy sellers. After smoking as soon as, they turn out to be addicted, and their lives spiral into catastrophe. They ultimately commit a bunch of crimes whereas excessive, together with a success and run, homicide, and tried rape.
Initially meant to show mother and father in regards to the risks of hashish use, the movie went out and in of recognition through the years. And whereas we will discover its campy and outrageous plotline form of entertaining, there’s a lot about this film that’s simply wildly unrealistic.
The concept that somebody may smoke hashish simply as soon as and get so addicted that they’d kill for it, or be part of a gang to have entry to it, has us rolling our eyes. And don’t even get us began on the hallucination plot traces. The characters within the film hallucinate virtually each time they partake, when in actuality, analysis has discovered that solely 0.47% of hashish customers expertise cannabis-associated psychotic signs.
