Drugs, Music, Madness and Government Propaganda Films
Anyone who grew up and attended a public school in the United State be it in the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties or Nineties has probably been forced to sit through government made propaganda films about the negative effects of various controlled substances. The most notorious and laughable of these films was Reefer Madness (1937) in which the government was already trying to connect marijuana, with madness, jazz music, violence and sex:
Then in 1966 from the FBI X-Files, came the classic, campy, anti LSD film I Murdered A Hot Dog (my name for the film). What high school kid could not sit through this Ed Wood type of cinematic tale and not laugh:
Then in 1998, the Nancy Reagan founded Partnership for a Drug Free America decided to scare the hell out young people and hired an unknown actress named Rachel Lee Cook to flip her wig on this public service announcement This Your Brain on Drugs (Temper Tantrum Remix):
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Here's an alternative perspective that rarely gets aired:
Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia Interview by Tom Snyder
At least Kesey is honest concede that nothing is free and acknowledges his frequent use of LSD use my have had certain unintended effects on him. Jerry Garcia, the man sitting next to him may have died because of his cocaine use but it's more likely that Garcia's love of sugar got him into the health crisis that aggravated his diabetes and ultimately killed him. . Despite the hazards of their drug use, neither Kesey nor Garcia would have been quite the same artists without the use of drugs and neither man had any regrets about that aspect of their life.
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