The
Online Reefer Madness Teaching Museum
Reefer
Madness Movie
a.k.a. The
Burning Question,
a.k.a. Tell Your
Children
Reefer Madness Movie's Listing, w/ Movie Posters
Museum Index of short
film(s) -- Reefer Madness era:
This page was provided from the Drug War Room .com
Reefer Madness (a.k.a. The
Burning Question, a.k.a. Tell Your Children)
Manufactured in 1936, this film was a precursor to
today’s equally ridiculous billion dollar anti-drug misinformation media
campaign by groups like The Partnership For A Drug Free America. Will the lies never end?
Running Time: 66 minutes
Transcript of introduction to Reefer
Madness:
The motion picture you are about to
witness may startle you.
It would not have been possible, other
wise, to sufficiently emphasize the frightful toll of the new drug menace which
is destroying the youth of America in alarmingly increasing numbers.
Marihuana is that drug -- a violent
narcotic -- an unspeakable scourge --The Real Public Enemy One!
It's 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 and incidents, while fictionized
for the purposes of this story, are based upon actual research into the results
of Marihuana 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 not have failed in its purpose....
Because the dread Marihuana may be
reaching forth next for your son or daughter....or yours...or YOURS!
I wonder how the government got such a crazy correlation between
marijuana and
"Murder! Insanity! Death!"? I bet you didn't know the
history to the word assassin.
as·sas·sin
Pronunciation: &-'sa-s&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Medieval Latin assassinus, from Arabic hashshAshIn,
plural of hashshAsh one who smokes or chews hashish, from hashIsh
hashish
Date: circa 1520
1 capitalized : one of a secret order of
Muslims that at the time of the Crusades terrorized Christians and
other enemies by secret murder committed under the influence of
hashish
2 : a person who commits murder; especially :
one who murders a politically important person either for hire or from
fanatical motives |
But read on because there is controversy in
this translation...
ETYMOLOGY OF ASSASSIN
In the 'History of Alamut' there are at least four
etymologies given for the word assassin.
- User of hashish
- Follower of Hassan
- Rowdy people
- Asas
Below I've included excerpts from various sources which
argue the 'correct' etymology of the term. Generally contemporary Isma'ili
sources reject the 'hash' root entirely (though do not, interestingly enough,
reject the Alamutis 'terrorist' reputation) as demeaning to Isma'ilis.
Myth : The word assassin is derived from the word hashish.
It is a common myth that the word assassin comes from the
Arabic word haschishin for hashish user.
The story is that al-Hassan ibn-al-Sabbah used hashish to
enlist the aid of young men into his private army known as assassins (aschishin
- or follower of Hassan). One of the prrimary sources for this information comes
from the writings of Marco Polo who visited the area in 1273, almost 150 years
after the reign of Al-Hassan.
There are many conflicting facts and sources for this
information.
In the early 11th century, al-Hassan became the head of
the Persian sect of the Ismailians, a rather obscure party of fanatics which
gained local power under his guidance. In 1090, al-Hassan and his followers
seized the castle of Alamut, in the province of Rudbar, which lies in the
mountainous region south of the Caspian Sea. It was from this mountain home that
he obtained evil celebrity among the Crusaders as "the old man of the
mountains", and spread terror through the Mohammedan world.
In the account given by Marco Polo in "The Adventures
[or Travels] of Marco Polo" it is told that "The Old Man kept at his
court such boys of twelve years old as seemed to him destined to become
courageous men. When the Old Man sent them into the garden in groups of four,
ten or twenty, he gave them hashish to drink. They slept for three days, then
they were carried sleeping into the garden where he had them awakened.
"When these young men woke, and found themselves in
the garden with all these marvelous things, they truly believed themselves to be
in paradise. And these damsels were always with them in songs and great
entertainments; they; received everything they asked for, so that they would
never have left that garden of their own will."
When the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take a
young man and tell him they could return to Paradise if they entered his service
and followed his instructions or died in his service.
From this account it is farily clear that hashish was not
the substance used. First, hashish is seldom prepared in a liquid form Hassan
would drug young men with a substance which "cast them into a deep
sleep" from which they could not be awakened. They were then carried to a
beautiful secret garden which was impenetrable and unseen by any but those
intended to be his haschishin. When they awoke in the garden, surrounded by
beautiful naked women and boys, they were told that they were in Paradise. After
a few hours of bliss, they were again made unconscious with the unknown
substance. Awakening back in the presence of "The Old Man of the
Mountain" they were told that he had given them this glimpse of Paradise
and that they would go to Paradise if they entered his service and followed his
instructions or died in his service. Thus, he recruited an army of assassins who
were the first terrorist gang.
It is from this story that the connection between the
words assassin and hashish is drawn. It is said that the word assassin comes
from the Arabic word haschishin for hashish user. But Hassan and his followers
didn't speak Arabic; they were Persians. Assassin comes from Hassassin -- a
follower of Hassan.
Hassan, in fact, was a hashish prohibitionist. He argued
that the Koran's ban on alcohol was a ban on all intoxicants, so his assassins
were drug free terrorists. Except in the false Paradise where they were served
wine as one of the joys of heaven. So, it is desire for alcohol not hashish that
helped motivate the Assassins.
At the same time, within the crusading-culture of a pre-
and early-modern Europe, the Syrian and Persian Nizaris took shape as Muslim
mercenaries-cum-fanatics who murdered their victims while high on opium or
hashish. If this propagandist concoction of a 'stoned' assassin fails to fit the
complex reality of the discipline and training required for committing what was
always an explicitly political act, the popular notion of Nizaris as a community
of killers also denies their rich, multivalent culture.
- Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the
Isma'ilis
"The Old Man kept at his court such boys of twelve
years old as seemed to him destined to become courageous men. When the Old Man
sent them into the garden in groups of four, ten or twenty, he game them hashish
to drink [sic]. They slept for three days, then they were carried sleeping into
the garden where he had them awakened.
"When these young men woke, and found themselves in
the garden with all these marvelous things, they truly believed themselves to be
in paradise. And these damsels were always with them in songs and great
entertainments; they; received everything they asked for, so that they would
never have left that garden of their own will."
And when the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take
him and say: 'Go and do this thing. I do this because I want to make you return
to paradise'. And the assassins go and perform the deed willingly."
- Marco Polo - on his visit to Alamut in 1273
"Many scholars have argued, and demonstrated
convincingly, that the attribution of the epithet 'hashish eaters' or 'hashish
takers' is a misnomer derived from enemies the Isma'ilis and was never used by
Moslem chroniclers or sources. It was therefore used in a pejorative sense of
'enemies' or 'disreputable people'. This sense of the term survived into modern
times with the common Egyptian usage of the term Hashasheen in the 1930s to mean
simply 'noisy or riotous'. It is unlikely that the austere Hasan-i Sabbah
indulged personally in drug taking."
"There is no mention of that drug [hashish] in
connection with the Persian Assassins - especially in the library of Alamut
('the secret archives')."
- Edward Burman, The Assassins - Holy Killers of Islam
"He goes on to state, that years passed by, and both
his old school-friends found him out, and came and claimed a share in his good
fortune, according to the school-day vow. The Vizier was generous and kept his
word. Hasan demanded a place in the government, which the Sultan granted at the
Vizier's request; but discontented with a gradual rise, he plunged into the maze
of intrigue of an oriental court, and, failing in a base attempt to supplant his
benefactor, he was disgraced and fell. After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan
became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailians,--a party of fanatics who
had long murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil eminence under the guidance
of his strong and evil will. In A.D. 1090, he seized the castle of Alamut, in
the province of Rudbar, which lies in the mountainous tract south of the Caspian
Sea; and it was from this mountain home he obtained that evil celebrity among
the Crusaders as the old man of the mountains, and spread terror through the
Mohammedan world; and it is yet disputed where the word Assassin, which they
have left in the language of modern Europe as their dark memorial, is derived
from the hashish, or opiate of hemp-leaves (the Indian bhang), with which they
maddened themselves to the sullen pitch of oriental desperation, or from the
name of the founder of the dynasty, whom we have seen in his quiet collegiate
days, at Naishapur. One of the countless victims of the Assassin's dagger was
Nizam ul Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend.
excerpt from Mirkhond's History of the Assassins
(published in an article about Omar Khayyam in the Calcutta Review, No. 59.)
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