This Is Your Encyclopedia on Drugs
In 1951, Encyclopedia Britannica made an "educational" film on drug addiction that seemed to take its cues from another unintentionally hilarious anti-marijuana movie Reefer Madness, which fifteen was released by New Line Cinemas fifteen years earlier. Britannica's version traces the tragic downfall of Marty Malone, a "good boy" whose fondness for marijuana leads him to heroin and then jail. Highlights include a scene in which Marty, out of his mind from smoking reefers (that's "jazz talk" for marijuana), gets the bright idea of using a window ledge to smash open a bottle of "pop" (that's Midwest-speak for soda). As blood streams out of our protagonist's mouth, the narrator explains: "Marty badly cut the inside of his mouth, though he didn't even know it at the time."