STONER'S NIGHT OUT

[Music] hey kid thinking of dropping some acid tonight think it's still cool to be spaced out at a party [Music] wow where have you been [Music] listen kid look around drugs aren't our scene anymore [Music] think about it keep thinking real hard life without drugs is the way it's getting to be it's the way it's going to be it's the way it's got to be think about it everybody's blaming the kids but that's taking the easy way out you can't just blame the kids that's too easy and it's not the answer i believe it has to start with each of us in our own home yes i believe we can solve this problem the question is where do we begin no where do i begin first of all we have to stop kidding ourselves drug abuse is a problem it's the most unfunny thing i can think of it bothers me it's frustrating and i don't know what to do about it i don't have an answer i wish i did i don't know i i really don't know up to this point hey dad what's happening i'll show you what's happening get in that room now your mother found that in your room would you please explain it uh it's nothing what's it called john dope grass whatever you want then you must be known as junkie no dad i'm sorry but it's just what i like to do you say it's not true what about you drink i see you handling from the kitchen my son my marvelous son is a junkie you don't have to tell them everything you're going to be respecting this town what are you tearing us down i'm not tearing you down i'm the only one that i'll hurt what is the next step you people are fools you don't know what you're talking about the last time i dropped acid i decided to make a self-portrait groovy isn't it okay america here it is 60 seconds of truth in words and pictures and the picture doesn't get any better because you're looking at the outside of a prison wall in europe they're a lot more like this one and locked behind them are over 900 united states citizens busted on drug charges like the girl in rome will wait six to ten months for her trial with no bail not even a chance for it and the guy in spain is in a foreign jail cell for six years and a day the drug laws overseas are tough and they're enforced to the letter and if somebody tells you they're not that's a bunch of baloney so before you leave check the laws of the countries you plan to visit one fact will come through loud and clear when you're busted for drugs over there you're in for the hassle of your life so people tell me i have no desire to uh to try to score any kind of dope here i didn't most places in europe there's uh the penalties are just too strict and there's there's nothing you can do once you get busted well if i understood the laws a little more i would have uh definitely you know capped out because like i realized it's just too heavy there's no one that can help you and everybody says like it's not worth it and it's true the laws are very strict and they enforce them and uh and if you smoke and you get caught then you have to be willing to pay the dues well i still have five and a half years left so it's quite a long time before i and free is i can't even see the end of it you just say goodbye to it for a while there are over 900 united states citizens doing time on drug charges in foreign jails they didn't know or they didn't care when you're busted for drugs over there you're in for the hassle of your life it's been a lot of pain to a lot of people who i know i just knew that um if you come over to europe anywhere you don't have anything to do with drugs i don't think it's going to help you because if you're caught with it and you're busted that's it you're in it doesn't it doesn't matter if you're from a wealthy family lawyers aren't going to help you because they you have to go by their laws and you want to spend you know the rest of your life into jail it's the truth when you bust it for drugs over there when it comes to drugs nobody thinks of a cop in the same way twice when we bust a big time pusher when we take a kid to the hospital who's passed out from an overdose we're guardian angels when we have to pick up a small-time user when we warn you that junkies are responsible for over half the crimes in our cities and go out of our way to prosecute them we're pigs someday we wish that somebody would think of us as just humans another drug that affects the nervous system is marijuana marijuana changes the senses the way one sees and feels about the world sometimes marijuana makes a person feel lively and excited laughing more often it makes him quiet and withdrawn you see it distorts the sense of space and of time now the brain may say that a car is going this fast instead of this fast unlike depressants and stimulants marijuana doesn't seem to carry the danger of severe damage to the body and it doesn't have heroin's danger of physical addiction but many scientists believe that young people who use marijuana often regularly run the danger of becoming dependent psychologically dependent on it they lose interest in normal life they let the world go by then there are the psychedelic drugs principally lsd a brain under the influence of lsd distorts the senses your feelings smell sight and sound something may be commonplace an everyday occurrence but with lsd it takes on great [Music] significance lsd can give great pleasure but there are grave dangers involved one of them is that it destroys judgment some people believe they can fly adults keep making wars next world probably kill everybody on earth including me parrots are hypocrites they tell us one thing but then they do another why don't they practice what they preach why are adults so hung up with making money that's all they think about school's a real bummer doll teachers doll subjects i just can't wait to get out why can't we dress the way we want in school sure we're old enough to be drafted why are they always treating us like children adults never have time to listen to us and when they do they just don't think what we're saying if adults like to make war so much why don't they go and fight in them i'm better educated than either of my parents but they don't listen to me how can i plan for the future with the draft waiting for me why don't you come back some other time and everything is all right with us and in the meantime i'll do what i want to do here and you do what you want to do where you live dear why shouldn't i smoke grass why shouldn't i live now and have all the fun i can if i don't get killed in the war or by the big bomb all i can look forward to is making money like my father and i know he isn't happy you know sometimes i think it's like a war everyone over 30 is the enemy over 30 over 25. so it is with the pothead the more he needs the escape from reality or the pleasure of marijuana the more he is becoming emotionally dependent exactly as the square and unhip alcoholic adult does do two wrongs ever make one right cigarettes are much worse right man don't worry man that's right it's a fact no one ever got cancer from pot but it's also a fact that no one ever dropped out of school because they were hung up on tobacco and no one who just finished smoking a cigarette ever forgot she was driving a car as she tripped out on the beauty of a back road nature trip [Music] and no cigarette pusher ever tried to turn you onto a hard drug or the needle another basic difference is that you can smoke cigarettes and do other things you wouldn't dare to do this on pot or this or this and would you rather your pilot had just finished a joint not a cigarette [Music] or your surgeon operating on your heart your attorney pleading your case your sergeant [Music] your dentist your flight leader your team center your lso [Music] your school bus driver your country's astronauts or even the guy who is just changing your front tire would you rather he was smoking a cigarette or a joint however neither your government nor any responsible person recommend smoking so two or three wrongs don't make one right either blow as much grass as you like and your body won't need it right you can quit any time you like not true for everybody and that's the problem the world health organization of the united nations with its leading medical and psychiatric experts from over 100 member nations has this to say about marijuana being habit-forming without one dissenting vote [Music] that may be true for the great majority of smoke pot but it's not true for the many thousands who have gone on to acid amphetamines barbiturates and end up on heroin however it is not a fact that practically everyone on grass turns into a flaky drug addict that's just not true every informed person knows this what is true may be discovered in this narcotics rehabilitation center that there are too many unstable people in america who would become emotionally dependent on marijuana and end up as non-functioning wheatheads [Music] easy availability and the implied approval of society will in the opinion of many medical authorities create a drug dependency problem far more serious than that of the five to six million alcoholics today if the acknowledged effect of marijuana is much greater than alcohol it becomes easy to see why the emotionally unstable and immature may turn to marijuana in even greater numbers than to alcohol and eventually go to more dangerous drugs in the form of lsd pills and heroin who me who me who me who me it's possible and that's the problem you can never tell who is so stable and so emotionally secure that they will not become dependent on marijuana or other drugs for pleasure and full-time but escape matter i'm feeling good nothing baby nothing [Music] when i'm high it enhances my creativity this is the same subject matter and painter for both paintings one was painted before going up on wheat and the other well high on weed can you see any significant creative difference when i'm high it enhances my creativity the artist thinks he's being more creative but do you see it in his work to some extent the very inhibited person may feel a greater freedom to be creative but this doesn't mean he will have the necessary talent to be so it really makes me understand myself if you don't understand yourself when you're down then there's no logical or scientifically accepted reason that you will when you're high besides while you're up on grass you may tell yourself only what you want to know if you are lucky enough not to be on a bad trip and discover a frightening thing about yourself at that time [Music] [Applause] [Music] let's face it the reasons we've heard for blowing grass up to now are like an iceberg what about the underlying reasons that are like the 90 of the iceberg you never see the reasons below the surface that makes teenagers get so hung up on marijuana in spite of what their parents say and in spite of the big risk of being busted the world stinks obviously these are things that bug a lot of the young people but this time rather than hear from the establishment who run newspapers radio television book and magazine publishing companies political parties and schools let's hear from those other teenagers who aren't smoking pot not all teenagers are on grass i'm not and my close friends aren't every time someone wants to turn me on the pot they tell me i'll discover myself well i don't need that kind of crutch besides i've never seen any pot has come up with any kinds of answers that help them cope with the kind of problems they have or i have to criticize anybody but i think that too many teenagers don't have too much purpose it's like they don't have any goals i don't mean that they should just be planning to make money and all that but i think that trying to find something you'll enjoy doing for the rest of your life is the least you can do now because everybody has to work even girls before they get married and even after they do i think too many teenagers traded in their idealism for a stick of weed when i see some teenagers acting superior to those of us who don't need drugs to feel good or understand ourselves i get real bugged well now you've heard from both sides of the question but what you do with your life is up to you if you become a pothead you risk blowing the most important time of your life your teenage that unrepeatable time for you to grow up and to prepare for being an adult that can handle problems and make something meaningful out of life or you have the choice to have the courage to see and deal with the world for what it really is far far from perfect but for you and for me the only one there is while it's true that some of you will actually go to the moon and perhaps other planets it's also true that in a few short years this world will be your establishment and you will be the establishment and what you do or don't do about it will be your scene you're the generation with the brain power and the opportunity to do more for the human needs of this world than any other generation in history let's hope that your teenage children don't have too much criticism about what you did or didn't do because you were on pot