FILM, MUSIC REFLECT MIXED SOCIETAL VIEWS ON MARIJUANA

Sniff. Sniff. Smell that? It's the pungent odor of marijuana wafting in the
air as the music, television and film industries inhale a lungful of pot
culture:

Marijuana use is touched on in the television series Once and Again, in
which Eli Sammler, portrayed by Shane West, is arrested for pot possession
and fired from his job. On the cover of High Times magazine, Aaron Lewis,
lead singer of the rock group Staind, proudly clutches a bong and a handful
of weed. Afroman had a novelty hit song this year, Because I Got High, that
had nothing to do with altitude.

On ABC's Once and Again, the eldest son passes a joint to his teen-age
stepsister, while on NBC's The West Wing, the surgeon general floats the
idea of decriminalizing marijuana.

Cannabis also gets a starring role in two winter films. The recently
released comedy, The Wash, pairs producer, rapper and now actor Dr. Dre
with one of hip-hop's most notorious smokers, Snoop Dogg. Rappers Redman
and Method Man have also puffed their way into theaters with How High, in
which the pair smoke magical pot that gives them the smarts to get into
Harvard University.

"People are not proud to say they do coke, but marijuana -- it's been a
trend for years," Redman says. "It's a movie star in its own self."

Blame the revival on a generation of baby boomers working in film and
television today who came of age during the pot-smoking era of the 1960s
and 1970s. Add to that teens and those in their 20s who are creating what
the Department of Justice ominously calls "the New Marijuana Epidemic" by
making ganja their drug of choice. Combine these two generations with an
ongoing public push to legalize marijuana and suddenly it seems we've
jumped into a time machine and gotten off in the 1970s, the heyday of
Cheech and Chong.

All of which is enough to make organizations such as the White House Office
of National Drug Control Policy want to spoil pop culture's high. We are,
after all, still in the midst of a war on drugs.

"We have decided as a society, or at least as a legal system, that there
isn't anything called responsible drug use," says Donald F. Roberts, a
communications professor at Stanford University who has worked on studies
examining drug, alcohol and cigarette usage in music, television and film
for the National Drug Control Policy office. "That being the case, one
would hope you would portray it in ways that make people not attracted to it."

The darker side of marijuana use is clearly delineated in the news. A conga
line of celebrities has been arrested for marijuana possession this year,
including Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing; Snoop Dogg; and former
Dallas Cowboys lineman Nate Newton, who was caught twice in the past two
months. And the Los Angeles Clippers' Lamar Odom was suspended for five
games for smoking it.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, about 10 million people
use marijuana and 69 million people older than age 12 have smoked it at
least once. The drug trails only alcohol and cigarettes in popularity.

So it's hardly noted that the lead singer of the rock band Nickelback wears
a marijuana leaf T-shirt onstage and calls for the legalization of the
drug. Or that a spate of high-quality films -- Eyes Wide Shut, American
Beauty and Wonder Boys -- feature characters smoking weed as casually as
they'd light a cigarette or drink a glass of wine. It's a subtle shift from
the past, when, according to Steven Hager, editor in chief of High Times,
pot users were depicted as destructive people with dead-end lives.

"I don't think marijuana is treated as badly," says Mark-Boris St. Mourice,
managing editor of Heads magazine, which, in another indication of
marijuana's increasingly popularity, is battling with High Times and
Cannabis Culture for dominance in the pot publications genre.

"It's more levelheaded," continues St. Mourice, who likens the drug's more
casual treatment to how homosexual lifestyles have increasingly gained
acceptance in pop culture. Take Tommy Chong's recurring role as the stoned
owner of a photo lab on television's That '70s Show.

"He isn't denigrated; he's just another one of the characters," St. Mourice
says. "The young characters are smoking pot on a regular basis on that
show. That's a big deal, too. Yet they still happily go on with life and
don't end up cutting their mom's head off with an ax."

Once and Again, which focuses on the second marriage of two parents who
both have children, kicked off its season with the eldest child,
18-year-old Eli, being arrested for pot possession. A recent episode
started with him being fired from his job for arriving late one too many
times, possibly because of his ongoing drug use. It ended with Eli
introducing his 16-year-old stepsister, Grace, to pot -- at her request.
"We're showing a fully dimensional, complex person who has a lot of great
qualities who's smoking pot a lot -- maybe to his detriment -- and it
really isn't spelled out," says Winnie Holzman, an executive producer for
the show. The story line developed out of the experiences of Holzman and
her co-executive producers, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, the pair
behind thirtysomething and My So-Called Life.

"In our generation it was very common to smoke pot," says Holzman, who's in
her 40s. "It's an issue now because we're all raising teen-agers."

On the other hand, we still live in an era in which television and movies,
such as the teen flick Dude, Where's My Car? and last year's Saving Grace,
use goofily doped-up characters for laughs.

"One of the problems with illicit drug use is that it gets portrayed
sometimes seriously and responsibly in the sense that, 'Gee, this guy used
marijuana, and it did reduce his reaction time driving the car -- and that
cost the kid his life,' " Roberts says, "but the next film is a comedy. ...
There's not much consistency there." And anyone who's raised a child, he
adds, knows how important consistency is in affecting behavior.

When the script writers began building How High around Redman and Method
Man, the duo had two requests. The action had to take place on a college
campus, and "we wanted to be smoking a hell of a lot of weed," says Redman,
who's also known as Funk Doctor Spot, or Doc for short.

"People in hip-hop know we smoke," he explains. "How we going to do a movie
and not have a tremendous amount of weed? It wouldn't have been right."

And indeed, many scenes show the characters shrouded in billows of smoke.
The filmmakers brush off any suggestions that the film, which is rated R,
encourages drug use among the teens who will inevitably sneak into theaters
to see their musical heroes.

"I don't think the film at all says, 'Go out and do drugs and you'll do
well,' " says Pamela Abdy, executive producer of How High.

Adds Redman, "I'm not promoting it to a younger crowd. But if you've got to
hear it from us not to smoke weed and your parents are not telling you,
there's something wrong."