HOW THE MEDIA MUZZLES THE MARIJUANA MESSAGE

On the TV screen, rap star Snoop Doggy Dogg sits in the driver's seat,
toting a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. As the song's lyrics go, the rapper
is "rolling down the street, smokin' Indo, sippin' on gin and juice," -- or
at least that's what he says on the CD. On TV, the word "Indo", aka
Indonesian weed, has been deleted from the track -- this as members of
Snoop's entourage pass cups around the car for alcohol refills.

Yes, Snoop and his buddies can drink and drive on MTV, but what they're
smoking is as taboo as a naked crotch shot. And this censorship is just one
of hundreds of instances in which MTV has enforced a policy -- which
includes blurring out any images of pot leaves and requiring artists to
submit censored tracks -- to exclude
any and all marijuana references. Guns, gangsters and prostitutes are still
acceptable, of course.

Although contacted numerous times over the past several weeks, MTV has
refused to discuss its policy to censor weed-related imagery. A spokesman
for the network could only say last week that MTV does not show "drug use"
of any kind, but could offer no explanation for the fact that Snoop's
drinking and driving doesn't seem to pose a problem for the network.

The censorship of "Gin and Juice" is just one of many examples of MTV's
drug-related hypocrisy. Ostensibly a barometer of musical and youth culture,
the Viacom-owned network considers something as benign as a pot leaf logo on
a hat or shirt off limits, but when Spring Break rolls around, images of
college kids abusing alcohol and stumbling in the streets are commonplace on
the boob tube channel.

"I think it is unfortunate," says Steven Duke, a professor of law at Yale
University and recognized expert on drug policy. "Presumably many of these
college kids are underage, and in that case you can't distinguish between a
legal and an illegal drug -- both alcohol and marijuana are illegal if
you're under 21. And as for drugs there is no doubt that alcohol is a more
damaging drug than marijuana."

Ironically, MTV's anti-marijuana policy violates one of the key values --
i.e. freedom of expression -- associated with the popular music it promotes.
"MTV is a private organization, so I don't think it's a case
of government censorship," says Duke. "Basically one of the reasons alcohol
and tobacco get treated that way is because the industry is domestic and
powerful. In other words, when you're a broadcaster and you go against the
alcohol or tobacco lobbyists, you're risking losing a lot of money. The
alcohol industry in particular supports the ad campaigns against marijuana
because they realize that they're in competition. There's a clear
competition between alcohol and marijuana."

Duke says the networks are caught between a rock and a hard place. "If you
say anything about marijuana being an acceptable drug or depict normal
people enjoying marijuana, you're going to get the government down on your
head," he says. "There's no real point -- unless you want to go on a crusade
- -- in saying anything positive about marijuana."

But MTV's choice to censor rather than just ignore pot images and lyrics
may, ironically, call more attention to pot, rather than veil it. "I suppose
one of the things that censorship might accomplish is to make it more
interesting to young people," says Lynn Zimmer, an associate professor of
sociology at Queens College in New York. "If someone cares enough about
something to censor it, it must be important. And I think for kids who know
that's what's happening, it may actually give a bit more glamour to
marijuana. It is interesting that the issues of demonization and
glorification seem to go together."

Not that the popular media's perpetuation of marijuana disinformation is
anything new, Zimmer adds. "In my class today I showed some of the Reefer
Madness clips from the 1930s, and the students thought they were pretty
amusing," she says. "Not many people believe any more that marijuana causes
crime and insanity. So the myths change with the times. They almost never go
away, and they certainly haven't done any good. It certainly hasn't stopped
marijuana use."

Michael Marciano