Smoking marijuana may be legal here in Washington state, but it's still a federal crime. That certainly hasn’t stopped some of the people that we spend the most time with from lighting up: popular characters on television. Mad Men has even seen leading man Don Draper get stoned this season. What's the history of getting high on the small screen? Is casual pot use getting more common on TV? Robert Thompson is director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. He talked with David Hyde.
Washington became one of the first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use in 2012. But there are a lot of challenges ahead: the state must set up a licensing system for marijuana growers and sellers, the federal government may mount a challenge, the need to set a new limit on amount of marijuana in the bloodstream for safe driving. And medical marijuana is still in the picture.Over the next several months we will be exploring the issue and tracking the impact of I-502.
The Evolution Of Pot Smoking On TV
From the Facebook page of the TV show "Weeds."