If I had to make a list of every movie or TV series I’ve ever watched where people smoke, toke, shoot, and shnarf all manner of supposed “drugs†it would be a mile long.
Drug use in movies and series is becoming increasingly prevalent, which always leads me to wonder what the fuck they are actually ingesting.
For a long time I figured it was just the real thing and that there was probably some dodgey pact that Hollywood made decades ago with law enforcement to just turn a blind eye to it in exchange for some fat kickbacks.
But apparently it’s highly illegal for any controlled substances to be used on camera (what happens off camera is anyone’s guess), which is why Hollywood is forced to use the following substances instead of actual drugs.
Chrystal Meth (or tik as it’s known in the good ol’ S of A)
Apparently the meth that my main man Walter White cooks up in Breaking Bad is nothing more than totally harmless rock candy.
Only problem with this is I’ve never seen rock candy smoke up like whatever it is they use when the characters actually smoke it, so I’m a little sceptical of that one…
Mahanga-Janga
Again, this one is a little suspect. Apparently the weed the characters in Pineapple Express blaze is actually a non-tobacco herb that looks like pot, cooks like pot, but produces none of the blissful side-effects.
So that’s Pineapple Express. What about Weeds, Knocked Up, Harold & Kumar, Grandma’s Boy and old classics like Half Baked, Cheech and Chong, Outside Providence and Don’t Be A Menace? You telling me they ALL used this non-tobacco herb?
Again, sceptical…
Cocaine
FINALLY a grain (gram?) of truth. Legend has it that Pacino topped up on real coke throughout Scarface back in the day, but when they shot Blow in 2001, the actors schnarfed inositol – powdered vitamin B.
So instead of getting an intra-brainous blast of ego-inflating, gibberish-producing, teeth-gnashingly powerful charlie, the actors left the set everyday with lowered cholesterol, healthy, shiny skin and hair and regulated blood pressure.
FUCK YEAH!
Crack
The dodgiest of the lot. Apparently Ryan Gosling’s character in Half Nelson smoked a piece of a broken drinking mug that prop artists dyed with coffee to look like crack. A pinch of tobacco produced the smoke and hey presto, the audience were none the wiser.
So there you have it. A list of four movies that substituted the real thing with perfectly safe, non-toxic alternatives.
Somehow I still don’t buy it. Wired has the original article that I’ve ripped this off from, so you can go there if you want to check the source, but I’ve pretty much copy / pasted the entire piece here.
I still reckon most movies just use the real thing.
I mean c’mon! There’s acting and then there’s just trying to hold your shit together on camera while you’re higher than God; doesn’t take a genius to spot the difference and I reckon most actors fall into column ‘B’ when they have to “act†high on camera.
Shoulda been an actor goddamnit! How fun must that shit be?! 
-ST
