Our morality lesson begins with some hijacked footage of a cobra from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, over which the jaded narrator (Patrick Miller) drones on about how the snake, with its life destroying poison, has come to symbolize evil and death; and how the snake waits to get its fangs into the unwary and oblivious. As the narrator continues, saying that people should be smart enough to avoid this kind of poison, but then, as the scene shifts to someone cooking up a batch of heroin and injecting it into a syringe, why are so many people ready, willing, and able to fall victim to another kind of poison -- the horror of drug addiction!

Next, we cut to a school, where the narrator's drone sucks us in as he talks about how outcasts, thrill seekers, and those just out for kicks are the ones who usually fall down the destructive path of addiction, but no one is truly immune. And the poor, hapless, white-bread of a dope who will stumble and fall in our place is John Scott (Kevin Tighe -- who a lot of us will recognize as Randolph Mantooth's partner in the old Emergency TV show.) Appparently, John's grades aren't that great, and threaten to get him booted off the track team. You see, John's life is a fragile stack of cards just waiting for the wrong wind to topple them over. Unfortunately, John has already taken the first step by popping a few bennies (-- that the film misidentifies as barbiturates --) to help him get through a test. And things get worse when John runs into his old friend, Pete, who dropped out of school last year (-- in truth, Pete was arrested and sent to jail for drug trafficking. You can tell he's a bad influence due to his turtle neck and scruffy beard). Pete (Gerald LeRoy) is no real friend, though; he only sees John as another mark, a potential victim, for his drug trade. (Ah leave him alone, ya beatnik hippie!)

When Pete invites him to a party, John turns him down, saying he has to study for a test. John was also hoping his folks would help him study but they're not home. All John needed, the narrator intones, was a little guidance to help him over this little hump to keep him on the straight and narrow, but it's a push that will never come. He does get a push, but not  from the right place as he dumps the books and head's to Pete's party.

And so it begins...

I think comedian Dennis Leary said it best, when he commented that we don't need illegal drugs when cold medicines like Nyquil and Sudafed are available over the counter. I can attest to this, for on one snowy day, in the grips of a horrible cold, I mixed a cocktail of Dayquil and Sudafed and headed to K-Mart to buy a new snow shovel ... Entering the store, I headed down the wide aisle toward the seasonal displays, when the drugs finally kicked in. Then, as the wide aisle narrowed and my perceptions went fish-eyed, the world suddenly had a 30-degree tilt to the left. As I adjusted for these new vectors and kept moving, things in front of me were briefly suspended in time and space, and then warped by to some place far, far behind me. Throwing myself to the side, I clung to the shelves for dear life as people passed by, convinced in my delirium, that they were all giving me the stink-eye, which I returned in kind. Needing to get out of there, and overcompensating for the perceived tilt of the store, I lost my balance, started pin-wheeling with my arms, and careened into the automotive department. Deducing that there were no snow shovels hidden amongst the motor oil, I finally had a rational thought: through the green haze, I realized I was no longer right in the head and under the influence of the medication. 

It took me twenty minutes to navigate my way back out of the store, inching along the wall, and the icy cold air outside sobered me up enough to drive home, where the sidewalks would have to wait until I slept this off ... Later, my doctor told me that I should no longer take any kind of cold-medication that had stimulants in them, or another episode like this would be likely. Beyond that, as far as coming under the influence (-- besides alcohol and beer), I can only claim a little reefer, including sitting in the back of a tour bus going to see Pink Floyd and getting the second hand smoke from all the people torching up in the bathroom, and sitting in art class, next to a hot pottery kiln, on a 108 degree day, with no air conditioning, while rubber-cementing a project together, when every known color in the universe started dancing before my eyes. While falling off the stool, I tried to catch some of the globs with my hands before passing out in the fumes, and then woke up later in the nurses office. However, I was soon a cult hero because classes started letting out early during the heat-wave due to my accident. But while my story had a happy ending, Johnny's road to potential ruin is yet to be determined. Will our boy face temptation and not bend? We'll find out soon enough when he arrives at Pete's party.

Once inside, we find out that Pete has conspired with fellow hop-head, Helen (Julie Conners), to prime John by getting him drunk and out on the dance floor. And as Helen gets her hooks into our boy, we can only hope that John is just acting the part of the square and his dancing prowess aren't that whopperjod. (Serioiusly. The man has the rhythm of an avocado.) Always under the leering, lecherous of eye of Pete, and pulled along by the omniscience narrator, chiding him for doing this just for kicks, John's road to ruin is now on the fast track. With Helen's help, and the horrors of peer pressure, John quickly graduates from "Squaresville" by smoking some pot and getting high. However, what goes up, must come down ... Now perpetually hungover, John blows off school work, which gets him kicked off the track team. But that doesn't matter as long as he gets more reefer, and the narrator keeps tabs on our boy as the effects of the weed soon have him in the grips of the munchies and space-time anomalies.

Soon, pot isn't enough to keep him high, and John quickly moves on to mainlining heroin -- and we get a quick lesson from the narrator on how to prepare an injection (-- more on this later). Although Pete assures him one hit won't hurt him (-- isn't that what he said about the reefer?), one hit leads to another; for without one comes the horror of withdrawal. John gets his first bitter taste of this when he heads to Pete's for another hit, swearing each visit will be the last and then he'll stop cold turkey, but Pete's nowhere to be found, and as he starts to go through withdrawal, two other addicts tie him down to a bed to control the spasms until Pete comes back. Now that he has John good and hooked, Pete ups the price because he knows his mark will pay up before going through withdrawal again. 

While trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy, John sells off what he can [including the family silver] to feed his habit. No one must know he's a junkie, but his days are numbered ... Seems Helen has been picked up for shoplifting and rats them all out: John is picked up in the raid on Pete's hideaway, but being a first time offender, the judge goes easy on him and the sentence is mandatory rehab. Several months pass, and John is clean, sober, and back on the streets, where the narrator ponders if he will try to pick up the pieces of his life and move on, or will he -- like so many others, go back to drugs. 

Our answer comes when we switch back to the snake, with the caption that reads:

It Never Ends

The scathing call to take the high road in these short-subjects comes across no louder and clearer than in the ones dealing with the horrors of drug abuse. Adults never seem to grasp that the more you tell the younger generation not to do something almost guarantees that they'll go out of their way to do it -- and it's way beyond getting their "kicks."

These things are a riot to watch, mostly due to the simulated effects the narcotics have on folks, usually through some kind of mondo-overacting or wacko-animation (-- the giant chicken dance in L.S.D. immediately comes to mind). Any kind of drug intake usually resulted in a bad case of the giggles at best, and at the worst, violent motor activity and a loss of all sense of perception as a you shotgun a cup full of broken glass, thinking it's a mug of coffee. The bad guys and pushers are always vile, and the tempted heroes and heroines the squarest of squares. Subtlety is thrown out the window as the dominoes of life are stacked up on a springboard, waiting for that one slight jolt to tumble them all over, with the last one teetering on the brink of the precipice. Will it fall over the edge? That was usually up to the viewer -- but the snide narrators rarely gives us much hope.

These shorts also, almost always, committed one comical -- yet borderline tragic, mistake. Comical in how obvious it is, and you can't believe the filmmakers didn't realize this, and tragic in that the majority of these shorts, while they try to warn us off, are basically "How-To" instructional guides on how to get high. Narcotics: Pit of Despair shows you how to cook up some heroin -- and to save the cotton because it can be boiled for an emergency hit. Goofballs & Tea gives you a step by step look on how to grow your own pot, and does everything besides light a match for you. 

The same axiom holds true in other shorts, in other genres, but with the "Horrors of Drugs" it is the most hilariously obvious. And I don't think that's exactly the educating the filmmakers had in mind.