---
title: Reefer Madness and the 1930s marihuana campaign
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/reefer-madness-and-the-marihuana-campaign/
description: a low-budget independent feature made around 1936 as Tell Your Children was later sold on the exploitation circuit as Reefer Madness, framed from its…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: an interwar radio-and-newsreel intelligence collage with a 1930s map of Europe and propaganda poster proofs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-interwar.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# Reefer Madness and the 1930s marihuana campaign

At a glance

A low-budget independent feature made around 1936 as Tell Your Children was later sold on the exploitation circuit as Reefer Madness, framed from its first frame as a public-health lecture…

- **When:** 1936
- **Actor:** George A. Hirliman…
- **Target:** U.S. parents and cinema audiences…
- **Source:** Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/)

Full details

- **Actor:** George A. Hirliman (producer) and Louis J. Gasnier (director) of Tell Your Children; exploitation distributor Dwain Esper; separately, Harry J. Anslinger's Federal Bureau of Narcotics
- **Target:** U.S. parents and cinema audiences; members of Congress and magazine readers during the 1937 marihuana tax debate

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/reefer-madness-and-the-marihuana-campaign/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/reefer-madness-and-the-marihuana-campaign/#how-it-works)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/reefer-madness-and-the-marihuana-campaign/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/reefer-madness-and-the-marihuana-campaign/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/reefer-madness-and-the-marihuana-campaign/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/reefer-madness-and-the-marihuana-campaign/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/reefer-madness-and-the-marihuana-campaign/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/reefer-madness-and-the-marihuana-campaign/#sources)

On this page

> **Content note.** This page quotes a 1937 letter entered into a U.S. congressional hearing record that describes Spanish-speaking residents of a Colorado town as "degenerate" and "low mentally, because of social and racial conditions". The words are quoted as evidence of how the campaign argued. They are not this archive's description of anyone.

**In one line:** a low-budget independent feature made around 1936 as *Tell Your Children* was later sold on the exploitation circuit as *Reefer Madness*, framed from its first frame as a public-health lecture, while a separate federal campaign led by Harry J. Anslinger's Federal Bureau of Narcotics used crime anecdotes, a magazine article and congressional testimony, including claims blaming ethnic and racial groups, to press for the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act.

![Diagram: a lecture frame and a warning foreword wrap a chain of fictional disasters in Tell Your Children; the film is resold as Reefer Madness; separately, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics moves crime anecdotes into a magazine article and a hearing record; decades later the public-domain film returns as a comedy screening](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/reefer-madness-and-the-marihuana-campaign-diagram.svg)

## What happened

**Two tracks, kept apart.** The film and the Bureau's campaign ran at the same time and drew on the same fears, but the record consulted for this page does not show the Bureau commissioning, funding or endorsing the film. A 2026 review in *Addiction* lists the belief that Anslinger endorsed *Reefer Madness* among the popular misconceptions about the 1937 Act. Its authors report that the film's producer asked Anslinger for an endorsement in May 1938, after the Act had passed, and that Anslinger refused and tried to suppress showings after the film's release in 1939 (Hall and Yeates 2026).

**The Bureau's campaign**

- **1930.** Harry J. Anslinger becomes the first Commissioner of the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) in the Treasury Department. He holds the post until 1962 (ABA Journal; Musto 1972).
- **1930s, the "Gore File".** Anslinger's Bureau keeps a collection of police reports, press clippings and case summaries linking cannabis to crime and violence. A 2015 essay on the Points blog describes these files as the source material from which the Bureau's propaganda was built, with recurring emphasis on Black and Mexican users and on the danger to white children (Points 2015). Anslinger's papers at Penn State University Libraries include a folder titled "Marijuana Users - Musicians, 1933-1937" (Penn State Ask A Librarian).
- **October 1933.** In Tampa, Florida, Victor Licata kills five members of his family with an axe. He is found insane and committed. Police records and psychiatric evaluations describe mental illness that predated the killings (Schaffer Library research file on Licata; FEE).
- **July 1937.** *The American Magazine* publishes "Marihuana: Assassin of Youth" by H. J. Anslinger with the writer Courtney Ryley Cooper. It recounts the Licata case without naming him: "An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida." The article presents marihuana as the cause; it does not report the mental-illness record (Anslinger and Cooper 1937; FEE).
- **27 April to 4 May 1937.** The House Committee on Ways and Means holds hearings on the marihuana tax bill (H.R. 6385). Anslinger testifies for the Treasury Department. His testimony includes a letter from Floyd K. Baskette, city editor of the *Alamosa Daily Courier* in Colorado, which reads in part: "I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigaret can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents," and goes on to say that most of the local Spanish-speaking population are "low mentally, because of social and racial conditions". The letter was written in 1936 (House hearing record; NPR Code Switch 2013).
- **Claims about Black jazz musicians.** Statements linking marihuana to Black people and jazz musicians are widely attributed to Anslinger. The most-quoted wording ("There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers...") is of **uncertain origin**. Some bibliographies cite the musicians folder in his papers, but Penn State's librarians report that its Special Collections could not verify the quotation and that no document in that folder contains it; other writers cite his 1937 congressional testimony instead. This page does not treat that quotation as verified.
- **2 August 1937.** The Marihuana Tax Act is signed. It takes effect on 1 October 1937 (Musto 1972; Bonnie and Whitebread 1974).
- **How central race and Anslinger were is debated.** Bonnie and Whitebread (1974) and Musto (1972) describe anti-Mexican sentiment in the Southwest as one driver of state and federal laws. Campos (2018) and Fisher (2021) reassess that account; Fisher argues that the earliest drug laws aimed mainly to protect the morals of white users rather than to target minority groups. Hall and Yeates (2026) argue that Anslinger initially opposed federal marihuana prohibition for practical reasons, changed position apparently under pressure from state officials and orders from his superiors, and played a smaller role in passage than popular histories give him.

**The film**

- **About 1936.** *Tell Your Children* is produced by George A. Hirliman, an independent producer, and directed by Louis J. Gasnier, a director of silent serials. The cast includes Dorothy Short, Kenneth Craig, Lillian Miles, Dave O'Brien, Thelma White, Carleton Young and Josef Forte. No budget figure was found in the sources consulted.
- **The frame.** The film opens with a printed foreword: "The motion picture you are about to witness may startle you. It would not have been possible, otherwise, to sufficiently emphasize the frightful toll of the new drug menace which is destroying the youth of America in alarmingly-increasing numbers. Marihuana is that drug - a violent narcotic - an unspeakable scourge - The Real Public Enemy Number One!" The story is then told as a lecture by Dr. Alfred Carroll (Forte), a high-school principal, to a parent-teacher meeting.
- **The story.** White, middle-class high-school students are drawn into parties at a dealer's apartment. The chain of outcomes includes a hit-and-run death, an accidental shooting, a beating death, a suicide and a commitment to an asylum for the criminally insane. Carroll closes by turning to the audience, and the title *Tell Your Children* returns on screen.
- **The church-group story: unverified.** Many accounts, including Wikipedia and Indiana University Cinema's blog, say a church group financed the film to warn parents. The AFI Catalog cites a 1987 *Los Angeles Times* interview in which the actress Thelma White said a religious group made it. No named church, contract or 1930s document supporting this was found for this page, and the writer of Hazlitt's history of the film says he could not confirm that version of events. It is treated here as **unverified**.
- **Release: dates disputed.** The film is usually dated 1936, when it is said to have been made. Trade-listing research reported on Wikipedia and film-history forums places its first documented screenings under *Tell Your Children* in late 1938, when it is also reported to have been refused a licence by the New York State censor. Hall and Yeates (2026) date its release to 1939.
- **Esper's version.** Dwain Esper, an exploitation producer and distributor, acquires the film, reportedly around 1938, and circulates it on the roadshow and grindhouse circuit under several titles: *The Burning Question*, *Doped Youth*, *Love Madness* and *Reefer Madness*. Accounts say he added or recut footage to stress the sensational scenes; the extent of his changes is not documented in the sources found. Reported dates for the *Reefer Madness* title range from autumn 1940 (the same trade-listing research) to 1947 (the AFI Catalog).
- **Same market.** Esper had already made *Marihuana* (1936), written by his wife Hildagarde Stadie and sold with the tagline "Weed with Roots in Hell", and Elmer Clifton directed *Assassin of Youth* (dated 1937 or 1938), which shares its title with Anslinger's article and its actress Dorothy Short with *Tell Your Children*.
- **Public domain.** The film is in the U.S. public domain. Accounts attribute this to a defective copyright notice on the prints (Indiana University Cinema's Establishing Shot blog; Wikipedia).
- **1972, rediscovery.** Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), finds a print at the Library of Congress, buys a copy (reported at $297) and screens it at college fundraisers in California. Robert Shaye's New Line Cinema then books it on the college and midnight-movie circuit, where it plays as comedy (Hazlitt; Wikipedia; Indiana University Cinema's Establishing Shot blog).

## How it works

- [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/): the foreword calls marihuana "The Real Public Enemy Number One" and a scourge "destroying the youth of America in alarmingly-increasing numbers", with no figures. The remedy is single and fixed: *tell your children*. Anslinger's article uses the same structure: one axe murder stands for a national danger, and federal action is the remedy.
- [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): the film shows only catastrophic outcomes, each following from a first cigarette, with no user who is unharmed and no base rate. In the Bureau's campaign the Licata case is told without the psychiatric record that police and doctors held, which is the omission that makes the causal story read one way (FEE; Schaffer Library).
- [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/): the film is voiced through an authority figure, a doctor who runs a high school, speaking to parents. His title vouches for a case history that is fiction, and no data is offered. In the hearing, a newspaper editor's letter vouches for marihuana's effects on a local population without evidence beyond his say-so.
- [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/): this tag applies to **the Bureau's campaign record, not to the film**. The Baskette letter, entered by the Bureau's witness, places a local drug problem on "Spanish-speaking residents" and explains it by "racial conditions". The film itself shows white students and white adult dealers; it does not assign the danger to an ethnic group.

## Then and now

**The Meth Project, Montana (2005 onward).** Nearly seventy years later, the Montana Meth Project, a nonprofit founded by software executive Thomas Siebel, who according to ABC News gave $5.6 million to launch its ad campaign, ran television, radio and print ads aimed at teenagers under the line "Not Even Once". The spots, directed by Tony Kaye, Darren Aronofsky and Alejandro González Iñárritu, showed a first use leading to theft, violence, sex work and physical decline (NPR 2006; ABC News 2006; Erceg-Hurn 2008).

- **Similarities.** A single first use leads straight to catastrophe; the ads offer no base rates; the remedy is abstinence. Researchers reviewing the campaign described its portrayal of users as unhygienic, dangerous, untrustworthy and exploitative (Erceg-Hurn 2008).
- **Differences.** Methamphetamine is a different drug with a different documented health record, and the ads were public-service announcements, not a commercial feature sold to cinema audiences. The campaign was launched with private money, had been adopted in eight states in all by 2011 (Anderson and Elsea 2015), and was not tied to a federal agency seeking a new law. The critiques cited here concern effectiveness and the portrayal of users, not ethnic targeting. And the campaign was evaluated: Erceg-Hurn (2008) found the published evidence for its effectiveness weak, and Anderson (2010) found that once a pre-existing downward trend was accounted for, its effect on youth meth use was statistically indistinguishable from zero. Anderson and Elsea (2015), using national and state survey data, found little evidence of an effect in the full sample and some evidence of a decrease among White high-school students. The Meth Project reported large declines in teen use (Montana Kaimin 2016). In 2025 the Montana campaign turned to fentanyl, and Montana Public Radio reported experts questioning its effectiveness.

This comparison concerns message structure. It takes no position on drug policy in either period.

## Positions on the record

- **The film's own stated purpose.** The foreword and the lecture frame present the film as a warning to parents. That is the film's own claim.
- **Exploitation scholarship.** Schaefer (1999) describes the exploitation "square-up": an opening text or lecture that frames forbidden content (drugs, sex, vice) as public education, which gave producers a stated social purpose when censors or local authorities objected. *Reefer Madness* has both an opening text and a lecture frame. Whether its makers meant the warning sincerely, and who first paid for it, is not documented.
- **The Bureau's stated purpose.** Anslinger presented federal action as protecting youth from a drug he described as causing crime and insanity (Anslinger and Cooper 1937).
- **Critics and later historians.** Historians document the anecdotal basis of the Bureau's claims and the racialised material in the hearing record (Musto 1972; Bonnie and Whitebread 1974; Fisher 2021). Others argue that popular accounts overstate both Anslinger's role and race as the cause of the Act (Campos 2018; Fisher 2021; Hall and Yeates 2026).
- **Later reception.** From 1972 the film was screened by legalisation advocates and midnight-movie audiences as comedy.
- **What is documented:** the film's foreword and structure; Hirliman and Gasnier as producer and director; Esper's retitled circulation; the July 1937 article and its Licata anecdote; the Baskette letter in the House hearing record; the Act's passage; the film's public-domain status and 1970s revival.
- **What is not shown:** that a church group financed the film; that the Bureau commissioned or endorsed it (Hall and Yeates report that it refused); the exact wording of the most widely shared Anslinger quotations about jazz musicians; the film's budget and 1930s audience numbers.

## Same-method test

A health ministry in any country that released a film opening with "the drug destroying our youth in alarmingly-increasing numbers", told through a headmaster's lecture in which every user ends in death or madness, would be tagged the same way here. So would any national drug agency that told a legislature a murder was caused by a drug while leaving out the killer's psychiatric record, or entered a letter blaming a local problem on an ethnic group's "racial conditions". The tags follow the method, whatever the drug, country or decade.

## How to spot it

- An opening text telling you the shocking material is for your own education is a frame. Ask what the film or post would be without it.
- Count the outcomes shown. If every user meets disaster and none is unharmed, the sample was chosen, not measured.
- When one crime stands for a national trend, look for the case file: what else was known about the person?
- Check whether a quotation attributed to an official appears in the record it is said to come from. Many circulating quotes do not.
- Keep the source of a film separate from the agency whose message it seems to carry until a document links them.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from the page's sourced facts (`make_diagrams.py`) | CC BY 4.0, FRAME |
| 1939 newspaper advertisement for a midnight showing of Tell Your Children | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reefer_Madness_ad_-_8_July_1939.jpg) | Public domain |
| Poster for Reefer Madness: Women cry for it, men die for it | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reefer_Madness_(1936).jpg) | Public domain |
| Harry J. Anslinger, 1938 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harry_J._Anslinger_(cropped).jpg) | Public domain (Library of Congress, Harris & Ewing) |

### Stills

![1939 newspaper advertisement for a midnight showing of Tell Your Children](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/reefer-madness-ad-1939.jpg)

*Newspaper advertisement for a midnight showing of *Tell Your Children* at the Wysor Grand, *The Star Press*, 8 July 1939: "Adults only", "The scourge of the nation's youth". Public domain.*

![Poster for Reefer Madness: Women cry for it, men die for it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/reefer-madness-poster.jpg)

*Undated poster for the film under its *Reefer Madness* title, used on the exploitation circuit (Motion Picture Ventures): "Adults only!", "Women cry for it, men die for it!" Public domain.*

![Harry J. Anslinger, 1938](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/harry-anslinger-1938.jpg)

*Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, at a meeting on U.S.-Canada marihuana control, Washington, March 1938. Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress. Public domain.*

### Image gaps

- **Frames from *Tell Your Children* / *Reefer Madness*, including the foreword card and Dr. Carroll's lecture.** The film is widely reported to be in the public domain because its copyright was not renewed. Copies are held by the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress, but neither could be reached from the build environment. **Fillable.**
- **1930s and 1940s release posters (*Reefer Madness*, *The Burning Question*, *Marihuana*, *Assassin of Youth*).** Posters were often separate works; each needs its own check for notice and renewal. **Possibly fillable.**
- **A page of the 1937 House hearing record showing the Baskette letter.** A U.S. government work and so public domain; the National Library of Medicine's digitised copy was unreachable from the build environment. **Fillable.**
- **The July 1937 *American Magazine* article.** Copyright renewal status not checked. **Maybe.**
- **Montana Meth Project ads.** Copyrighted. **Not fillable.**

## Sources

- *Tell Your Children* / *Reefer Madness* (dir. Louis J. Gasnier, prod. George A. Hirliman; later distributed by Dwain Esper). The film itself, public domain; opening foreword quoted from the film as transcribed at [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Reefer_Madness) and [IMDb crazy credits](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028346/crazycredits/).
- U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means. *Taxation of Marihuana: Hearings on H.R. 6385*, 75th Congress, 1st session, 27-30 April and 4 May 1937. [National Library of Medicine digitised copy](https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/ocr/nlm:nlmuid-2934112RX315-leaf).
- Anslinger, H. J., with Courtney Ryley Cooper. "Marihuana: Assassin of Youth." *The American Magazine*, July 1937.
- Schaefer, Eric. *"Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959.* Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999. [Publisher page](https://www.dukeupress.edu/bold-daring-shocking-true).
- Musto, David F. "The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937." *Archives of General Psychiatry* 26, no. 2 (1972): 101-108. [doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1972.01750200005002](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/490581). (Musto's book *The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control*, Yale University Press, 1973, covers the same history.)
- Bonnie, Richard J., and Charles H. Whitebread II. *The Marihuana Conviction: A History of Marihuana Prohibition in the United States.* Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974.
- Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). ["How an Axe Murderer Helped Make Weed Illegal"](https://fee.org/articles/how-an-axe-murderer-helped-make-weed-illegal/) (Licata's police and psychiatric record).
- Campos, Isaac. "Mexicans and the Origins of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States: A Reassessment." *The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs* 32 (2018). [doi:10.1086/SHAD3201006](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/SHAD3201006).
- Fisher, George. "Racial Myths of the Cannabis War." *Boston University Law Review* 101 (2021): 933-977. [PDF](https://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2021/07/FISHER.pdf); [Stanford Law School listing](https://law.stanford.edu/publications/racial-myths-of-the-cannabis-war/).
- Hall, Wayne, and Sarah Yeates. "Correcting popular misconceptions about the origins of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937." *Addiction* 121, no. 4 (2026): 1008-1018. [doi:10.1111/add.70280](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.70280).
- Penn State University Libraries, Ask A Librarian: [source of the "100,000 total marijuana smokers" quotation](https://psu.libanswers.com/faq/391108) (quotation not found in the cited folder); [H. J. Anslinger papers](https://archives.libraries.psu.edu/repositories/3/resources/2052).
- Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society. ["The Value of Propaganda as Historical Evidence: Anslinger's Gore File as Source Material"](https://www.pointshistory.org/post/the-value-of-propaganda-as-historical-evidence-anslinger-s-gore-file-as-source-material), 15 March 2015.
- ABA Journal. ["Sept. 25, 1930: U.S. names its first drug czar"](https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/sept-25-1930-us-names-its-first-drug-czar).
- NPR Code Switch. ["The Mysterious History Of 'Marijuana'"](https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/07/14/201981025/the-mysterious-history-of-marijuana), 14 July 2013 (Baskette letter).
- Schaffer Library of Drug Policy. [Research file on Victor Licata](https://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/e1930/licata/index.html).
- Jones, Alan. ["Is Reefer Madness For Real?"](https://hazlitt.net/feature/reefer-madness-real) *Hazlitt*, 18 April 2014 (church-group claim unconfirmed; Stroup and the Library of Congress print).
- Indiana University Cinema, Establishing Shot. ["From the Hysterical to the Hilarious: The Many Lives of Reefer Madness"](https://blogs.iu.edu/establishingshot/2024/04/15/from-the-hysterical-to-the-hilarious-the-many-lives-of-reefer-madness/), 15 April 2024 (rediscovery, New Line, copyright notice; repeats the church-group story).
- Wikipedia, ["Reefer Madness"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reefer_Madness) (alternate titles, reported release and censor dates, church-group claim as repeated there; used alongside the sources above, not alone).
- American Film Institute, [AFI Catalog entry for *Tell Your Children*](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/7885-TELL-YOUR-CHILDREN) (1947 *Reefer Madness* title date; Thelma White's 1987 *Los Angeles Times* interview).
- Wikipedia, ["Marihuana (1936 film)"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marihuana_(1936_film)) and ["Assassin of Youth"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin_of_Youth); [Film Forum programme note on *Marihuana*](https://filmforum.org/film/marihuana-weed-with-roots-in-hell-forbidden-fruit).
- Erceg-Hurn, David M. "Drugs, Money, and Graphic Ads: A Critical Review of the Montana Meth Project." *Prevention Science* 9 (2008): 256-263. [doi:10.1007/s11121-008-0098-5](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11121-008-0098-5).
- Anderson, D. Mark. "Does information matter? The effect of the Meth Project on meth use among youths." *Journal of Health Economics* 29, no. 5 (2010): 732-742. [ScienceDirect](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167629610000779).
- Anderson, D. Mark, and David Elsea. "The Meth Project and Teen Meth Use: New Estimates from the National and State Youth Risk Behavior Surveys." *Health Economics* 24, no. 12 (2015): 1644-1650. [doi:10.1002/hec.3116](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.3116).
- NPR. ["Montana Uses Shock Tactic in War on Drugs"](https://www.npr.org/2006/02/28/5238116/montana-uses-shock-tactic-in-war-on-drugs), 28 February 2006; ABC News Nightline, ["Montana's Gritty Meth Ads Are Turning Heads"](https://abcnews.com/Nightline/Health/story?id=1784296&page=1).
- Wikipedia, ["Montana Meth Project"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montana_Meth_Project) (directors, founding); Montana Kaimin, ["Evaluating the effectiveness of the Montana Meth Project"](https://www.montanakaimin.com/news/evaluating-the-effectiveness-of-the-montana-meth-project/article_39f61954-ac5a-11e6-b695-bfd686efc470.html).
- Montana Public Radio. ["An anti-meth campaign is now targeting fentanyl. Experts question its effectiveness."](https://www.mtpr.org/montana-news/2025-07-01/an-anti-meth-campaign-is-now-targeting-fentanyl-experts-question-its-effectiveness), 1 July 2025.