The ominous Lecturer informs the parents that he has come to warn them about the evils of marijuana on their youth ("Reefer Madness") through the tragic tale of one boy's struggles with the demon weed in a film titled "Tell Your Children".

Throughout the film, the Lecturer stops to detail a political point or to condescend any audience member questioning his credibility.

Jimmy Harper and Mary Lane, a joyful teen couple, blissfully enjoy each other's company ("Romeo & Juliet"), unaware of the seedy goings-on in The Reefer Den across town.

Jimmy is taken to the Reefer Den, where Jack, Mae, college dropout Ralph and neighborhood prostitute Sally pressure him into smoking his first joint, leading him to a hallucination of an insidious bacchanal.

One night, Jimmy and Sally take a joy ride in Mary's stolen car while buzzed, running over an old man.

Jack brings him back to the Reefer Den with a pot-brownie, putting him in a cartoonized trip ("The Brownie Song").

Racked with guilt, Ralph has pot-induced hallucinations of Jimmy as a ghost, Mary as Satan's sodomy pal and the children who got hooked on the Reefer Gang's dope as the living dead.

He rejects her pleas and she bludgeons him to death with a garden hoe, gaining her much-needed empowerment ("The Stuff (Reprise)").

Jimmy burns down the Reefer Den's weed garden, freeing Mary from both Hell and Satan before everyone's eyes.

In 1998, writing partners Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney, who had met while studying at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, were driving from Oakland to Los Angeles and listening to Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage, when they began discussing how one might stage the piece.

The high school is named after Harry J. Anslinger, the first Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, known as the Father of the Drug War.

[6] It some territories, it can be downloaded or streamed in HD via Vudu, Redbox, Amazon, Google Play, Microsoft, and YouTube.

The night before, The Public Theater's Joe's Pub hosted a release party concert featuring a four-person ensemble and leads Alan Cumming, Ana Gasteyer, Christian Campbell, John Kassir, Robert Torti, Amy Spanger, and Jenna Leigh Green doing an abbreviated concert version with introductions to each song by Kevin Murphy.