During the Great Depression, a troubled New Orleans beat cop gets a shot at redemption when he becomes the first Black federal agent in the Bureau of Narcotics—only to discover that the price of his status comes at the cost of persecuting his own community.
Get to know the writer:
1. What is your screenplay about?
Reefer Madness is a one-hour historical crime drama set in 1933 New Orleans. It follows Gary O’Neill, a troubled but ambitious Black federal narcotics agent, as he becomes one of the first Black agents in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and is pulled into undercover work inside the city’s jazz clubs, dockside networks, and marijuana underworld.
At the same time, Commissioner Harry Anslinger begins transforming marijuana into a national panic, using propaganda, racism, and political fear to build the foundation of what would become the War on Drugs. Tonally, we often describe the series as Boardwalk Empire meets Sinners, with the grounded political-crime engine of Narcos: Mexico: a seductive period underworld, a Black music-driven cultural pulse, and a federal propaganda machine colliding in the making of America’s drug war.
At its core, the story is about what happens when a man’s biggest opportunity forces him to help enforce laws that harm his own community.
2. What genres does your screenplay fall under?
Historical crime drama and political thriller.
3. Why should this screenplay be made into a movie/tv series?
This story should be made because the history behind marijuana prohibition is still shaping lives today. Cannabis is now legal and profitable in many places, yet many people, especially Black and racialized communities, are still living with the consequences of the laws, convictions, stigma, and policing that came before legalization.
That contradiction is at the heart of Reefer Madness: the distance between who profits from the plant now and who paid the price for it then. While developing the project, we travelled to New Orleans and saw advertisements for legal weed in a city deeply tied to jazz, race, policing, and survival, knowing that people are still imprisoned for cannabis-related offences.
As a series, Reefer Madness offers a rich and entertaining world of jazz, crime, politics, undercover work, family fracture, and moral compromise, while opening a necessary conversation about propaganda, racism, policing, and historical accountability.
4. How would you describe this script in two words?
Historical reckoning.
5. What movie have you seen the most times in your life?
Dana: The Lion King — the original.
Mehdi: The Dark Knight
6. How long have you been working on this screenplay?
We created our first draft of the television pilot in 2022, then did a major rewrite in 2024. Before that, we explored the material through related theatrical productions in 2018 and 2019, so the world, themes, and characters have been evolving with us for several years.
7. How many stories have you written?
Mehdi and I have both written across various genres independently, totaling about a dozen stories between us.
8. What motivated you to write this screenplay?
The motivation came from a combination of personal experience, historical curiosity, and frustration with the hypocrisy surrounding cannabis legalization. While we were in university studying theatre and English, we began asking a simple question: why did cannabis become illegal in the first place?
That question led us into the history of propaganda, racism, jazz culture, policing, and the early drug war. Over time, especially through work and research connected to cannabis, it became impossible to ignore how legalization had grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry while so little attention was being paid to the people and communities harmed by prohibition.
That feeling became even sharper when we travelled to New Orleans during the development of the project. Seeing weed advertisements in a city so tied to the history of jazz, race, policing, and survival, while knowing people are still imprisoned for cannabis, made the story feel even more urgent.
9. What obstacles did you face to finish this screenplay?
One major obstacle was learning how to reshape our instincts from theatre into television. Coming from playwriting, we had to become more disciplined about screen pacing, visual storytelling, pilot structure, and what a first episode should reveal versus what it should hold back for the series. Our mentor, Adrian Colussi, helped guide us through that process and encouraged us to keep sharpening the script as a television pilot.
COVID was also a major disruption. Like everyone else, we had to keep creating while the world was turned upside down. Thankfully, we received two grants from the Ontario Arts Council for creative research, and that support helped motivate us to keep developing the project with seriousness and care.
The other challenge has been learning how to “kill our darlings.” The world of Reefer Madness is big, with many characters and historical threads, so part of the process has been learning what belongs in the pilot and what should be saved for later episodes.
10. Apart from writing, what else are you passionate about?
Dana: I’m passionate about mental and physical health, fitness, history, mixed martial arts, and truth. I’m especially drawn to stories, ideas, and practices that help people understand themselves, their bodies, and the world more clearly.
Mehdi: I’m a huge believer in trying new things and experiencing as much of life as I can. I’m passionate about good food, current events, staying in shape, and my family.
11. What influenced you to enter the festival? What were your feelings on the initial feedback you received?
Our mentor, Adrian Colussi, encouraged us to enter more screenwriting competitions and festivals. The Black Screenwriters Festival felt like a strong fit for this script, and the possibility of receiving a recorded reading was especially exciting because Reefer Madness has such a strong sense of voice and character.
We really appreciated the feedback. It recognized the promise of the pilot, the strength of the dialogue, the depth of the research, and the potential for the series to live on a streaming platform. The main note was to trust the script more by making the pilot more concise, especially by saving certain storylines for later episodes. That was helpful because it confirmed that the world is working, but also reminded us that the pilot needs room to breathe. It is always hard to kill your darlings, but we value feedback that helps the pilot become leaner, sharper, and more producible.
