Sue Ann, you're gonna love grass. You know what's great about turning on? Oh, you get these clear, fully formed... ah...
Thoughts?
Ya, right! And the ideas... the ideas just seem to... ah...
Flow?
Closing off the first season in 1980 with a joint in hand, The Facts of Life seemed a head of its time. Blair agrees to help Sue Ann get into the cool group, but explains what the cool group is about when she hands her a lipstick case with a joint inside. "Marijua-"
In an early role of Helen Hunt's, the 16 year old girls gather in her dorm room to get high, but when actually faced with having to smoke pot, Blair backs down. Sue Ann, however, doesn't. Feeling the peer pressure she smokes the joint at Blair.
"I just don't feel like getting spaced out, and giggling at stupid jokes, and not being able to finish a thought. And look at her, she's lost the power of speech! I'm gonna pass."
Further demonstrating their namesake, the show educated, by showing differing sides, consequences, and various paraphernallia, such as roach clips, bongs, hiding places and a joint itself. After Tootie spies a bong in the girls dorm room she goes and buys a few for herself and friends. When she gives one to Mrs. Garrett, the dorm mother is enraged. Progressively, the focus was not on pot itself, but making it available to children.
But Natalie declares "I'm gonna put Root Beer in mine! It comes with a built in straw!"
It is interesting to show a main cast member smoking pot, as in the public eye this could taint the character. Furthermore, aside from having to rewrite a poor essay, Sue Ann got off without any serious consequences, unlike the girls whose dorm room it was who'd gotten expelled from school. America would soon be heading into the "Just Say No" era of the Reagan Administration's War on Drugs, but progressively, the episode focused more on reprocussions, choices, and peer pressure.
