"Reefer gets you raped. And you won’t care!"

Such is one of the hilariously overwrought statements blasted across the screen, 30s public service announcement-style, during Studio Theatre's hysterical production of Reefer Madness: The Musical.

Based loosely upon the 1938 anti-marijuana propaganda film of the same name, the show’s setup involves a high school theater troupe dramatizing the devastating effects of reefer, using the tale of one high school sweetheart couple’s demise as its center. As soon as those wholesome drama geeks come on stage like a rabid mob of villagers, singing, "Creeping like a communist, it's knocking at our doors/Turning all our children into hooligans and whores!", you know it's going to be a trip.

The songs of Reefer Madness are inarguably catchy and surprisingly effective lyrically, but Studio adds a couple neat touches of its own as well, such as the 420 winking address for the pot den, and having an old fashioned, costumed soda hawker sell snacks during intermission (yes, those brownies really are going for 25 cents). Matthew Gardiner's jittery choreography keeps the pace pulsing throughout.

Bobby Smith amuses as cartoonish gangster-style pot dealer Jack, but he really steals the stage when doubling as the son of God during the works' show-stopper, "Listen To Jesus, Jimmy" (his throw-away lines are the best, offering gaga fans communion, or as he puts it, "Body of Me"). Lauren Williams brings the same sort of squeaky, dizzy innocence to the ingenue Mary as she did to Little Red Riding Hood not long ago, though plot twists allow her to really let loose in the second act. Channez McQuay is a particular delight as Mae, Jack's reluctant, put-upon girlfriend; she breezes her way through the torchy, self-deprecating addiction anthem, "The Stuff." And Lawrence Redmond is having a ball extolling the dangers of that “leafy green assassin” as the show's narrator.

The War on Drugs excepted, pot hysteria is hardly what it used to be, yet Reefer Madness still packs a punch, particularly during its conclusion, "The Truth", which in a neat if slightly overwrought manner, compares the theme to the more contemporary forms of morality policing. But message aside, it's still damn funny seeing a fervent ode to marijuana-laced brownies onstage.

Reefer Madness: The Musical runs through August 5 at Studio Theater's Secondstage. Tickets are available online.