One Toke Over the Line?

Afroman’s smash hit “Because I Got High” offers a strong anti-drug message.

Try making that statement with a--pardon the expression--straight face.

The song may detail the perils of pot use, but it’s delivered with a wink as big as the giant spliff Afroman wields in the song’s video.

But there is a sober tone, literally and figuratively, in Afroman’s voice as he talks about his ditty.

“There was a decline in my own personal life [from marijuana use], and people can use that as a reference,” says the performer, based in Hattiesburg, Miss., whose real name is Joseph Foreman.

The loping sing-along, which is featured on the soundtrack of Kevin Smith’s movie “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” and on Afroman’s just-released album “The Good Times,” indeed presents a cautionary tale, a litany of pot-induced woe starting with “I was going to clean my room until I got high” and culminating with the narrator losing his wife and kids and sleeping on the street, all “because I got high.”

As good-naturedly witty in speech as he is in his songs, Foreman notes that, ironically, his current success means he doesn’t get high.

Influenced by such party-minded rappers as 2 Live Crew, Tone-Loc and Biz Markie, he had built a regional following around Mississippi with independent releases but had been unable to get a meaningful break before June, when his self-released version of “The Good Times” caught the attention of Universal Records.

“The song came to me quickly once I realized a lot of things,” says Foreman, who grew up in Palmdale. “Marijuana was for me a pacifier in a time of poverty. I was sitting on a corner trying to sell my CDs, depressed. Now I have a lot to do, so I don’t smoke.”

But if that’s the message, it’s a mixed one. There’s the sound of someone toking in the song’s background. The album cover evokes those of the pot-centric magazine High Times (which has nominated “Because I Get High” as “pot song of the year” in its annual Doobie Awards), with the singer posing as if lighting one up. And the Afroman cartoon logo shows him with a joint dangling from his mouth.

Even at a time with when weed references are de rigueur among rockers and rappers, this imagery is downright brazen.

The hit is also too big to ignore, one of the most requested songs in recent memory for radio stations in formats across the pop, rock and urban board. MTV, having initially rejected the video, agreed to run an edited version (the giant spliff is gone), though not in daytime and never on its top-rated “Total Request Live” show. “TRL” or no, after just a few weeks of radio play, “High” is shaping up as this year’s pop culture catch phrase: “Who Let the Dogs Out” meets Cheech & Chong.

So where does Foreman, 27, really stand on drug use?

“I’m not pro or anti,” he says. “I’m just a guy with an acoustic guitar sitting on a bucket singing a song. I told the truth in this song. It’s a good awareness song, and you can choose. For a person with a lot of goals in your life, it’s an anti-drug song. But if you don’t care anyway, it’s a pro song.”

That presents an intriguing situation for everyone from the record company releasing the song to radio and MTV programmers to those in the fields of addiction awareness and counseling.

“My 3-year-old has been singing it around the house, and I don’t know how to react,” says Avery Lipman, senior vice president of Universal Records. “He doesn’t know what it’s about, but the song is so catchy, it’s easy to pick up. I remember when [Madonna’s] ‘Like a Virgin’ was on the radio, and my little sister, who must have been 9 at the time, was going, ‘What’s a virgin?’ and I was like, ‘Ugh.’ Parents and siblings will have tough questions with this.”

But Lipman also sees the song as good-natured comedy, as he does all the colorful (and frequently off-color) tales of sex and inebriation on “The Good Times,” which fits into a ribald tradition running from Redd Foxx to Richard Pryor to 2 Live Crew. In fact, he notes, “Because I Got High” is being submitted by the label for Grammy consideration in the comedy category, not pop or rap.

“To me it’s like ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy,’ an edgier version of that,” Lipman says.

Even substance abuse counselor Buddy Arnold, co-founder of the Musicians’ Assistance Program, doesn’t wholly condemn it.

“I think it does make too light of [marijuana use],” he says. “But it’s all tongue in cheek. I don’t really think it’s going to do much harm.”

MTV, which demanded that the word “hash” be made inaudible in the video of Weezer’s current hit “Hash Pipe” before airing it, weighed the matter seriously.

“We have set standards regarding gratuitous sex, drugs, violence and language,” says MTV spokeswoman Linda Alexander. “However, everything is looked at before it goes on the air, and context is an important factor.”

Radio programmers, though, seemed to have few qualms. San Diego’s alternative-rock KFSD-FM (92.1) was the first station to air it and experienced a flood of requests after just two spins, a phenomenon repeated around the country. A Philadelphia station actually played it 25 times in a row.

“I’m surprised the airplay is as widespread and on as many formats as it is, considering the title and lyrical content,” says Ron Rodriguez, editor in chief of industry publication Radio & Records. “I thought there would have been more resistance.”

Rodriguez notes that though drug references are hardly new in hit songs (remember “Acapulco Gold”?), there has never before been one this big and this blatant. Even in the relatively conservative contemporary hit radio pop format, 102 of the 132 stations reporting to Radio & Records have been playing the song.

David Morales, music director of Dallas station KHKS-FM, is one of the few pop programmers who won’t play the song.

“We’ve played some songs that have gotten complaints for content before, Eminem and others,” he says. “But this doesn’t even have innuendo about it.”

But he knows he’s in the minority.

“It’s 2001 and you can get away with a lot more,” he says. “[Depeche Mode’s] ‘Personal Jesus,’ [George Michael’s] ‘I Want Your Sex,’ it wasn’t too long ago that those were real scandals.”