Last segment of The Jay Weber Podcast #0029 7-14-26
Episode Transcript
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Heavy use of marijuana by teens and young adults with family histories of depression,
bipolar disorder, self-harm, and suicide are at a higher risk of developing a psychotic
or mental health disorder.
(35:13):
One of the biggest stories in America that the various media outlets are
practically refusing to tell is just what a disaster legalizing
weed has been for this country. These moves by about
half of the states now have created a harmful new
chemical dependency across much of this country that's harming our
young people, filling our hospitals, causing more crime and accidents,
and no one wants to talk about it. The potheads
(35:35):
and the America haters who tricked the state and local
politicians into legalizing marijuana certainly don't want to talk about it,
nor do the Democrat lawmakers who actually took the votes
that unleashed this stupidity, and so for the moment, no
one's talking about it. And for people like me who
knew it was a dumb and socially destructive idea from
the very start, still aren't getting our we told you
(35:55):
so moment, not yet, but it's coming. When I had
gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany on the podcast Asked last Friday,
he correctly stated that a lot more research needs to
be done into the harmful effects and possible benefits of
marijuana before we have a handle on what's reasonable to
legalize and regulate. And the truth is increasingly
of that research is being done. At least two new
landmark studies have come out recently that confirm THHC and
(36:17):
pot usage do nothing to ease social anxiety or other
mental disorders, as so many proponents of pot usage claim,
what a surprise the dopes who just want to smoke
potter making up fake benefits for doing so. We'll get
to that in a moment, but first I want to
talk about how farcical California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose state
has allowed for legalized marijuana for years because most of
(36:38):
them just wanted to believe pot was okay for usage
or even good for you, now has California awash
in pot related criminality and dysfunction, with Newsom pivoting and
now trying to take credit for the massive drug busts
that are occurring as a result of legalization. I tell you,
Gavin Newsom is truly the turd of the punch bowl
that just won't flush. What a clown this man is.
(36:58):
Last week he was holding a new conference to gloat
about how state investigators there just busted a major grow
operation that's been operating there. Sixty-three thousand pounds of
pot was confiscated, and Newsom tried to take victory lapse
over this. The truth is, though rural California is so
awash in illegal drug operations, this one that they
busted is just one of many and probably small potatoes. Moreover,
(37:20):
the shameless and ever slippery Gavin Newsom tried to take
credit for this massive bust, even though he himself and
the pro legalization crowd in California insisted that the biggest
reason to legalize weed was that it was going to
eliminate the black market. Just idiots. The editors of the
Wall Street Journal right. It was one of many doubtful
promises Newsome and other progressives made to convince voters to
(37:41):
legalize the drug. In twenty sixteen, Californians approved a ballad
initiative to permit the recreational use and sale of weed.
The state was then supposed to set up a comprehensive
scheme to license, regulate, and tax the drug. Yeah, they
didn't do that. Newsom said in twenty seventeen, quote,
there is no more black market. Well, folks, the black
market continues to thrive, with transnational gangs using the cover
(38:02):
of legal weed to grow illegal weed. It's then sold
on the street in California for far lower prices than
legal dispensaries there and it's transported across the country and
even internationally for sale. The Wall Street Journal says California
pot is known worldwide for high potency, and the United
Kingdom has been seizing suitcases full of it being smuggled
(38:23):
in on airplanes by gangs. So, California legalized weed and
they're now part of international drug smuggling. The Wall Street
Journal says licensed pot businesses also continue to complain that
they're being undercut by illegal operators. This prompted Democrats and
Sacramento last year to cut taxes on the industry. Newsom
said the tax cut would promote quote the long term
success of the legal industry. So, these Wall Street editors’ joke,
(38:46):
Progressives turn out to be supply siders when the supply
they want is reefer. Huh. The tax cut also won't
snuff out the black market. No, you're never going to
get rid of the illegal black markets. All you can
do is make it harder to thrive or may make
it impossible for them to exist. And this is something
that today's Democrats decidedly do not want to do. They'd
rather see criminality thrive across the country, as they've made
(39:08):
clear for the last decade. Or so ever since the
first round of defund the police rallies, and you can
check with any state that has legalized pot. This story
is basically the same everywhere. Overall drug usage is up,
not just pot related. Drug crime is up. Hospital emergencies
related to pot and other drugs are up. Medical and
insurance costs related to it are up. Car accidents related
(39:29):
to drug driving are up. And yes, among the states
that are seeing the biggest pot related problems is California. Yeah,
because the dopes who run that state from the top
to bottom are genuine fools. Not long ago, the Wall
Street Journal did a major investigation into California's high schools
and found that administrators who run them are finding it
impossible to deal with the drug problems. It is so
bad in LA that some kids are vaping pot openly
(39:52):
in class and the teachers aren't doing much about it.
Vape pens now come in all sorts of disguises. They
look like real pens and markers and other objects,
so it's easy to sit in class and vape, and yeah,
everyone smells it. But all of Los Angeles now smells
of pot pretty much all the time. According to the
people who live and work there. Oh, and if the
lights are turned off to watch a video in class,
(40:13):
it's a pothead free for all, according to these LA students.
And some of you will remember that the pothead's excuse
for why legalized weed wasn't going to affect our children was, well,
the age is going to be twenty-one. It's not
going to be all over the schools. Kids won't be
able to get it. That claim was idiotic on its face,
and now California schools are proving it. Well, the nation's
schools are proving it because what the Wall Street Journal
(40:34):
found that this is going on in all sorts of
states that have legalized marijuana. When questioned by the Wall
Street Journal, LA high school kids said that they easily
get it from older siblings, or friends or even parents.
Yeah, we're talking LA here. So, it's an area full
of stupid parents who have convinced themselves and their kids
that pot is natural and even healthy. Yes.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Legalization has shifted how cannabis is perceived from a way
for stoners to get high to a mainstay health and
wellness tool. Cannabis companies are now marketing their wares as
treatments for anxiety, pain, and sleep problems. Edible and cute
packaging and THHC vapes and flavors can make marijuana seem safe, stylish,
and fun. They speak. Weed is seen as organic and natural.
(41:15):
According to a seventeen year old from Liberty High School
will team it, he's explaining how his peers see it.
He says, unlike nicotine, doctors sometimes recommend it, so quote
why should it be bad?
Speaker 4 (41:25):
Then?
Speaker 2 (41:26):
A national study last year found about twenty six percent
of twelfth graders and eight percent of eighth graders said
that they'd used pot in the last year. This is
according to the University of Michigan and their survey. Principles
say they're seeing more of the drugs on campus and
it's creating health and safety problems. Quote, it's just everywhere
in the community. That's hard for schools to
deal with, says Chris Young, a principle in Newport, Vermont,
(41:48):
and as the Wall Street General Investigation notes, the school's
battle against cannabis is happening. Is a growing body of
scientific research that reveals how dangerous it can be for the
teenaged brain. Studies have found that the regular use of
marijuana wanted by teens is linked to poor performance in
school and deficits and attention and memory. And the commercial
products now sold in states that have legalized cannabis are
(42:08):
much stronger than the marijuana commonly used in decades past,
according to these researchers. Yet we have seen all
this before. Another dodge that pro pot defenders will use is, hey,
there are all sorts of ways to get high. You
don't have to smoke it. People aren't really smoking it anymore.
Bull Plop. This Michigan study found that about seventy percent
of high schoolers and sixty percent of middle schoolers who
(42:29):
used pot said they vaped it. Vaping is by far
the most popular way for children and older teens to
get high, and it's such a large market that the
stuff comes in flavors. Apparently, the flavors even help mask
the distinctive pot smell for the most part. But how
do you keep it out of school? It's nearly impossible.
One high school in New York City de Witt has
limited the types of foods that students are allowed to
(42:51):
bring to school in lunches and carry in because so
many kids were smuggling in edibles, school staffers are now
ordered to confiscate any homemade baked goods or any suspicious
candies like gummies. Other students have installed vape detectors in
their bathrooms because the breaks between periods were just a
pot free for all, to the point where the kids
who wanted to use the facilities couldn't get to them.
(43:13):
Other schools have decided to have school staff monitor the
bathrooms between periods. Imagine being a math teacher whose classroom
happens to be across the bathrooms, and so, hey, we
are assigning you an extra duty between classes. You need
to go and stand in the bathroom to make sure
no one's vaping in there. First, crummy duty. Secondly,
having taught me, those teachers are going to be mocked
(43:34):
mercilessly by the kids as being perverts. Trust me, mister
Jones is a perve. Missus Ellis is a lesbo
perve just because they drew the short end of the
straw and got that duty. That's the sort of unearned
reputation that sticks in schools with each new class of kids. Too.
I feel for those teachers. This Wall Street Journal report
says at Liberty High School in La quote, students have
(43:55):
been known to hide contraband in their underwear of their
bras places where they know school staff can look. Often,
kids flushed the evidence if they're about to be caught.
When maintenance workers tried to fix a block toilet recently,
they fished out about a dozen vape cartridges and pens
from the plumbing, they say in this Wall Street Journal report.
Vaping weed and nicotine in Liberty's bathrooms took off in
twenty one and twenty two, the years where kids returned
(44:18):
to school after COVID after remote learning, and they had
to go so far as to monitor the bathrooms and
put in vape sensors. So now it's mostly pushed weed
at that school to a parking garage near the school.
But before that, the crush of potheads vaping in the
bathrooms between classes was literally pushing the other kids to
try to hurry and use bathrooms off campus because they
(44:38):
couldn't get into the school bathrooms, they couldn't actually use
the facilities. It got so bad in this school of
about twenty-seven hundred teens they had to find other
bathrooms because the bathrooms in the schools were reserved for
the pothead kids. All of this is occurring in schools
and at least half of our states because the leaders
of those communities and states were dumb enough to legalized weed.
They were dumb enough to buy into all of the
(44:59):
false promise is that the pro drug and pro pot
activists were selling. It's a harmless drug, it's not an
entrance drug. Legalizing it is going to eliminate the black market.
It won't be in the schools. It's not harmful to kids.
All of those were wrong. We knew they were wrong,
and we've known this for decades. For decades, we have
known pot usage is harmful to kids. Marijuana usage has
(45:20):
been linked to schizophrenia and other mental disorders and young
people since at least the late eighties or early nineties.
Let's not pretend otherwise and given how much more potent
today's strains of pot are, medical professionals and researchers are
seeing even more dramatic links between the two being drawn
here At this point in our learning arc. Related to
the overall effects of pot usage and THHC, it's safe
(45:43):
to say that we already know it is harmful to
young people and can already question any other so called
positive health effects when it comes to adult usage. Yeah,
certain levels of THHC seem to be able to calm
nausea and cancer patients and may be helpful medically in
other ways. But every doctor or pharmacist that I've ever
spoken to about it says the same thing. You know,
we have plenty of other drugs to handle cancer related
(46:05):
nausea or general anxiety. There's nothing special about the helpful
properties of weed, and we simply don't need it as
any sort of medical drug. That's the truth of the
matter as things now stand. As modern medicine and medical
research now understand this, that's just the truth of the matter. Meanwhile,
the negative effects on young people and they're still developing
brains have been well known since the eighties or nineties,
(46:27):
and there's more modern research being done all the time.
As I said, two significant new studies are confirming that
cannabis and THHC usage shows virtually zero benefit when it
comes to treating most mental disorders. The results of these
two studies were released in March, and one was a
larger review of other past studies on the topics. Quote.
Researchers reviewed data from fifty-four randomized clinical trials conducted
(46:49):
between nineteen eighty in May of twenty twenty-five. Involving
about twenty-five hundred participants, the studies assessed cannabinoids as
a primary treatment for mental disorders or substance abuse disorders. Overall,
the review found no significant benefit for several conditions commonly
cited as reasons for medical cannabis use, including anxiety disorders,
psychotic disorders PTSD, and opioid use disorder. The lead author,
(47:13):
Jack Wilson from the University of Sydney said, when we
look at the evidence, we just don't
see that the evidence is quite there for the routine
use of these medicines. They seem to address the question
of well, what if users insist pot is helping them?
The lead author says, if they think it's helping them
feel better, great, but it's probably a placebo effect because
pot usage doesn't help with these metal conditions. Also, the
(47:36):
investigators made it clear we did not look at studies
related to depression, so they can't draw any conclusions there.
But if pot is basically a downer, I can't imagine
how regular pot usage would help anyone suffering from depression.
It would probably only make it worse. Moreover, this lead
researcher said the cannabis medications being administered in these studies
were largely oral formulations, such as capsules, sprays, or oils.
(47:59):
He said, in real life, people typically use smoked cannabis,
and there is even less evidence of its effectiveness for
mental health. How's this for a kicker. The only thing
these researchers said THHC might be helpful in treating was
cannabis usage disorder, as in, if you're already a big
pothead and harming yourself with it. In other ways, managing
those symptoms with some level of THHD therapy could help.
(48:22):
That's about it. Cannabis use disorder is
basically a dependence on weed, where people are irritable, restless, moody,
and can't sleep if they aren't smoking weed, if they
can't get their pot. It's a real diagnosable condition. But
of course, being scientists who were reviewing other people's work,
these researchers also called for even more research. More knowledge
(48:43):
is always better, but these two recent studies not surprisingly
suggested that there are more dangers related to using pot
than there are benefits. The lead author of the other
study blames doctors who are currently prescribing or okaying
pot usage for their patients with mental disorders. Their stats
suggests about one in four Americans say they are regular
pod users twenty seven percent, and of those about half
(49:05):
claim they're using it to deal with some sort of
mental disorder. That has these researchers chastising any doctor who's
telling their patients to say it's ok to use, and
saying regular use of potent marijuana can be dangerous. Utilizing
marijuana during pregnancy, adolescence, and young adulthood can interfere with
brain development. Heavy use of marijuana by teens and young
adults with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder
(49:27):
is linked to an increased risk of self-harm, suicide attempts,
and death, and those individuals at high risk of bipolar
or psychotic disorders, such as people with family histories. Studies
show that use of marijuana raises the risk of developing
a psychotic or mental health disorders. Using it after the
onset of mental conditions can make them worse. One lead
(49:47):
researcher said, if you are a daily user of high
potency cannabis, for example, you may be six times more
likely to develop a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia or
bipolar disorder than somebody who's never used cannabis. Contributing to
this problem is the amount of THHC in today's pot,
and it skyrocketed from about four percent of THHC in
the nineteen seventies to an average of eighteen to twenty
(50:09):
percent today. This researcher says you can now buy cannabis
and dispensaries that has a THHC content of thirty five percent.
Marijuana concentrates, which are like nicotine concentrates, have THHC
content of eighty percent. That's about twenty times greater than
the THHC content of cannabis from the sixties and seventies. Yeah,
the Federal Center for Disease and Prevention says that high
(50:31):
potency weed is contributing to the rise of people addicted
to pot as well. And I know, I know this
is another long time claim that the potheads have talked
themselves into believing. You know, pot isn't deducting, of course
it is. We all know people or certainly did in
high school who couldn't go a single day without getting high.
We called them burnouts. In the eighties, and as someone
who has gone to his twentieth, thirtieth, and fortieth class reunions,
(50:54):
I can tell you that many of them are still
basically low ambition, low energy pot users. Usage can quickly
become a burnout lifestyle if you aren't careful. And everyone
in this audience knows someone who fits that description. It
might even be Gramma or Grandpa. But I've lived far
too long on this earth to have bought into any
of the bs that the proport crowd has been selling
(51:14):
as part of this push to legalize and normalize weed.
And frankly, I never thought most Americans would be stupid
enough to buy into this nonsense. Sadly, I underestimated my
fellow Americans yet again on this issue. Pot sales are
now legal in about half of our states. But our
told ja so moment is coming to people, those of
us who've known all along how stupid and destructive. This
is our told you our moment.
