Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hold the phote of fellow conspiracy Realism. Yeah, we have
Speaker 2: we have some breaking news, funny story. Right as or
Speaker 2: directly after we recorded this episode, we got some astonishing
Speaker 2: reports from the DEA and Matt you hit up the
Speaker 2: group chat instantly.
Speaker 3: I did the DEA. Well, can I do you mind
Speaker 3: if I just say what it is?
Speaker 4: Please?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what we're doing this part.
Speaker 3: At the beginning, guys, we have talked about uh, well,
Speaker 3: people keep calling it marijuana in the news, but as
Speaker 3: we're going to talk about this episode, please call it canna.
Speaker 3: That's what it is.
Speaker 2: Shout out the higher side chat.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 5: Is it because marijuana is kind of still like has
Speaker 5: like sort of stigma, Yeah, because of sort of racist overton.
Speaker 3: Ok, we're literally about to have this conversation.
Speaker 4: I remember.
Speaker 2: You know them, the DEA Drug Enforcement Administration.
Speaker 3: Yes, they are planning to or at least proposing to
Speaker 3: reschedule marijuana from a Schedule one to a Schedule three drug.
Speaker 2: Substance, has it happened yet? Schedule one for anybody outside
Speaker 2: of the US or for anybody who hasn't lived an
Speaker 2: interesting life, Schedule one is the is considered like they're
Speaker 2: the most vilified and or dangerous drugs that are off
Speaker 2: They deserved to have little to know medical efficacy.
Speaker 4: Things like heroin and cocaine.
Speaker 3: You know, yes, and they are drugs. They also have
Speaker 3: a high potential for abuse right and addiction. But Schedule three,
Speaker 3: this is the quote from the actual DEA scheduling here.
Speaker 3: The new scheduling for cannabis would be quote moderate to
Speaker 3: low potential for physical and psychological dependence, which is okay.
Speaker 2: And this is important because this is a federal level move.
Speaker 2: If the White House budget boffins approve of it, it's
Speaker 2: a real game changer. Right now, thirty seven states do
Speaker 2: have some form of legalized cannabis for medicinal uses, but
Speaker 2: state by state legislation is a world away from federal legislation.
Speaker 5: Well, and even in states where it's legal, there's still
Speaker 5: weirdness with the banking system where you'll go to a
Speaker 5: dispensary and you know, basically their point of sale is
Speaker 5: almost like treated like an ATM where you're paying ATM
Speaker 5: fees and then they're giving you back your change in
Speaker 5: cash to the rounding up kind of to the nearest dollar.
Speaker 5: It's very unusual. As legitimate as these operations are, there
Speaker 5: still are like all of these your kind of things
Speaker 5: that don't jive with like the overall federal law. And
Speaker 5: this would change all of that.
Speaker 2: Well, let's marijuana companies or cannabis companies be taxed like
Speaker 2: any other business, which is so.
Speaker 5: Would this immediately like legalize it because it's not.
Speaker 3: No, because other other substances that are Schedule three or
Speaker 3: just a couple of ketamine like steroids, antabolic steroids, stuff
Speaker 3: with cody controlled.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but none of this could happen because this still
Speaker 3: has to go to the White House and there's some
Speaker 3: people up there that have to gomm Okay.
Speaker 2: It just feels like brain doesn't guys like it's going
Speaker 2: to I think something like it's going to happen because
Speaker 2: the majority of the states is turning around. The money,
Speaker 2: the money started speaking, you know what I mean, people listened.
Speaker 2: And also the Biden administration really wants to win, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean.
Speaker 4: True, they want to appeal to the young people.
Speaker 3: Gotta be cool.
Speaker 2: Cool Grandpa is like, you can't get your dad's house,
Speaker 2: but you can come over here.
Speaker 3: I'll get rid of your student loans and student loans.
Speaker 2: And with that, with that important update we do we
Speaker 2: talked off air, we do believe that our examination this
Speaker 2: evening holds up because everything we said still is true
Speaker 2: and as we will find, there are some moral, indeed
Speaker 2: philosophical quandaries that we encounter with the idea of drugs
Speaker 2: as weapons.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Nol.
Speaker 2: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 2: super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 2: You are here that makes this the stuff they don't want.
Speaker 4: You to know.
Speaker 2: This is a continuing series. Fellow conspiracy realist. We earlier
Speaker 2: delved into the idea of drugs as weapon. It's things
Speaker 2: like Tora, things like hallucinogens or opioids being being deployed
Speaker 2: in a purposely damaging manner. It's a real thing. We
Speaker 2: thought this was very interesting and as we were recording,
Speaker 2: you remember, there was other stuff that we had not
Speaker 2: yet gotten to. So this became a series and I
Speaker 2: guess you know, we gotta start out first. One thing.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's very important to say cannabis is
Speaker 2: sometimes vilified, right historically, sometimes often in modern day, but
Speaker 2: in the larger picture, as we'll find maybe, uh, this
Speaker 2: is somewhat of a recent development, this vilification at.
Speaker 5: The opposite and yeah, in some ways, I feel like
Speaker 5: it's gotten a lot lighter rap and is no longer
Speaker 5: really even referred to as a gateway drug the way
Speaker 5: it used to be. But what you're talking about, I think, man,
Speaker 5: is this specific situation involving cannabis that is very specific
Speaker 5: and involves a very specific type of extreme reaction. But overall,
Speaker 5: I would say the attitude is softened towards cannabis.
Speaker 2: Yet what I'm saying is we'll see this in just
Speaker 2: a second, throughout the larger picture, like all of you know,
Speaker 2: human society and history, cannabis was not vilified, and so
Speaker 2: what we're seeing now as a loosening is arguably a
Speaker 2: return to the baseline normal of the majority of the past.
Speaker 4: Totally fair.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's a plant that grows out of the ground.
Speaker 5: There was certainly a time where anything of that nature
Speaker 5: was Why would we dare try to you know, regulate
Speaker 5: what God hath wrought upon us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's still a weird thing because poppies are
Speaker 3: just a plant that grow out of the ground.
Speaker 2: Too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I think there are some people that would
Speaker 5: argue that all drugs should be legal, that it would
Speaker 5: cause they would they would cause a lot less problems.
Speaker 3: But it's an interesting debate, right, which is kind of
Speaker 3: cool because it is, it is and probably always will
Speaker 3: be a debate, and we'll go through, I would say,
Speaker 3: where drugs get completely legalized, then everything's illegal again, and
Speaker 3: then we're just we're going to have an interesting relationship
Speaker 3: with these things like we've always had.
Speaker 2: And in the United States in particular, the way that
Speaker 2: state legislation works, the laws become wildly different, right, And
Speaker 2: that too, I think lends interesting flavor to a lot
Speaker 2: of these debates. So we're never going to tell people
Speaker 2: what to do. Be safe, don't harm others. In tonight's
Speaker 2: follow up to this series, we're looking at a different
Speaker 2: kind of conspiracy and weaponization, the concept of something called
Speaker 2: cannabis induced psychosis. Here are the facts. Okay, this is
Speaker 2: a fun way to get into it. What are I
Speaker 2: was I was talking with our friends on a on
Speaker 2: a show called The Higher Side. It's a it's a podcast,
Speaker 2: or it's a cannabis based podcast hosted by people who
Speaker 2: are professional cannabis farmers. And they're the ones who were
Speaker 2: always adamant with me about the nomenclature that marijuana itself
Speaker 2: is a prejudicial term. Because of Harry Aslinger wanting to
Speaker 2: sort of do the Hogan DAWs thing.
Speaker 4: I had a real person's name, yeah.
Speaker 2: Or and Slingers sorry, they.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's good, It's good, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, the terms are relevant, I think, and there
Speaker 5: are cannabis activists who you could call that that have
Speaker 5: done interesting things to affect change, and I think we're seeing, uh,
Speaker 5: the fruits of a lot of I wanted to add
Speaker 5: one thing to peggyback on one I said before about
Speaker 5: some people thinking all drugs should be legal. I had
Speaker 5: one of those people. But that does not mean that
Speaker 5: I think that everyone should do all the drugs.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that you do all the drugs. You know,
Speaker 2: most activists said, most activists are not are not in
Speaker 2: that way, and a lot of them come to that
Speaker 2: conclusion or that platform that ideology through any number of roots.
Speaker 2: You know, you might have people who are just very libertarian, right,
Speaker 2: so they may never touch a substance or illegal substance themselves,
Speaker 2: but they want to square with their other beliefs. I mean. Also, cannabis,
Speaker 2: I think has so many cool nicknames. It took me
Speaker 2: forever to figure out what left hand cigarettes are or
Speaker 2: jazz cigarettes.
Speaker 5: Jazz cabbage is another good one, jazz cabbage lettuce.
Speaker 3: As morning routine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gotta get right in the morning.
Speaker 4: The kids call it zaza now, which is delightful. I guess.
Speaker 4: I don't know where it comes from.
Speaker 5: I'm not even sure what the etymology is, but that
Speaker 5: is what the gen zers call it.
Speaker 2: And then of course weed pot. I also love the
Speaker 2: specific strain names like sour diesel, and they just get
Speaker 2: more and more ridiculous, especially.
Speaker 3: That time stick as the supermoji.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's my favorite one. Yeah, it's really mellow.
Speaker 2: This thing is. It's a group term for a group
Speaker 2: genus of flowering plants, and it has been so popular
Speaker 2: with humanity for so long. The first generic and archaeological
Speaker 2: evidence shows us that people were domesticating some form of
Speaker 2: cannabis around twelve thousand years ago in East Asia during
Speaker 2: Neolithic times. It was also funny because East Asia has
Speaker 2: some of the harshest anti cannabis laws around. Well, but
Speaker 2: they used to dig it.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, yeah, but the plant itself can be
Speaker 3: used for its fibers and not smoked, right right, Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: so who knows if twelve thousand years.
Speaker 2: Ago, Yeah, that's a good point. They were likely doing both.
Speaker 2: There were religious ceremonies where it appeared people would burn
Speaker 2: it in some kind of incense container and inhale the fumes.
Speaker 2: They would also, yeah, they'd make fabric out of it
Speaker 2: or rope. People figured out it had mind altering effects.
Speaker 2: There were certain things you could ingest. They didn't have
Speaker 2: the science to understand, you know, this is THC or
Speaker 2: this is CBD or sativa or whatever, but they realized
Speaker 2: the effects. And ancient Greeks wrote about this. Herodotus, famous
Speaker 2: for me mentioned in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, as well as
Speaker 2: a couple of other things. He had a book called
Speaker 2: Histories where he tells a funny story about how people
Speaker 2: just love getting high in like hemp saunas hemp seed
Speaker 2: saunas in Scythia. And I'm not sure even now it works,
Speaker 2: but we do have the.
Speaker 4: Quote, Yeah, the Scythians.
Speaker 5: As I said, take some sort of hemp se presumably
Speaker 5: flowers and creeping under the felt coverings.
Speaker 4: Throw it upon the red hot stones.
Speaker 5: Immediately it smokes and gives out such a vapor as
Speaker 5: no grid vapor bath can exceed the Scyths. Oh they're siths.
Speaker 5: That's like they're the bad guys. Delighted, shout for joy. Oh,
Speaker 5: say it's fun.
Speaker 4: It does sound like a good time, silly, goofy good time.
Speaker 3: Is that a thing? Are there? Are there like weed
Speaker 3: bath houses?
Speaker 4: Never have I ever? It's just called hot boxing. Your
Speaker 4: mom's car is what that is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but like go and get a spa day in
Speaker 3: a cannabis cloud.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, I mean if it was gonna be a thing,
Speaker 5: it would be a thing now. And probably in like California.
Speaker 5: You know there's some spots which is so legal. It
Speaker 5: has been for so long that they've had like there's
Speaker 5: like they finally have the actual consumption lounges.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you guys know.
Speaker 5: I didn't that while cannabis has been legal for purchase
Speaker 5: and personal use, it has never been legal in the
Speaker 5: United States to consume in a place with others.
Speaker 4: And only just now.
Speaker 5: There are a couple of spots, I believe, one on
Speaker 5: by Woody Harrelson in California and one in Vegas that
Speaker 5: are legally licensed for on site consumption.
Speaker 2: I do have to point out it's just looking at
Speaker 2: this because it surprised me too when I first read histories.
Speaker 2: I think they're throwing the flowers of some kind of
Speaker 2: cannabis plant on there, maybe not necessarily the seeds That
Speaker 2: might be a translation thing.
Speaker 5: Those seeds will pop and get you in the eye,
Speaker 5: like I don't know, like popcorn or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we've all been there. But I'm sure there
Speaker 2: are a lot of people who ingest some kind of
Speaker 2: cannabis and then go relax in asana. Those things seem
Speaker 2: like they go together. But I know people have tried. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: their Yeah, it's like faheta is sizzling at a restaurant.
Speaker 2: But also, did we know that. I do want to
Speaker 2: bust the myth here so that nobody risked their job
Speaker 2: or their career. If you're trying to beat a drug test,
Speaker 2: going into a sauna for a long time will be fun,
Speaker 2: but it is not going to detox you. It is
Speaker 2: not going to work. And people have tried that and
Speaker 2: had disappointing results.
Speaker 4: Dude. Thank yes, that's absolutely correct.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you said it will give you the same result,
Speaker 5: because I think someone said it to you as a tweet,
Speaker 5: or someone from the industry or some who had experienced this,
Speaker 5: because they're not stupid, right. I did just want to
Speaker 5: point out in terms of this sort of spiritualized version
Speaker 5: of this sort of thing, or maybe a sauna is
Speaker 5: not necessarily spiritual, but what they're talking about it almost
Speaker 5: feels ritualistic. There is, in of course, Oakland, a church
Speaker 5: called the Zide Door, Oakland's Church of Ethnogenic Plants, where
Speaker 5: their sacraments involve cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms that allow individuals
Speaker 5: to come closer to their God, their soul, and their
Speaker 5: truest understand ending of faith. And it is a Christian church.
Speaker 2: There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Again, as long as
Speaker 2: they're not forcing people to do stuff they don't want
Speaker 2: to do. I do get it. I do have to
Speaker 2: get to this one Herodotus thing though, because if you
Speaker 2: continue reading this quote, which is circulated and a lot
Speaker 2: of cannabis discussion forums and so on and scholarship even
Speaker 2: after he says, you know, they shout for joy, they're delighted.
Speaker 2: He goes on to say this vapor serves them instead
Speaker 2: of a water bath, for they never, by any chance
Speaker 2: wash their bodies with water. So he like walks down
Speaker 2: the street to also call them smell Athians. Yeah, call
Speaker 2: them like dirty kids. Still, cannabis grew into a global crop.
Speaker 2: It was used in spiritual rituals in Japan and China,
Speaker 2: in step with just like in Scythia, in step with
Speaker 2: practical uses for fabric garments, ropes, And I guess we
Speaker 2: have associations with cannabis here in the Americas. I didn't know.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until fifteen forty five that the Spanish imported
Speaker 2: cannabis to South America, to Chile in particular. Mind I
Speaker 2: it's just a crop. I think it's just a crop.
Speaker 2: They already understood, so it made sense to them they
Speaker 2: could create.
Speaker 5: Course, at that point it is treated like any other
Speaker 5: import export, just like as a cash crop.
Speaker 4: And everyone's fine with it.
Speaker 2: And as any college stoner can tell you, America's own
Speaker 2: founding fathers were super duper into hemp. We don't know
Speaker 2: if there was super we know a couple guys were
Speaker 2: super into smoking it, for sure, but we also know
Speaker 2: a lot of them just considered it a profitable, commercially
Speaker 2: viable crop, including you know, including like the Jeffersons, the Washingtons,
Speaker 2: and so on. But to our earlier point, this stuff
Speaker 2: wasn't vilified the way it has been in modern era,
Speaker 2: and I would define modern eras in like the last
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty years, right, last one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty two centuries here in the West are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but what there was pushback against it or much earlier, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah. The first and the precedent of what we
Speaker 2: would call the modern cannabis bands and laws came about
Speaker 2: in the thirteen hundreds in Islamic regions, and then in
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds some colonial countries began to restrict this
Speaker 2: as well. But when they were restricting it, it was
Speaker 2: kind of a culture war thing for them because it
Speaker 2: was the laws were based on class and social and
Speaker 2: racial tensions. It was a method of punishing and controlling people,
Speaker 2: just like just to be clear, it was not a
Speaker 2: medical concern when they did this, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And we said, you know, there was this charge to
Speaker 2: vilify canna abyss in the US and the guy who
Speaker 2: did it was such a pill. We talked about him
Speaker 2: in a prohibition episode. I believe his objections were entirely
Speaker 2: based on racism. He's like, Mexican people are bad. If
Speaker 2: white women get high, they're gonna listen to jazz and
Speaker 2: then sleep with black men, and we can't have that.
Speaker 5: Well, even some of those terms you talked about left
Speaker 5: handed cigarettes or jazz cigarettes, what is the left hand
Speaker 5: associated with? Like the devil, the left hand path and
Speaker 5: jazz cigarettes. It's like intense amounts of being a junkie
Speaker 5: or something. And it was much easier to demonize this
Speaker 5: crop that was readily flowing over the border, you know,
Speaker 5: from Mexico, and then associate that like a lot honestly,
Speaker 5: let's not lie. A lot of politicians still do today
Speaker 5: as sort of a dog whistle of that we got
Speaker 5: to crack down an immigration because they're bringing drugs.
Speaker 4: You know, and crime over the border.
Speaker 5: It was just a much more kind of i don't know,
Speaker 5: feeding an absolute falsehood as opposed to something that maybe
Speaker 5: has a tinge of truth to it in terms of
Speaker 5: like car drugs and perhaps cartel violence being very much
Speaker 5: a real thing. It's still used in a similar way.
Speaker 5: But the idea that cannabis was causing the decline of
Speaker 5: Western civilization, you know, at the Mexican American border, pretty
Speaker 5: absurd when you look at it now.
Speaker 2: It was empowering criminal organizations. That's one of the big
Speaker 2: takeaways of prohibition. You want to give organized crime a
Speaker 2: new revenue stream. Try to prohibit a substance. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter what it is, sadly, but we saw
Speaker 2: we also saw the dawn of global coordination. So with
Speaker 2: the arrival of like a world wherein everybody can interact
Speaker 2: in some way with another person or another country, we
Speaker 2: saw this huge crackdown on this plant and lake you
Speaker 2: pointed out earlier. There has been a somewhat of a
Speaker 2: reversal of draconian drug policy in the twenty first century.
Speaker 2: The bands are still highly uneven in the US because
Speaker 2: it sounds ridiculous to explain it to someone from outside
Speaker 2: of this country. But there's stuff you can totally do
Speaker 2: in you know, Washington or California that can land you
Speaker 2: in jail in Alabama, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, the attitudes strange.
Speaker 2: And in that way, it's somewhat similar to the ongoing
Speaker 2: debate and the uneven laws around abortion. Whether your pro
Speaker 2: choice or pro life, you know, a state will treat
Speaker 2: you differently depends on.
Speaker 5: That's odd, you know that those two things that seem
Speaker 5: it couldn't be more different. I mean, but there is
Speaker 5: a similarity too, because they've both been involved governing what
Speaker 5: people do with and to their bodies. So I guess
Speaker 5: there is a similarity. But it just feels like the
Speaker 5: tide is turning with marijuana, where it's just a matter
Speaker 5: of time before even what once were the most draconian
Speaker 5: places are like, you know what, this is a revenue
Speaker 5: stream and we should probably just stop, you know, stop
Speaker 5: this lying. It's no longer politically useful to us anymore,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was the first really big use case that
Speaker 2: brought previously divided people together on this subject was Colorado.
Speaker 2: Right when Colorado enabled people to buy and sell cannabis legally,
Speaker 2: they made money hand over fist, you know, so other
Speaker 2: people wanted in on the game. The money moves, and
Speaker 2: that's I think that's part of why right now, if
Speaker 2: you look at drug policy in the US, it's a messy,
Speaker 2: messy bowl of spaghetti, just like something you might cook
Speaker 2: when you're really high.
Speaker 3: Is it moms spaghetti and does it have her morning
Speaker 3: routine in it?
Speaker 2: It's on her sweater already, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Ha, No, man, you got ripped off.
Speaker 2: Tikops. Yeah. And so this we do have to say
Speaker 2: before we get into this, because this is something we
Speaker 2: have to explore together. A lot of that recent vilification
Speaker 2: and a lot of the public attitude from marijuana and
Speaker 2: throughout decade recent previous decades, it had a bad look
Speaker 2: because the propaganda was successful, things like Reefer Madness all
Speaker 2: those other scary films, you know, the that was.
Speaker 3: Almost one hundred years ago. Isn't that crazy? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Right, because that was a nineteen thirty six film, I
Speaker 2: want to say, nineteen thirties and the.
Speaker 5: Highly racist You already pointed that out then, but that
Speaker 5: particular film is shockingly racist.
Speaker 2: But is there some genuine sand to this? We're all,
Speaker 2: is this bad reputation? Are these all just cynical attempts
Speaker 2: to wage a war on drugs? It turns out the
Speaker 2: truth may not be as simple as we would like it.
Speaker 2: We'll tell you what we're talking about afterward from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: And we're back everyone. Before we jump in to the
Speaker 3: next section here. I just didn't realize that the DARE
Speaker 3: program was established in the year I was born, and
Speaker 3: that just it's crazy to me that that program has
Speaker 3: been alive as long as I have, and it's you know,
Speaker 3: it maybe has children or offspring, let's say, in different ways,
Speaker 3: like different other programs, Because that was an LAPD Los
Speaker 3: Angeles Police Department team up with the Los Angeles School
Speaker 3: districtor Unified School District that we've talked about before in
Speaker 3: the show where they like went in to teach the
Speaker 3: kids all about the drugs and everything again whole episode
Speaker 3: on that. It's just crazy to me that that even
Speaker 3: thing grew We grew up with that.
Speaker 5: It precisely absolutely and I have very just sin memories
Speaker 5: of having those folks come to my school with their
Speaker 5: suitcase full of drugs that made so many of the
Speaker 5: kids just be like, I want to trial these drugs.
Speaker 5: But I also had to say, memories of them bringing
Speaker 5: reformed addicts to our school who are talking to us
Speaker 5: about that was like what life on hard drugs was like,
Speaker 5: and that definitely stuck with me as well. But the truth,
Speaker 5: I think lies somewhere between the two, between the fear
Speaker 5: mongering and the like over you know, the overly trying
Speaker 5: to terrify kids and to being straight. And it turns out,
Speaker 5: to Ben's point before the break, that there is some
Speaker 5: sand to the kinds of extreme reactions some people can
Speaker 5: have with something as what we've come to believe as
Speaker 5: innocuous as cannabis.
Speaker 2: Here's where it gets crazy. True story. John Morales, the
Speaker 2: actor played Big Gruffly crime Dog, said sixteen years in
Speaker 2: prison due to a twenty eleven arrest where he was
Speaker 2: growing one thousand cannabis plants. He also had twenty seven
Speaker 2: weapons and nine thousand rounds of ammunition. I'm kidding, that's
Speaker 2: not the crazy part. But that's the truth.
Speaker 4: So you're not kidding, that's real kind, it's it's wild. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So let's go with a specific example. This is something
Speaker 2: I think we talked about briefly off air that gets
Speaker 2: us into the conflict that we're kind of wrestling with.
Speaker 2: It's a story that starts in twenty eighteen with a
Speaker 2: young California resident.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 5: And then I have to tell you when I first
Speaker 5: when you hipped me into this story, hip us the story,
Speaker 5: I couldn't believe what I.
Speaker 4: Was hearing, just going to preface it with that.
Speaker 5: In twenty eighteen, California resident Brent Specker, I think that's right,
Speaker 5: described as a novice marijuana user, was smoking a bong
Speaker 5: with her new boyfriend, a man by the name of
Speaker 5: Chad Omelia. She had a coughing fit. As anyone who's
Speaker 5: used a bomb can tell you, coughing fits are not
Speaker 5: entirely uncommon, and they don't necessarily mean something bad is happening.
Speaker 5: It's going to have to power through it, you know.
Speaker 4: Ah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Some people say if you don't cough, you don't get off,
Speaker 5: which sounds kind of gross, but it's the thing people
Speaker 5: say because they usually imply I said, Okay, you got
Speaker 5: a real serious hit and you're about to be mega
Speaker 5: mega high. In this case, it was very, very different.
Speaker 5: According to Specker and a group of experts testifying in court.
Speaker 5: Yes court, she immediately began to hallucinate and allegedly lost
Speaker 5: touch with reality. Was experiencing various intense psychotic I think
Speaker 5: you could argued delusions, one being that she was dead,
Speaker 5: that she was hearing voices of who she believed were
Speaker 5: paramedics that were trying to revive her.
Speaker 4: I found that a little confusing.
Speaker 5: Because it's like, you know, sometimes you will have a
Speaker 5: situation where someone will black out and they'll be in
Speaker 5: some sort of let's say, fugue states, right, and then
Speaker 5: they're hearing the voices of reality that then get filtered
Speaker 5: through whatever that kind of hallucinatory state might have been.
Speaker 5: But that is not the case here. This is very
Speaker 5: much imagined paramedics.
Speaker 3: Yes, and remember this is testimony given in a court case. Right,
Speaker 3: These are I hesitate to say carefully constructed events or
Speaker 3: a carefully constructed story, but as much is it's a
Speaker 3: narrative being told to by a defense to keep someone
Speaker 3: out of prison and or to prevent them from being
Speaker 3: charged with something.
Speaker 4: That is what this is.
Speaker 2: A jury is hearing this, yes and so And at
Speaker 2: the time Byrne feels like her Brind feels like she's
Speaker 2: being kind of bullied by her new boyfriend. They had
Speaker 2: been dating for a few months. His name is Chad Amelia.
Speaker 2: And as she is experiencing, you know the result of
Speaker 2: this of taking this bond hit, these voices that were
Speaker 2: once paramedics to her, they become more sinister and they
Speaker 2: tell her, according to this testimony, that she has to
Speaker 2: kill her boyfriend to bring herself back to life. She
Speaker 2: acts on these hallucinations, fatally stabbing him one hundred and
Speaker 2: eight times with two large knives. The police arrived shortly
Speaker 2: after midnight. O'melia is in sensate, lying in a pool
Speaker 2: of blood, probably already dead or bleeding out and unresponsive,
Speaker 2: can't feel things. They at this point they don't know
Speaker 2: if he's doing basically yeah, but they know he's not.
Speaker 2: He's not in a good way. And when he when
Speaker 2: they when they come in, Brennan starts stabbing herself in
Speaker 2: the net and with a serrated knife and it takes
Speaker 2: they have to use a taser. She's still stabbing herself
Speaker 2: while they're tasing her. It takes nine blows from a
Speaker 2: baton to bring her down and disarmor. They call the paramedics,
Speaker 2: and the paramedics are eventually able to save her life,
Speaker 2: but not the life of Omelia.
Speaker 5: Well, guys, I mean what I hate to even bring
Speaker 5: it up, but what comes to mine in the situation
Speaker 5: for me, and I think many people hearing you surf
Speaker 5: of the first time will be some kind of demonic
Speaker 5: possession that we see depicted in this way where someone's
Speaker 5: harming themselves, you know, and acting outside of their character
Speaker 5: to the extreme, while hearing voices and all of these
Speaker 5: kinds of things. And well, you know, whatever your position
Speaker 5: might be on whether or not exorcisms are real or
Speaker 5: are real because of demonic possessions are real, Rather, I
Speaker 5: can't help it feel this is something that would you know,
Speaker 5: would happen in a case like that.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot to unpack about this case. We'll
Speaker 2: get into some of it, but for our purpose is
Speaker 2: tonight the most important aspect is this. She is not
Speaker 2: going to see any prison time. She's originally charged with murder,
Speaker 2: it was dropped down too involuntary manslaughter, a crime for
Speaker 2: what she was found guilty. The jury found her guilty
Speaker 2: was a jury trial, and at that point the Superior
Speaker 2: Court Judge David Worley sentenced her to two years of
Speaker 2: probation and one hundred hours of community service. She had
Speaker 2: also been out on bail since twenty eighteen. That seems
Speaker 2: pretty light for a murder, even an accidental one.
Speaker 5: Right, Well, and at all hint is on this argument
Speaker 5: that she was involuntarily intoxicated. And I don't know, man,
Speaker 5: this really feels like a stretch to me. I mean,
Speaker 5: peer pressure is real don't be subject to peer pressure
Speaker 5: kids out there. People that apply peer pressure are usually.
Speaker 4: Kind of.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's not a nice thing to do. Nobody
Speaker 5: wants to feel to be made to feel that way.
Speaker 5: But is it the same as holding someone down and
Speaker 5: putting a wed gas mask on their face and against
Speaker 5: their will, forcing them to get high.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: That's the argument. A lot of people were irritated about
Speaker 2: this and thinking it was a case of affluenza or something,
Speaker 2: affluenza being the portmanteau for the way that people of
Speaker 2: certain class and privilege can get much lighter sentences in court,
Speaker 2: you know, up to an including just getting things dismissed
Speaker 2: or getting a sweetheart a sweetheart deal with the prosecution.
Speaker 2: Under the criminal law of California, you are responsible for
Speaker 2: your actions if you are intoxicated, whether that's a legal
Speaker 2: substance like alcohol, whether it's something illegal like bath salts
Speaker 2: or whatever, fentanyl, whatever, unless you were intoxicated involuntarily against
Speaker 2: your will. So, for our earlier DA Tour example, if
Speaker 2: somebody blew detur in your face right and or you know,
Speaker 2: the gymsen weed stuff, and then ordered you to commit
Speaker 2: a crime. You would not necessarily be on the hook
Speaker 2: for that because you were involuntarily dosed. So that's the
Speaker 2: argument she makes, or her team makes.
Speaker 3: Well, the argument is that she was. It wasn't forced,
Speaker 3: but she was. She was already not what a novice
Speaker 3: user she was. She didn't smoke weed very often. She
Speaker 3: had already been smoking the bong and we talked about
Speaker 3: the coughing fit she had that was after another like
Speaker 3: and basically and another bong hit. That was the argument
Speaker 3: in court.
Speaker 2: Well, the lawyers did use the phrase involuntarily intoxicated, and
Speaker 2: it's because of that California law.
Speaker 5: Yes, aren't they arguing that it was like the final
Speaker 5: hit that did it then all of a sudden was
Speaker 5: the one that she was sort of that's where the
Speaker 5: true peer pressure came in or the you know, the
Speaker 5: boyfriend bullying her into doing it, and then that's the
Speaker 5: one that caused this you know, apparent psychotic break or
Speaker 5: what we're going to get into shortly.
Speaker 3: That was the argument.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, involuntarily intoxicated. It's a dangerous argument to make too,
Speaker 2: because is that not kind of victim blameing a dead person?
Speaker 2: You know, we do know there was bodycam footage from
Speaker 2: law enforcement where you can see you can see documented
Speaker 2: footage of Britain's behavior. And obviously this is a terrible
Speaker 2: thing to happen. Someone's lost a people have lost a friend,
Speaker 2: a son, a loved one, you know, and she's lost
Speaker 2: her partner as well, and she is There are experts
Speaker 2: who come for both the prosecution and the defense side,
Speaker 2: and they both argue that this person was suffering from psychosis,
Speaker 2: from a mental break and they also say, prior to
Speaker 2: these events, she had no history of mental illness, no
Speaker 2: history of general violence, suicidal ideation. Instead, they seem to
Speaker 2: agree she showed signs of something called cannabis induced psychosis
Speaker 2: or CIP, A bit of a controversial diagnosis, even now
Speaker 2: it's listed in the DSM.
Speaker 5: What we didn't we mainly hinted around the racist aspects
Speaker 5: of early kind of you know, marijuana propaganda or whatever.
Speaker 5: And maybe I don't mean to use that term, like
Speaker 5: it's definitively none of the stuff is real, but like
Speaker 5: there were a lot of things en Rey for madness
Speaker 5: that were about it'll cause you to go insane, It'll
Speaker 5: cause you to go insane, lose your mind and perhaps
Speaker 5: hurt the ones you love, while of course drinking is
Speaker 5: totally fine and no one ever hurts somebody they loved,
Speaker 5: you know, while consuming too much alcohol.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: When I hear this, it just feels really dangerous, you know,
Speaker 5: the idea of bringing back this notion that we cannabis
Speaker 5: alone could cause someone to do this, It just feels like,
Speaker 5: I mean, you certainly hear about studies where regular use
Speaker 5: of cannabis can cause exacerbated forms of dementia over time,
Speaker 5: it can cause changes in the prefrontal cortex and things
Speaker 5: like that, but the one to one.
Speaker 4: Is really odd to me and a little bit of
Speaker 4: a reach. It feels well.
Speaker 3: It should be noted that this was an argument that
Speaker 3: the defense attorneys put forward. Yeah, and then the medical
Speaker 3: experts that the prosecution came forward with agreed that this
Speaker 3: was in fact a case of cannabis induced psychosis, like
Speaker 3: I get it, yeah, which is which is weird again,
Speaker 3: Like we don't think about it as even being a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the judge said this right, had concluded that yes,
Speaker 2: this was a death, this was involuntary manslaughter, and that
Speaker 2: as a result of the circumstances leading to this tragic
Speaker 2: horrific event. It was clear the defendant had quote lost
Speaker 2: touch with reality, basically supporting what the experts had also concluded.
Speaker 2: This is one of the most prominent cases in I
Speaker 2: guess outside of scholarship, this is one of the most
Speaker 2: prominent public cases, but because it was so extreme. But
Speaker 2: it's not the only one. We have seen multiple reports
Speaker 2: of multiple reports of people who encounter or believe they
Speaker 2: have encountered CIP, whether secondhand or first hand, like in
Speaker 2: their own mind. There's another example we want to talk
Speaker 2: about from twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think we should very much so.
Speaker 5: One man's message about cannabis induced psychosis from PBS Rocky
Speaker 5: Mountain's name of the article Ethan Andrew. They say started
Speaker 5: smoking cannabis when he was sixteen, and the symptoms of
Speaker 5: cannabis and new psychosis started when Andrew was eighteen, after
Speaker 5: several months of smoking what he called high potency.
Speaker 4: Marijuana every day.
Speaker 5: A quote from Andrew, I was having schizophrenia like symptoms,
Speaker 5: like seeing things and hearing things that weren't there. I
Speaker 5: was super paranoid that people were following me. And by
Speaker 5: the way, the article goes on to point out maybe
Speaker 5: a little ironically that Andrew was using cannabis in order
Speaker 5: to deal with anxiety and depression and obsessive compulsive disorder,
Speaker 5: and it would appear it had the opposite effect, which is.
Speaker 3: A common US use of common when we talk about
Speaker 3: you know, medical marijuana, that that term right where it
Speaker 3: comes from, is treating things like this, right, using this
Speaker 3: substance as an alternative to being prescribed other types of
Speaker 3: Western medication. And you know, for I don't even know
Speaker 3: how many countless human beings, the cannabis has functioned really
Speaker 3: well for those things, at least with you know, in
Speaker 3: case studies and in larger studies with you know, both
Speaker 3: individuals and large swaths of people. Guys. I thought it
Speaker 3: was interesting to hear this particular story from someone that
Speaker 3: was that young, sixteen to eighteen years old. It's really
Speaker 3: interesting because some of the data we're going to get
Speaker 3: into later in this episode talks about the age you
Speaker 3: are when you begin using cannabis as a.
Speaker 2: Substance state of brain formation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and also this concept here in this version of
Speaker 3: cannabis induced psychosis, it took years and or you know,
Speaker 3: months for these symptoms to really progress to the point
Speaker 3: where Andrew was noticing them, and then people around him
Speaker 3: were noticing them.
Speaker 2: You know what, Without further ado, let's get to that part.
Speaker 2: So psychosis in general refers to It's kind of vague,
Speaker 2: but it's a collectionist symptoms that affect the mind where
Speaker 2: there has been some measure of loss of contact with reality,
Speaker 2: meaning most directly that a person experiencing psychosis will have
Speaker 2: a difficult time to some degree, clocking the difference between
Speaker 2: reality and fantasy. Right, So you might just have intrusive thoughts.
Speaker 2: Those can happen to everybody, but for most people you
Speaker 2: recognize that that's just that's you having an intrusive thought.
Speaker 2: This is not the case with psychosis, and it's still
Speaker 2: really difficult to understand because, just like the phrase cannabis,
Speaker 2: psychosis is a group term. People get to psychosis through
Speaker 2: any number of different roads or paths, right, just like
Speaker 2: differing political ideologies lead people to support cannabis deregulation or
Speaker 2: cannabis you know laws, even if they don't agree on
Speaker 2: anything else.
Speaker 5: And you can induce someone to give birth, but you
Speaker 5: didn't put the baby in them.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, I don't mean to be crass, but like
Speaker 5: induced I think is an important term here.
Speaker 4: It triggers something that's already there. And maybe I'm not.
Speaker 5: An expert here, but that's what it seems to be
Speaker 5: to me in this case. And I'm not trying to
Speaker 5: be a cannabis apologist here either, but the word induced
Speaker 5: implies to me that it is something that is triggering
Speaker 5: a condition that maybe needed a catalyst to like kind
Speaker 5: of rear it's ugly head.
Speaker 4: Potentially, it's just it's how it hits me.
Speaker 5: And again, not an expert here, anxious to hear more
Speaker 5: of what the experts have to say.
Speaker 2: We had the so we pulled that general psychosis definition
Speaker 2: from the National Institute of Mental Health, and we're not
Speaker 2: even sure how many people develop some type of psychosis
Speaker 2: each year in the US. We know a little bit
Speaker 2: about age range late teens through mid twenties, which is
Speaker 2: why the Andrew example I think is pretty relevant here.
Speaker 2: We know that in general, with general psychosis, there will
Speaker 2: be warning signs that emerge in advance of the development
Speaker 2: or the break. You know, suspiciousness, paranoid ideology, which I
Speaker 2: find a little bit subjective, trouble with thinking clearly and logically.
Speaker 2: You call it brain fog. Social withdrawing decline and self
Speaker 2: care disruptionist sleep, things like that. But CIP differs from
Speaker 2: general psychosis because it is defined as psychosis triggered within minutes, hours,
Speaker 2: or days of smoking or consuming marijuana. So we're not
Speaker 2: even sure. Science is not even sure about what the
Speaker 2: time window means. Right do you take to are you
Speaker 2: playing sublime? You spoke two joints in the morning, and
Speaker 2: then you are fine for two days and then you
Speaker 2: lose it? You know what I mean? When this is
Speaker 2: why critics might say this is a misleading defense, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. We're not casting any aspersion on
Speaker 2: the people who have been diagnosed with that or have
Speaker 2: been found to commit actions under that. We're telling you
Speaker 2: what the critics would say. They're saying it's convenient.
Speaker 3: We Yale School of Medicine. It comes with very similar things,
Speaker 3: saying that short term psychosis is a possibility in anyone
Speaker 3: that consumes THHC, like it is a possible thing until
Speaker 3: that THC is fully metabolized in the body. But again,
Speaker 3: that's like a sliding scale, right most everything now we're
Speaker 3: discussing mental health, there is a sliding scale when you're
Speaker 3: describing whatever that thing is. And they're also showing again,
Speaker 3: as you said, all that age range stuff. But they're
Speaker 3: also discussing, I guess, the timing between doses. So if
Speaker 3: you're some if you're an individual that ingests THHC on
Speaker 3: a regular basis, at least the l School of Medicine,
Speaker 3: and it's one other the Connecticut Department of Mental Health,
Speaker 3: they're saying the time in between doses matters when it
Speaker 3: comes to at least their findings on the potential to
Speaker 3: develop psychosis in this way.
Speaker 2: They also say fifteen percent of all new cases of
Speaker 2: psychosis are attributable to cannabis.
Speaker 3: Use, which which is high.
Speaker 2: It does feel high, yeah, and it also you know,
Speaker 2: we have to remember, we have to remember that there
Speaker 2: is the shadow of propaganda, right that is intergenerational. It's
Speaker 2: around today. Nineteen thirty six is not that different from
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, especially when you look at bad things
Speaker 2: that happen. We know there might be a way to
Speaker 2: get our heads around it. But here's part of why
Speaker 2: some of these recent rulings were so controversial. The father
Speaker 2: of the man who was killed in California later stated
Speaker 2: something I really stayed with all of us and said, look,
Speaker 2: this judge quote just gave everyone in the state of
Speaker 2: California who smokes marijuana a license to kill someone, which
Speaker 2: you know, there is a man suffering tremendous loss passed words.
Speaker 2: You know his spouse had also passed away fairly recently.
Speaker 2: But if you look at the science, if you look
Speaker 2: at the experts, they're arguing that CIP does seem to
Speaker 2: be not just real, but on the rise escalating. So
Speaker 2: what gives? Maybe we take a break for a word
Speaker 2: from our sponsors before we delve into the somewhat disturbing facts,
Speaker 2: and we have returned. Long story short the headline. It's
Speaker 2: something that old hippies have been telling us for years.
Speaker 2: Cannabis is both more accessible and a lot more powerful
Speaker 2: or potent than it used to be. Have you guys
Speaker 2: ever had that conversation with an older head.
Speaker 4: I suppose so yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, certainly a lot of people that grew up
Speaker 5: smoking weed back in the day they find the current
Speaker 5: stuff to be too strong because it can have more
Speaker 5: of a psychedelic effect, more of a experience akin to
Speaker 5: being on hallucinogens at properly high doses, and especially when
Speaker 5: you start dealing with things like edibles where you can.
Speaker 5: You know, it's measured in milligrams, and people can accidentally
Speaker 5: take a heroic dose of THHC edibles and all of
Speaker 5: a sudden they truly do feel like they're you know,
Speaker 5: tripping on you know, LSD or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unexpectedly deep water. Right, the days of shagweed are over.
Speaker 3: Shack weed, Oh, shag weed, I really, I really just
Speaker 3: got this picture of shack.
Speaker 5: I'm sure many a weed plan has been grown in
Speaker 5: a shack or two in its day, but especially the
Speaker 5: swag I think might be the word you're looking for, Ben,
Speaker 5: But shag is good to shack weed.
Speaker 2: That's called I've heard called dirt weed, ditch weed, skunk weed.
Speaker 4: Yes, swag was always what we called it growing up.
Speaker 4: I think you're absolutely right. All of these are standings.
Speaker 2: It's probably just because it wasn't legal.
Speaker 5: We were growing up a million percent and then your
Speaker 5: little little dealer could just make up whatever name you
Speaker 5: would have to pretend it was good. And that was
Speaker 5: also the type of stuff where you would get those
Speaker 5: massive seeds that if you caught one accidentally and you know,
Speaker 5: while you were smoking, it would pop knock your blocks.
Speaker 2: With I always say shwag s c h w ag
Speaker 2: is sure.
Speaker 3: I think I have heard that. I always think about
Speaker 3: what Joey Diaz called it, which was Susquehanna weed, which
Speaker 3: was referring to some locality near him that I did
Speaker 3: I never understood, but I enjoyed that reference. But guys,
Speaker 3: I just had I would have to say, from my
Speaker 3: personal experience, I have felt that thing you were describing Noll,
Speaker 3: that like out of body crazy experience, from the slightest
Speaker 3: amount of THHC in my body when I was younger.
Speaker 3: And you know, if you look at what at least
Speaker 3: what the experts are saying, if you have the genetic
Speaker 3: markers for something like schizophrenia or some other disorders like this,
Speaker 3: ingesting THHD at all can heavily increase your risks of
Speaker 3: developing those or even speeding up your development of those.
Speaker 3: Or it's almost like if it would be a dormant
Speaker 3: trait in you. When you take in THHD, you're increasing
Speaker 3: the probability that something like that arises, which is really
Speaker 3: interesting because it's not just THHC, it's everything emphetamines, hallucinogens, opioids,
Speaker 3: any kind of sedatives. Basically, you take any substance that's
Speaker 3: going to be mind altering, and you've already got that
Speaker 3: stuff going on, as you said, kind of latent, it
Speaker 3: increases the probability that that could happen.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, my father kind of late in life,
Speaker 5: he was an alcoholic. He stopped drinking and stopped smoking
Speaker 5: and didn't even take to drink coffee with caffeine in it,
Speaker 5: you know, from his late thirties up until his mid
Speaker 5: fifties when he kind of had a psychiatric break situation
Speaker 5: and all of a sudden, So he was obviously predisposed
Speaker 5: to that, like you're saying, Matt, but he was all
Speaker 5: of a sudden went from not touching a drug to
Speaker 5: being prescribed by professional physicians a combination of amphetamines and
Speaker 5: diabnzo diazepins, you know, which is like a weird kind
Speaker 5: of medical speedball in a way. And I'm pretty convinced
Speaker 5: that that led to his exacerbated mental decline that ultimately
Speaker 5: resulted in him taking his own life.
Speaker 4: Jeez, I mean, I'm just sorry.
Speaker 5: I don't mean to talk about personal stuff too much,
Speaker 5: but I think it's a teachable moment because I really
Speaker 5: am convinced that that is what happened. It pushed him
Speaker 5: what was supposed to help him actually made it far,
Speaker 5: far worse.
Speaker 2: And this leads us to unfortunately, that is a that
Speaker 2: is a story that many people in the audience today
Speaker 2: can personally relate to and it may have had their
Speaker 2: own similar experiences. We do know that there are studies
Speaker 2: that appear to quantify and back this up. There's a
Speaker 2: great interview you can read with doctor David Schreiber speaking
Speaker 2: with CBS News a few years back. He's a psychiatrist
Speaker 2: as well as the CEO and co founder of placed
Speaker 2: called the Compass Health Center, and he said that in
Speaker 2: the US since twenty nineteen, studies have shown an increase
Speaker 2: of emergency room visits that are the result of cannabis.
Speaker 2: In one way or another, someone has taken cannabis, they
Speaker 2: felt so high or they felt so out in such
Speaker 2: a bad way that they bit the bullet of maybe
Speaker 2: getting in legal trouble and went to the emergency room.
Speaker 2: A fifty percent increase of adverse events as a result
Speaker 2: of cannabis use, and then it's supplying in other parts
Speaker 2: of the world to and Ontario er visits for cannabis
Speaker 2: related psychosis rose two hundred and twenty percent from twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen to twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4: It's because it's a damn strong.
Speaker 2: I think it's because it's strong. It's also available, more available. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's Shreiver says there were eleven states in twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: that legalized recreational use of cannabis. By the end of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four that numbers should go up to twenty nine.
Speaker 2: And in addition, in step with this rise of availability,
Speaker 2: we see a rise in potency. In ten nineties, which
Speaker 2: was a distressingly long time ago THC and cannabis like,
Speaker 2: the potency was around four percent, and now the number
Speaker 2: is closer to twenty percent on average, so five times
Speaker 2: more than usual. It's deeper water than people are used
Speaker 2: to swimming in. As a result, you could compare it
Speaker 2: in some ways to the experience of a person who
Speaker 2: used certain opioids right for a time and then quit
Speaker 2: after they had acquired a tolerance. Their tolerance disappeared, they
Speaker 2: returned to it one day, and it has effects that
Speaker 2: they had not reckoned on experiencing.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, even compare it to I would say beer.
Speaker 3: When my dad was growing up, beer that existed was
Speaker 3: you know, either like near beer or non alcoholic right
Speaker 3: that he experienced when he was younger. We just talked
Speaker 3: about this, or when you get up to it, you
Speaker 3: got like your larger brands, like your Budweiser's and your
Speaker 3: Miller's and all these things that were available to him
Speaker 3: as he's going through his you know, exploring what beer
Speaker 3: is and drinking beer. Imagine like when I don't know
Speaker 3: about you guys, but when I turned twenty one and
Speaker 3: had my first beer, it was a Sweetwater, right, And
Speaker 3: that's around the time when we were that's an Atlanta
Speaker 3: brewing company. That's around the time that we were starting
Speaker 3: to see large variations in the alcohol content of a
Speaker 3: beer that you could go and buy from a store.
Speaker 3: And I do like, you can go down you can
Speaker 3: get a thirteen percent beer in a can, you know exactly,
Speaker 3: which which is like twice, if not three times as
Speaker 3: strong as something that you probably would have had access
Speaker 3: to in I don't know, the nineteen seventies nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: It's probably it's also still easier for underage people to
Speaker 2: obtain cannabis than it is to obtain alcohol.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, it was easier for underage people to obtain
Speaker 5: oxy content that was alcohol.
Speaker 3: But I guess just what I mean is that that
Speaker 3: potential shock of oh I didn't know how strong this was, right.
Speaker 3: I just see it in a lot of things nowadays,
Speaker 3: as companies try and I think, concentrate stuff to have
Speaker 3: that almost like a product that stands out or something.
Speaker 5: Bro it's it's what they're doing with peppers, spicy stuff,
Speaker 5: you know, roller.
Speaker 2: Coasters, and it's the story of American culture really the biggest,
Speaker 2: the best, where the country that tried cocaine and said
Speaker 2: needs a little more kick.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Oh, they have these cannabis cups in the same way
Speaker 5: they have for anything where they you know, you the
Speaker 5: job is of of these companies is to have the
Speaker 5: most purest, most potent products. And now it's all regulated
Speaker 5: and it's a lot you know. They don't have to
Speaker 5: do it behind in the shadows, you know.
Speaker 2: And while a large swath of America tends to regard
Speaker 2: cannabis in a less antagonistic light, there might be people
Speaker 2: who say, you know, well, I don't want my kids smoking,
Speaker 2: and I don't want to hang out with people who smoke,
Speaker 2: leaeder take edibles. But I don't think it's terrible. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's going to end civilization right or launch
Speaker 2: renewed interest in jazz. God forbid rights. Yeah, it's it's apocalyptic,
Speaker 2: isn't it. And these two big changes and availability and
Speaker 2: potency have pushed folks to reassess the situation in a
Speaker 2: way that's less bound to the cynical propaganda of old.
Speaker 2: We also know during COVID there may have been something
Speaker 2: There may have been yet another comorbid factor here because
Speaker 2: people weren't getting the care and treatment they needed for
Speaker 2: psychiatric issues, which meant they would end up self medicating.
Speaker 2: And as many of us listening unfortunately no firsthand, cannabis
Speaker 2: is one of the top go to substances people used
Speaker 2: to self meta. There's also alcohol and any number of
Speaker 2: other substances.
Speaker 5: And again we're not being a proponent of one or
Speaker 5: the other or any of those things, but there are
Speaker 5: a lot of people that might try to self medicay
Speaker 5: not knowing that there are very different strains of cannabis,
Speaker 5: that there are kinds that do focus more on the
Speaker 5: headier aspects of the drug the substance, and they can
Speaker 5: make it called I believe that's sativa, which can make
Speaker 5: people more on the I don't know, they lean more
Speaker 5: towards that psychedelic experience that I was describing. And then
Speaker 5: there's Indico, which some people call sleepy time weed, and
Speaker 5: it helps you get sleep if you have insomnia. Then
Speaker 5: there's also hybrids that are a combination of the two,
Speaker 5: but the really heavy sativas that is pure borderline hallucination
Speaker 5: material if you're not careful, especially if you eat it
Speaker 5: in edible form at a really high you know, milligram.
Speaker 2: Which again is difficult to it's difficult to understand if
Speaker 2: there's consistency in the dosage for the milligrams and a
Speaker 2: lot of edibles. And shout out to Indica, the street
Speaker 2: name into couch that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I don't think there's a there's an analog
Speaker 5: joke for sativa, but Sativa is the one that tends
Speaker 5: to be the heavier, kind of more like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 5: what's going on in my head kind of vibe.
Speaker 2: And so we have arguably an insidious perfect storm with
Speaker 2: some people trying to get through COVID or trying to
Speaker 2: get through that lockdown. They may have a pre existing
Speaker 2: condition of some sort. They're self medicating by ingesting cannabis,
Speaker 2: and the logic is that this may have accelerated. Again,
Speaker 2: this may have had this interaction that might not affect
Speaker 2: other people, but if they had certain genetic predispositions or
Speaker 2: behavioral dispositions towards some mental issues, then cannabis could put
Speaker 2: some high octane gas on the fire. And you know
Speaker 2: that's not even counting of course, younger people ingesting cannabis.
Speaker 2: Science is still trying to figure out how the human
Speaker 2: brain develops, and we know that's happening because every few
Speaker 2: years a study comes out and just says, well, actually,
Speaker 2: we don't think the brain is fully developed at this
Speaker 2: point in time. Another compounding issue is the science on
Speaker 2: conditions like schizophrenia, auditory hallucinations and so on. That stuff
Speaker 2: is still in progress as well. There's still much more
Speaker 2: that needs to be learned about that. The relationship between
Speaker 2: cannabis and mental health is therefore complicated. Individual cases vary
Speaker 2: so widely. There's not a silver bullet answer. You know,
Speaker 2: there's not a one size fits all approach to this.
Speaker 4: We know that heavy.
Speaker 2: Cannabis use can have certain adverse effects, you know, physical health.
Speaker 2: It's not great to smoke all the time. If you're smoking,
Speaker 2: you can also have memory issues and stuff. But I
Speaker 2: don't know, do we have We're almost sewing this up.
Speaker 2: Do we have any last words? I'd love to end
Speaker 2: with mental health resources?
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And I dig just want to point out that, like,
Speaker 5: there are studies out there that show there there are
Speaker 5: real correlations here between you know, folks developing early onset
Speaker 5: dementia and and and regular cannabis use. And you know
Speaker 5: that nothing happens in a vacuum. You all choices that
Speaker 5: you make. There may be ramifications down the line, like
Speaker 5: hopefully it doesn't result in you, in one moment of
Speaker 5: being peer pressured, you know, having a psychotic break that
Speaker 5: causes you to murder somebody. But these things that we
Speaker 5: that are so now available and maybe seemingly destigmatized, they
Speaker 5: it's not like you can just do whatever you want
Speaker 5: and expect there not to potentially be some bill that
Speaker 5: comes due at some point. That's true for alcohol, that's
Speaker 5: true for eating. You know, that's true for any vice.
Speaker 5: I suppose, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't really, I don't know. But just one
Speaker 3: thing I wanted to say is I think we kind
Speaker 3: of forget that cannabis is like a drug, a little
Speaker 3: bit like alcohol, where sometimes again it's not debilitating the
Speaker 3: way I've found alcohol to be when I'm like super
Speaker 3: super intoxicated to where I'm definitely not making good decisions.
Speaker 3: I would just say we kind of forget sometimes because
Speaker 3: of the way maybe popular culture thinks about cannabis that
Speaker 3: you can make a bad decision on that stuff in
Speaker 3: the same in a less controlled way than you would
Speaker 3: have if you weren't under you know, any substance, right,
Speaker 3: Which doesn't mean it's going to do that every time.
Speaker 4: Just a whole pound cake for example.
Speaker 3: Well, or I mean not joking doing something socially with someone,
Speaker 3: or you know that y're around at the time that
Speaker 3: you are high that you wouldn't do with that person
Speaker 3: if you weren't.
Speaker 5: I disagree with you a tiny bit there. I mean,
Speaker 5: I just feel like the inhibition lowering quality of alcohol
Speaker 5: are just so much more all encompassing than the inhibition
Speaker 5: lowering qualities of cannabis. To me, it's like the negatives
Speaker 5: are like, you know, the munchies or some kind. And
Speaker 5: I'm not saying the things you're describing aren't real, and
Speaker 5: they certainly can happen, I imagine for others, but in
Speaker 5: general my experience with folks, it just kind of makes
Speaker 5: people a little goofy and maybe talk too much or something,
Speaker 5: or like say something they wouldn't have normally said. I
Speaker 5: can't imagine someone who wasn't already going to do something
Speaker 5: nefarious being coerced by marijuana use into like date raping somebody.
Speaker 3: I don't That's certainly not what I was saying. Like what,
Speaker 3: I guess what.
Speaker 5: I'm saying that as an extreme example, that's all I think.
Speaker 3: You know, I definitely am not thinking those extremes. But
Speaker 3: I guess we forget that it is a substance that
Speaker 3: changes your brain a little bit. Thc is, it's psychoactive,
Speaker 3: So just you know, just be aware of that when
Speaker 3: you're using.
Speaker 2: And I'm an ardent fan or enthusiast of decriminalization. Simply
Speaker 2: simply put, without getting into any of my personal experiences
Speaker 2: or feelings, it's one of the best ways to cripple
Speaker 2: organized crime, right, including factions of the government that, in
Speaker 2: my opinion, engage in something very close to organized crime
Speaker 2: to pay out. Hey, you look at it. I walk
Speaker 2: down the street from that one.
Speaker 4: But it's true capitalism. Well I don't know.
Speaker 5: At least organized crime knows what it is and calls
Speaker 5: it like it is. I feel like what you're describing
Speaker 5: bit is almost worse because it's like masquerading as something
Speaker 5: else that's here to.
Speaker 4: Like help people.
Speaker 2: But they know, right, they know, and we also know that. Look,
Speaker 2: not everything is for everyone. There are plenty of people
Speaker 2: who swear by their cannabis routines and they say, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm more at peace, I'm happier, I'm motivating, and I'm stable,
Speaker 2: et cetera. I found something some sort of redom that
Speaker 2: works with me. And that means the answers are never
Speaker 2: as simple as we prefer. We have to be very careful.
Speaker 2: We cannot dismiss one person's experience because it doesn't jibe
Speaker 2: with somebody else's. People are different and all equally important.
Speaker 2: So what we can do, I would say, what we
Speaker 2: must do is practice empathy and kindness and maybe we
Speaker 2: end it here. If you or someone you know is
Speaker 2: struggling with mental health issues, please know there are tons
Speaker 2: of helpful, free resources out there in the US, out
Speaker 2: there in your neck of the global woods. You can
Speaker 2: reach out directly, confidentially, anonymously at eight sixty six nine
Speaker 2: zero three three seven eighty seven. That is the That
Speaker 2: is the National Mental Health hotline. They're always open. There's
Speaker 2: someone there for you. Be safe, folks. We want to
Speaker 2: hear your thoughts about this because we touched on a
Speaker 2: lot of things here. We try to be easy to
Speaker 2: find online.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 5: You can find us to the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where
Speaker 5: we exist on Facebook, where we have our Facebook group.
Speaker 5: Here's where it gets crazy. Join the conversation there, sling
Speaker 5: around some memes, have a You can also find us
Speaker 5: that handle on YouTube, where we release videos on the weekly. Finally,
Speaker 5: you can find us on x FKA, Twitter, on Instagram
Speaker 5: and TikTok. We are Conspiracy Stuff.
Speaker 3: Show call one eight three three std WYTK. Leave us
Speaker 3: a voicemail, give yourself a cool nickname, and then you've
Speaker 3: got three minutes say whatever you'd like do include if
Speaker 3: we can use your voice and message on the air.
Speaker 3: If you got more to say than can fit in
Speaker 3: that three minutes and one out, instead, send us a
Speaker 3: good old fashioned email.
Speaker 2: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.