Stefan Molyneux discusses marijuana use in the United States. He begins with some basic definitions, including what counts as regular use, heavy use, and cannabis use disorder. He outlines the main components of marijuana, such as THC and CBD, and presents data that show increases in past-year, past-month, and heavy use over recent years.
He then reviews usage trends by age group. Usage declined among adolescents during the pandemic period, held steady among young adults, and rose among adults over 26 as well as seniors. He also shares results from high school and middle school surveys, including the growing popularity of vaping as a method of cannabis use among students.
A substantial portion of the discussion centers on health risks. These include greater chances of addiction, psychosis, schizophrenia, cognitive decline, and shifts in stress and hormone systems. He covers respiratory damage from smoking and vaping, cardiovascular risks, impaired driving, workplace injuries, risky sexual behavior, fertility concerns, pregnancy outcomes, and impacts on family and child welfare.
He looks at how cannabis potency has changed over time, noting that THC levels have risen compared with earlier decades. He links higher potency and early use to greater risks, and he touches on historical reports of cannabis-related mental illness as well as the part adverse childhood experiences play in later substance use.
Toward the end, he takes up legalization, public messaging, political support, and commercial incentives. He makes the case that childhood trauma drives much of drug use and concludes that prevention should aim at improving childhood conditions, reducing trauma, and fostering better family environments.
0:00:00 - The Truth About Marijuana
0:00:57 - Definitions and Cannabis Basics
0:01:51 - Rising Use in America
0:03:54 - Heavy Use Surges
0:05:03 - Age Trends and Youth Use
0:06:56 - Young Adults and Seniors
0:08:27 - Past-Month Use by Age
0:10:14 - High School Use Declines
0:11:05 - Adolescent Trends and COVID
0:12:42 - Vaping and Cannabis Delivery
0:13:46 - Gender Differences in Use
0:15:05 - Racial Disparities in Usage
0:16:48 - Heavy Use and ACEs
0:19:19 - Childhood Trauma and Drug Use
0:22:38 - Rising THC Potency
0:24:28 - Concentrates and Ratios
0:26:06 - Mental Illness History
0:27:46 - Addiction and Psychosis
0:30:07 - Psychosis Harms Families
0:33:01 - THC and Brain Chemistry
0:34:41 - Schizophrenia Consequences
0:37:14 - Mental Health Risks
0:38:52 - Medical Uses and Limits
0:41:13 - Early Use Damages
0:42:56 - ABCD Study Findings
0:44:31 - IQ Decline and Income
0:48:36 - Brain Function Changes
0:52:20 - Heavy Use and Brain Activation
0:54:30 - Cannabis and Cortisol
0:57:26 - Hormones and Lung Damage
0:59:40 - Smoking Damage on CT Scans
1:01:44 - Vaping Risks and Injury
1:03:43 - Marijuana Versus Alcohol
1:04:45 - Driving and Workplace Dangers
1:07:53 - Sexual and Fertility Risks
1:09:44 - Pregnancy and Parenting
1:11:21 - Legalization Effects
1:13:16 - Legalization History
1:16:39 - Funding and Politics
1:18:43 - International Drug Treaties
1:21:06 - Could We Have Known?
1:23:16 - Final Takeaways
1:23:52 - Childhood Trauma Revisited
[0:00:00] Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux, from Freedomain. Yes, that's right, the famous Truth About presentations are back, baby! And we are going to talk about the truth about marijuana, the good, bad, the indifferent, and everything that you need to know to make the best decision for you and your future. Of course, we all grew up with this stuff about marijuana, and heaven forbid you ever talk about it online, this is the kind of stuff you will get. Hey man, it's 100% natural, an ancient remedy. It has powerful therapeutic benefits! It expands your mind, makes you feel good. It's harmless or at least safer than alcohol! Hey man, do you drink coffee? It's the same thing! Well, not really. Well, you can't OD on weed! Well let's look into this... truth-- Media and culture of course reinforce these messages along with the culture shredding stuff that comes out of Hollywood, of course.
[0:00:57] So let's start with, guess it's a philosophy show here, what do we start with? That's right, we start with definitions. So regular use is at least once per week. Heavy use is 20 out of the past 30 days. Cannabis use disorder, or CUD, addiction classification. That's a DSM-5 classification defined as the problematic pattern of cannabis use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress. So, are you ready for some mouthfuls of syllables? I bet you are. Composition of marijuana. Marijuana has over 120 cannabinoids. THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, is psychoactive and the most prevalent CBD. Cannabidiol is the most prevalent non-psychoactive component.
[0:01:52] Now, what is happening? This is focused on America, although the patterns, I'm sure, are similar elsewhere. Past-year youth for Americans age 12 and up, 17.5, 48.2 million people in 2019, increasing to 22.3% in 2024, or 64.2 million. So, past year or past month, we'll do past month as well, having had at least one cannabis product in the last year or month respectively, past month use, from 11.5% in 2019 to 15.4% or 36.4 million in 2024.
[0:02:38] Those are big increases. Some very, very big increases. A third, a quarter, it's big. Cannabis use disorder from 4.8% in 2019 to 7.1% or 20.6 million in 2024. I mean, just look at these numbers. Look at these numbers in just half a decade. Now, of course, there was COVID and all of that. But still, it's a big increase. There's been an explosion in heavy and daily use. In 1992, there were fewer than 1 million heavy users, 0.39% of 256 million. By 2012, this number grew to 6 million, 1.91% of 314 million.
[0:03:29] In 2024, there are an estimated 18 million heavy users, or 5.29% of 340 million. 7.9% of adults are now heavy users, which is wild stuff. Now, the x-axis here has a break from 1992, 2012 to 2024. So this is huge increases.
[0:03:55] We have increased intensity of use. this has changes in self-reported cannabis use in the U.S. from 1979 to 2022. In 2022, heavy marijuana users first exceeded daily alcohol users. Among past-month users, the median is 15 to 16 days, which is just shy of heavy use, 20 days plus. The median for alcohol past-month users is 4 to 5 days. On a per capita basis, marijuana use across the entire population was 0.64 days per person per month in 2008, or 2.3 billion days of use annually. By 2022, this increased to 2.03 days per person per month, a 218% increase. And that is in a very short amount of time, 14 years.
[0:04:53] So 8.1 billion days of use annually. And then this is just self-reported. We assume that this is under-reported.
[0:05:03] Past year trends by age group. From 2019 to 2021, past year use among kids aged 12 to 17 declined. From 13.2% or 3.3 million to 11%, 2.7 million, largely due to limited access, from the pandemic, holding stable for 2024.
[0:05:24] Young adults, 18 to 25 held steady at 35% past year, 12.2 million in 2024. Adults, 26 plus, have increased from 15.8 or 33 million in 2019 to 17.3%, 28.3 million in 2021, jumping to 21.7% of 49.3 million in 2024. Now, these studies were conducted as in-home interviews. The 12 to 17 cohort is almost certainly underrepresented in their use here. So we're going to examine a different study showing higher rates of adolescent use. In both studies, adolescent use is on a slow but steady decline. The fact that they're replacing it with vaping and other things we'll get to later. The graph here shows past-year usage trends from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. These are surveys conducted by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The data on seniors comes from a 2025 JAMA network open article cannabis use among older adults.
[0:06:35] 2007 use is somewhere between 150,000 to 380,000, as other studies reported, 0.4%. percent. 2022 users is more than 4.6 million seniors, right? From like a quarter mil to 4.6 million is mad, absolutely mad.
[0:06:56] The past year use in the 18 to 25 group is particularly concerning as the brain is continuing its development up until about age 25, especially among men. The pattern here of high use in the 18 to 25 age group and lower use 26 plus age group is consistent across decades of substance use disorder. So young adults, 18 to 25, clearly, I mean, you can see the lines here, are the peak group. This lines up with the classic college and early post-college window, independence, then social environments, peer pressure, lower day-to-day responsibilities and still developing brains. There's a noticeable drop, of course, once people move into the 26 plus group. The 26 plus category is broad, includes everyone from people in the late 20s and 30s all the way through to the elderly. The decline largely affects life stage changes, careers, serious relationships, family responsibilities, of course, and motivations for frequent recreational, use is declined. Financial pressures reduce the time, opportunity, of course. And most people just age out of heavier patterns as priorities shift. Use in general is higher among adults in the 26 to 49 range, with use generally falling off among the elderly. And of course, the boomers age into being elderly, they bring higher baseline use patterns with them.
[0:08:18] Seniors, 65-plus past-year use rose from less than 1% in 2007 to 8.4% in 2022.
[0:08:27] Past month's trends by age group. Past month use, any time will last 30 days. From 2019 to 2021, past month use among 12 to 17 declined. From 7.4% of 2 million to 5.8%, 1.6 million, again remaining stable for 2024. Four. Young adults, 18 to 25, held steady at 24.1% past month, 8.4 million in 2024. Now, I don't know if this is different now, just sort of by the by, it's a little side quest here. I don't know if this is different. I didn't know when I was in, I went to three different universities and I did graduate work at the University of Toronto. I didn't know any weedheads. I didn't know anybody who smoked drugs. I knew a few people as teenagers and there was the burnout group, the Outback group, and so on, that you could just see were going off a cliff in a World War I shot down airplane puff of endless smoke. But I didn't, it's how segregated weed culture, weed people, even occasional users, do not mix with others. You know, my friends and I were playing squash and going on hikes and so on. The idea of smoking weed was just as far from our mindset as we could conceive of, in the same way that not smoking weed is as far from the Weedhead's mindset as they could conceive of, and ne'er the twain shall meet in a way.
[0:09:48] Adults 26 plus was stable between 2019 and 2022, but jumped, from 12.3%, 27.1 million in 2022, to 15.1%, or 34.3 million in 2024. That's wild. That's like 7 million extra pot smokers in two years. Wild!
[0:10:14] So the graph shows past month's youth trends from the National Survey on Drug use and health, and these are conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The Monitoring the Future survey showed high schoolers' past month use falling significantly from 2015 to 2023. It's all about the impressions. It's all about what's considered cool and so on. And when these things change, as surely as a kite tail follows a kite, it will change as well. Another study showed high schoolers' past month use fell from 22% in 2015 to 17% in 2023. Of course, if you're home and you're kind of locked up under COVID and you can't get access to weed, then when you get to university, the big, of course, the big problem is promiscuity for women and drugs for men. I mean, obviously big overlapping diagrams, but those are the general challenges.
[0:11:05] Usage trends among adolescents. The Monitoring the Future survey has been tracking drug use among 8th grade, 10th grade, and 12th grade students since 1975. The survey is taken in school, self-administered, and submissions are anonymous. There is a noticeable drop in 2020 among all frequencies of use attributable to COVID lockdowns.
[0:11:27] While there was a rebound in most categories, marijuana use has not returned to pre-COVID levels. Teens report that it's harder to get marijuana now. Pandemic lockdowns' habits persist, such as structured time, less socializing. There's a slight increase in disapproval of occasional marijuana use. Graphs showing lifetime use, past year use, past month use, and daily use are next.
[0:11:54] So, I vanished from the screen. I vanished from the screen. Lifetime marijuana use among U.S. students, 8th grade, 10th grade, 12th grade. As you can see, there's a decline. Past year marijuana use among U.S. students, 8th grade, 10th grade, 12th grade. Again, a slight decline. And this is past month marijuana use and daily marijuana use is steady or declining. And of course, when marijuana becomes legalized, then the pathway to students diminishes because people can get marijuana from dispensaries, and so there's less of a delivery pipeline towards children.
[0:12:43] What about vaping? Vaping has increased as a method of cannabis delivery among adolescents. Other uses of vaping are nicotine and flavors only. Eighth-grade cannabis users are most likely to vape. Why? Flavors are especially appealing to younger kids who may find plain cannabis unappealing. It's easier to conceal. The devices look like pens or USB sticks. Vaping is also less harsh on the lungs than smoking. Next, we're going to have a look at the proportions of high school cannabis users who vape. Data for daily vape users is only available starting in 2020. Marijuana vaping among lifetime use U.S. Students 2017 to 2024 as you can see it is going up quite a bit marijuana vaping among past year use of marijuana for U.S. Students same time frame these are all the same time frame except bottom right is 2020 to 2024 so it is going up of course quite a bit.
[0:13:47] Gender shifts. In 2023, women aged 19 to 30 reported higher past year use than men for the first time on record. And, you know, just by the by, this is one of the challenges of the patriarchy is where all the power and the coolness and the authority and the strength and the dominance is, which has women, of course, want to imitate men. And this can lead them to smoking and this can lead them to swearing and to tattoos and to dominance and so on. Most women really can't, young women, can't really perceive benevolent masculinity, so they go with this kind of caricature of masculinity, of sort of chest-thumping dominance and bad habits. It's really not how it is, but that's how they perceive it. And if that's how you perceive it, that's what it is for you, right? Primary reasons cited by women include coping with anxiety and stress, greater comfort with legal products, preference for non-smoking formats, and reduced social stigma. In a separate 2023 study, 19.4% of female high school students reported past-month use compared with 16.4% of males. Researchers note that high school girls share many of the same motivations as young adult women with the added pressure of peer conformity during adolescence. Hey, man, It's like philosophy. All the cool kids are doing it.
[0:15:06] Racial, ethnic disparities, overall use. And, you know, much though I hate to break things out in this way, if the numbers differentiate, you wouldn't want to put things in a big blob, right? Because there are racial and ethnic disparities, which is worth teasing out, because we want to point out where the greater risks can be. Past year use is highest among multiracials at 32.9% and American Indians or Alaskan Natives at 30.2%.
[0:15:33] Past month use is highest among American Indians, Alaskan Natives at 25.2% and multiracial is at 24.2%. Lowest use is Asian adults, 10% past year and 5.8% past month. So as you see here, it's broken out with Asian. And for my British listeners, Asian means East Asian or Korean, Japanese, and so on. Chinese, Hispanic, we know, white, black, and this American Indians, Alaska Natives, and multiracial. So it's important. Whether the multiracial young, people or people as a whole are dealing with identity issues or not feeling like they fit in somewhere in particular, these are well-known psychological risk factors for multiracial kids, could be something like that. Again, I'm not sure if the reason is really known, but it is important if you have a multiracial kid, be sure to have good conversations with them about drug use. When 2002 to 2021 increased most among Hispanics 4.3 times and black females 3.6 times. Overall, women increased more than men.
[0:16:48] Racial, ethnic disparities, heavy use of marijuana. Heavy use highest among American Indian, Alaska Native, and multiracials at 14%. Black adults at 10.4%, whites at 7.6%, and Hispanics at 7.1%. Cannabis use disorder rates. Multiracial, 3%. American Indian, Alaska Native, 2.3%. Black, 2.2%. Youth heavy use and CUD cannabis use disorder also elevated in black multiracial and American Indian groups, I mean I worked up north after high school and spent some time working with, the indigenous population and seeing the reserves and addiction is absolutely catastrophic in those communities, it's really under discussed and really needs to be talked about in society just wanted to mention that.
[0:17:48] The Adverse Childhood Experiences study was first conducted by Kaiser Permanente in 1998. I actually interviewed the guy who ran it. So Adverse Childhood Experiences, these are 10 traumatic childhood events. 1. Did you feel that you didn't have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, or had no one to protect or take care of you? 2. Did you lose a parent through divorce, abandonment, death, or other reason? 3. Did you live with anyone who was depressed, mentally ill or attempted suicide? 4. Did you live with anyone who had a problem with drinking or using drugs, including prescription drugs?
[0:18:25] 5. Did your parents or adults in your home ever hit, punch, beat or threaten to harm each other? 6. Did you live with anyone who went to jail or prison? 7. Did a parent or adult in your home ever swear at you, insult you or put you down? 8. Did a parent or adult in your home ever hit, beat, kick, or physically hurt you in any way? 9. Did you feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were special? 10. Did you experience unwanted sexual contact, such as fondling or oral, anal, vaginal intercourse or penetration? So these are the questions, and they are highly correlated with negative life outcomes. It's not determinism, right? You get self-knowledge, you can actually to become a better person through adverse childhood experiences. But in the main, in general, without that kind of intervention, it's negative.
[0:19:19] So drug use as a whole is correlated with ACE experiences in a dose-dependent manner. The more ACEs, the more drug use, and cannabis is no exception. When middle school students were asked if they had used cannabis in the past 30 days, This is what research has found. Now, just a reminder, it is unlikely that people will say they had childhood trauma when they didn't.
[0:19:45] But it is likely that people who had childhood trauma will minimize it. If you've ever talked to people, and I've talked to thousands of people about childhood trauma, but they say, oh, it wasn't that bad, or I deserved it, or it wasn't abusive, or they only had their best interests at heart, they were doing the best. They were doing the best they could with the knowledge they had, all that kind of stuff. So...
[0:20:07] It's important that ACEs are underrepresented. If somebody said, I had a great childhood, and I've had this a million times on my show, people call in, I had a great childhood, and we start to dig in, and it really wasn't the case. So they're likely underreported. So zero adverse childhood experiences. And again, that doesn't mean you didn't have bullying at school. It doesn't mean that you didn't get a lot of propaganda to hate yourself, particularly if you're sort of the white male category and so on. So we're just talking about stuff that was considered bad in 1988. So that was a long, long time ago. So zero ACEs is the baseline. Three to 5% of kids who report zero adverse childhood experiences are using drugs, cannabis in the past 30 days. One ACE is 2.4 times or nine to 10%. Two ACEs is 2.9 times or 11 to 12%. Three ACEs is 5.3 times or 21 to 22%. Four or more ACEs is 7.9% or 31 to 32%. So drug use in general, as is a lot of addictive or most addictive behavior, drug use is self-medicating internal horror at childhood trauma. It's a very broad statement. Science backs this up very clearly. just remember when you're dealing with an addict, you're often dealing with somebody who is self-medicating childhood trauma.
[0:21:35] Four or more ACEs are linked to a 4 to 12 times higher odds of illicit drug use. Many people use substances to cope with trauma-related distress, a pattern supported by the self-medication hypothesis and multiple studies. They're not taking drugs to feel fantastic. They're taking drugs to stop feeling terrible. They're taking drugs to feel normal.
[0:22:01] In the same way that you take an aspirin or an anvil or whatever you take, if you have a headache, if you take them, you don't take it to get a high. You take it so you don't have a headache. So, ACE scores and drug use. Middle school students who used marijuana in the past 30 days by ACEs. So, again, you can see the ACEs along the x-axis, percentage of students along the y-axis. And, again, it's not deterministic. It's not like every kid with a terrible childhood is using drugs. but it is dependent. This is a terrible line. Stairway to hell.
[0:22:39] Now, let's talk potency. It's not just in your spam folder. So, marijuana today is not the same substance from the 1960s to 1970s. It's the same argument you have as a whole. You don't want to think your children are going through the same kind of schooling or education that you went through because the leftists have taken over and it's, you know, everything for the revolution. everything is toxic to health and so on. So, this is a deliberate result, the marijuana increase in potency, a deliberate result of selective breeding and market demand. So, let's look at the steep climb that has transformed marijuana's effects. Dispensary weed is more concentrated. It may also be mixed with concentrates, further increasing potency. So during the 1960s and 70s, we'd had about 1% to 3% THC. By 1995, it increased to about 4%. Early 2000s, 9.75%. Data on dispensary weeds started in 2014, showing significantly higher concentration. Street marijuana today is commonly 15% to 18% THC, while dispensary marijuana ranges from 22% to 25% THC.
[0:23:52] So, look at this chart. Average THC, 1970 to 2024 or so. It is not your grandfather's weed. I mean, it's turned into crack. It's turned into stuff that seriously scrambles your brain. Oh, a little weed, blah, blah, blah. If you're older, it's not the same thing at all, at all. It's like saying, well, I had a light beer, so you can drink gasoline.
[0:24:29] Concentrates are waxes, oils, and dabs. Dabbing is inhalation of a heated concentrate using a water pipe or other tool similar to vaping but less discreet. So the concentrates are inhaled through vaping and dabbing. Moderately common is mixing with flour, with edibles, next most common, followed up by topicals, suppositories, and beverages. Concentrates measured 6.7 THC, in 2007, bumping to 55.7% in 2017, and is now routinely 60% to 95% up to 99%.
[0:25:10] The illegality of marijuana was what largely drove the increasing potency of the drug. Legalization has introduced regulations on legal weed, as well as increasing demand for CBD products. So this is the non-toxic CBDs, the non-intoxicating compound thought to temper some of THC's harsher effects. THC to CBD ratio in weed, 14 to 1, 1995. Peak, 103 to 1, 2017. Still highly THC dominant at about 24 to 1 recently. So please, please, please, if you're older, do not judge what your children are exposed to by what you're exposed to. It's like saying, well, I saw a Playboy when I was a kid, so hardcore corn on the internet is similar. Apparently really not.
[0:26:06] Now, mental illness. Oh, I know, I know, and it's a tough one to talk about, but it's one of the reasons mental illness runs in my family, so it's one of the reasons I never touch that stuff with a 10-foot pole. I can't be doing acrobatics with people throwing broken plates at me and asking me to catch them. I will simply fall. Now, we're going to transition a little bit to the effects of THC, so we're going to cover historical reports to demonstrate that the health issues we will talk about were observed from at least the 19th century.
[0:26:37] Hashish, mentioned here, is a resin derived from cannabis which concentrated THC. It was consumed by mixing with tobacco and smoking, eaten as a paste in sweets, cakes, or candies, mixed into drinks, or eaten directly or taken in a pill. Fond. In 1845, French psychiatrist Moreau de Tour documented hashish-induced hallucinations, paranoia, and psychosis-like states. In 1894, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission found 30 to 40 percent of Bengal asylum inmates were habitual ganja and chara users. 7.3 percent of all Indian asylum admissions were hemp-related. During the 1800s in Egypt, up to 60 percent of asylum patients were linked to hashish. Hashish insanity syndrome was described. In the 1800s, U.S. asylum reports echoed these patterns, attributing 5 to 10 percent of insanity cases to cannabis. Now, by the by, THC concentration of 19th century hashish was 2-8%, much higher than what you get from smoking native cannabis buds, which range from 1-3% THC.
[0:27:46] So is it addictive? Could it be addictive? Well, cannabis addiction risk. So cannabis use disorder is a DSM-5. That's the manual of mental disorders. It's a categorization that basically means addicted to marijuana. Among people who use marijuana regularly, at least once per week, roughly 15 to 25% develop cannabis use disorder. Among heavy users, 20 or more days per month, the risk rises to 25 to 40 percent. Past month users aged 12 to 17, the cannabis use disorder rate is very high, around 78 percent. Past month users aged 18 to 25, the rate is around 65 percent. Now, you could say, well, but it's not physically addictive. Doesn't matter. What matters is, does it substantially interfere with or undermine productivity, happiness, efficiency, effectiveness, and can you quit, right?
[0:28:45] So, we need to talk about psychosis, the mental state in which a person loses touch with reality. It typically involves one or more of the following. Hallucinations. Seeing, hearing, or feeling things that aren't there, most common, are auditory hallucinations. By the by, absolutely terrifying. I cannot imagine what it's like, to see things that aren't there and how that would mess with your head completely, like our senses and our objectivity are the only way our trapped and a skull-cage prison brain gets to interact with reality, if you can't trust your senses, really messes with your capacity for reason and your capacity to connect with other people. So we've got hallucinations, we have delusions. Strongly held false beliefs that don't change even when presented with evidence such as paranoia, grandiosity, or beliefs that others are trying to harm them. That's right, my mother slept with a giant bread knife under her pillow. Disorganized thinking and speech: Thoughts and speech become confused, tangential, or hard to follow. I remember someone who came to a philosophy meetup many years ago... just could not follow what he was saying, could not interrupt him... it was a real challenge. Disorganized or abnormal behavior: Acting in ways that seem bizarre or unpredictable to others. I was once at a party and a woman who was high didn't like the conversation and tried crawling out the window on the second floor. Not super wise.
[0:30:07] So what happens to a psychotic individual? During a psychotic episode, people experience significant functional impairment. Missing work is very common during acute episodes. Performance drops sharply. Repeated episodes or prolonged psychosis may result in job loss. Psychosis, of course, puts a lot of strain on your relationships. Paranoia can lead to accusations, withdrawal, and conflicts. Trust is damaged. Children around a psychotic individual experience fear, confusion, and emotional distress. Parenting capacity is impaired, be it from withdrawal, unpredictability, or neglect. In severe cases, there can be risks to the child's safety. This is the, you're possessed by a demon, the only way to cure you is to do something dangerous. Delusion. Long-term exposure to parental psychosis is associated with higher rates of emotional and behavioral problems in children. It's hard to grow up and be wise when you are frantically managing somebody else's Vesuvius erupting constant insanity. I can tell you that. So what is the relationship between psychosis and cannabis? Well, high THC cannabis, greater than 15% THC, is associated with a three to five times higher risk of psychosis. This increases up to seven times if genetically vulnerable.
[0:31:30] 41% of heavy users who experience psychosis progress to schizophrenia within three years, with ages 16 to 30 most at risk. Now, cannabis-induced psychosis is typically temporary and resolves with cessation of the drug, usually within one to four weeks. Early users, heavy users and those with genetic predispositions are at risk for recurring or permanent psychosis. Generally, if a user experiences cannabis-induced psychosis and does not stop, this is a very strong predictor for more severe psychiatric problems.
[0:32:04] Now, given that high THC, as we talked about here, greater than 15%, is associated with three to five times higher risk of psychosis, we should note that the average THC content in weed from your local dispensary is 22 to 28%. That's not even counting the concentrates, which range from 60 to 95%. You're going to have a hard time finding cannabis products that qualify as not high THC even from the street. Once somebody experiences cannabis-induced psychosis if they continue using that's a very strong predictor of progression to schizophrenia, cannabis-induced psychosis comes on acutely it frequently includes strong paranoia and suspiciousness it can occur in people with no prior history, it usually resolves within days to weeks of stopping consumption. I knew a woman once who tried marijuana and was completely paranoid that everyone in the bar was trying to kill her.
[0:33:02] So, how does cannabis induce psychosis? THC acutely increases dopamine release in the main reward pathway of the brain, which is heavily implicated in symptoms of psychosis. So, dopamine is often called the brain's reward and motivation chemical. It plays a major role in pleasure, motivation, reward, and drive. It also helps with movement, attention, and focus. Excess dopamine is generally responsible for hallucinations and delusions. You want your dopamine in the Aristodelian mean. Too little, and you can't get out of bed. Too much, and you think you can fly.
[0:33:37] Repeated psychotic episodes lower the threshold of future psychosis, and chronic THC exposure down-regulates CB1 receptors. So this disrupts normal endocannabinoids signaling, which then moderates dopamine, glutamate, and GABA. Glutamate is the brain's main excitory neurotransmitter. It's the gas pedal. It is responsible for learning, memory, and cognitive processing. It helps neurons communicate and fire signals to each other. Glutamate dysfunction is thought to contribute to cognitive problems. GABA is the brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitter. Think of it as the brakes. Glutamate is the gas pedal. GABA is the brakes. It calms brain activity, reduces anxiety, and prevents overstimulation. It helps maintain balance by slowing down or dampening, excessive neural firing. GABA dysfunction can lead to too much excitation in the brain.
[0:34:41] So, the risk of schizophrenia is very, very important. Because cannabis use is linked to earlier onset of schizophrenia, late teens to early thirties, many individuals face decades of severe disability during prime adult years. Unemployment rates 4-6%, generally 70-90%. Lifetime homelessness, 4-6% of people, 20-50% of schizophrenics. Lifetime incarceration, 5-10% lifetime risk for men, often 20-50% or more for schizophrenics. High rates of repeated psychiatric hospitalization, with 30-50% re-hospitalized within one year of discharge. Life expectancy is reduced by 15-20 years compared to the general population. Appalling.
[0:35:31] I remember dating a girl in my early twenties and we went to go and visit her grandmother who was in a home in a small town in Ontario. And there was a guy there just incredibly bitter. He was a young guy. He was stuck in an old age home because I guess they didn't have any beds or there was no facilities or whatever. And he was a guy like in his early thirties with just like contempt and craziness in his eyes. And so I don't know his history, of course, but I just remember like, that is the life you absolutely don't want.
[0:36:00] Yeah, the vast majority of schizophrenics become unemployable. And so homelessness, homelessness at any point in your life, incarceration, spent any time in jail, being booked or arrested and held in custody, time served while awaiting trial. It doesn't include things like being held in the drunk tank or informal holds without being booked. Most of the time, schizophrenics will serve short terms in jail. Receiving a conviction of being sent to jail is common for serious cases while being sent to a psychiatric institution is not as common. The rate of incarceration for men here is less broad and involved being sentenced to serve jail time. Psychiatric hospitalization occurs for 0.4 to 0.6% of the general population, which includes schizophrenics. It is worth noting here that schizophrenics make up 0.3 to 0.7% of the general population. What happens with schizophrenics? while cardiovascular disease, suicide, overall poor health management. Many people with early onset schizophrenia do become parents, but parenting capacity is frequently impaired, increasing risks of family instability and child welfare involvement.
[0:37:15] Mental health risks. There are broader mental health risks that apply to regular users, not just heavy users of marijuana. These risks include increased depression risk, plus 51%, anxiety risk, plus 58%, and suicidal ideation risk of plus 50 to 65%.
[0:37:37] Contrary to no hangover and non-addictive claims, withdrawal symptoms affect 47% of heavy users. And again, this is just what people report. We can't read their minds. A lot of people are like, no, I'm fine, right? So it's probably higher. Heavy use also results in cumulative cognitive decline, including persistent brain fog and reduced executive function. You know, the burnout cases, the burn cases, the Christopher Lloyd character in the old show, Taxi, the guy who, well, he was both a weed user and an alcoholic who interrupted my prom in high school. I went to three proms in high school and was dragged out by security screaming. Me, I didn't do no disturbance. Stereotype accuracy is one of the most IQ prediction and stereotype accuracy are just about the most reproducible things in all of psychology. So when you have the stereotype of the burnout guy with the thousand yard stare, the slow shuffle, the no ambition, and the lazy justifications for a slow decline, they come from real things. Stereotypes come from real things. You can't create a stereotype that doesn't have some truth in it and have it sustain or stick.
[0:38:53] All right, how to use and how not to use marijuana medicinally. There are documented medical uses for cannabis, seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, Dravet syndrome or tuberous sclerosis complex, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, anorexia, weight loss associated with AIDS. Limited evidence exists for treating muscle spasticity and pain in multiple sclerosis. However, however, however, when it comes to using marijuana to treat medical health conditions, a Lancet study shows that there is little to no evidence that cannabis helps treat anxiety, depression, PTSD, or other conditions. Self-medication is dangerous. Using cannabis may even worsen outcomes or delay proven treatment.
[0:39:46] Medical marijuana use also carries the mental health risks we just talked about. This directly counters the common claim that people use cannabis for my anxiety/depression. And listen, listen, please, please understand. I don't, I have massive bottomless sympathy for people who are stuck in addiction. A lot of times they got into addiction from bad childhoods. Nobody's responsible for having a bad childhood. You're just born into the family you're born into. You don't blame yourself. So I don't want this to be shaming people with addiction. I want this to be, please, please be aware of the risks. If you had a bad childhood, don't have that make you have a bad adulthood. You didn't have choices as a child. You just had to survive with whatever you had, whatever was around you, whatever chaos and violence was occurring. You just had to survive that. As an adult, you can make different choices, but it's hard to make good choices if you're surrounded by propaganda. I mean, if you've ever had the situation where... I used a Windows Maps once, it took me to completely the wrong place, right? So if you've ever had a GPS mess up, then you know that if you're just following the GPS, you end up in the wrong place. If you don't have the facts, you can't make better decisions. So none of this is to shame you if you use marijuana. I guess I could have said this at the beginning. None of this is to shame you, is to give you better information so that you can avoid these risks.
[0:41:13] Risks of early use on the brain. Adolescents who begin using cannabis before the age of 18 have a four to seven times, not percent, times higher odds of developing addiction compared to adult-onset users. In the largest long-term study of over 11,000 American youth, the ABCD study, teens who used cannabis started out with stronger cognitive scores but then developed more slowly than non-users. Over time, they fell behind in key brain skills, including memory, working memory, thinking speed, and self-control, even though they often begin with better baseline performance. And, you know, I don't want to get all political up in your grill, but I will point out that governments love censorship and have also legalized weed. So they don't want you having access to things that might sharpen and improve your brain, counter-arguments, counter-factuals, things that go against general propaganda. They don't want you having access to stuff that's going to sharpen your brain and improve your thinking and challenge your preconceptions. But the stuff that turns you slower than a slug, hey man, have at it, right? It's not an accident. It's not a coincidence, right?
[0:42:26] The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development, or ABCD study, hey, that's clever, right? It was published in April 2026. That's right. That's how up to date we are on this show and strengthens its findings by combining self-reported data with objective testing of hair, urine, and oral fluid samples, right? So they got some facts. This helped cache teens who were using cannabis but had not reported it. They tracked individuals over time, and if a child was found to have started smoking weed, they were moved from the control group into the cannabis user's group.
[0:42:57] So early use of marijuana is linked to, oh, I hate saying this. I really do. I really hate saying it, is linked to irreversible changes in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. Psychosis risk is dramatically elevated, 11 times higher odds of developing psychosis and 27 times higher odds of emergency department visits or hospitalization.
[0:43:20] From JAMA, that's the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2026, any underage past year cannabis use doubles the risk of a psychotic disorder, and bipolar disorder within 1.7 to 2.3 years. 1.7 years, just over one year and eight months. 2.3 years is two years and 3.5 months. Another 2026 study finds that youth with cannabis use disorder have a 52% increased risk of developing schizophrenia later. Now, just to be clear, I understand, of course, just for those who want to tell me that correlation is not causation. I understand that people would say, ah, yes, but, you know, they felt themselves going crazy, so they were using cannabis to deal with that stress and that anxiety and that worry. They've teased this stuff out pretty well, and they know with a fair degree, a reasonable degree, you can't ever get perfect with this kind of stuff, but a pretty strong degree of certainty that it is, in fact, the cannabis use that precedes the schizophrenia, and therefore, it's much more likely that the cannabis use is the part of the domino set that has someone develop schizophrenia.
[0:44:31] The other stereotype, of course, about, I just noticed, I remember when I used to do these without glasses, oh, many years ago.
[0:44:40] So the idea that people using a lot of cannabis are less intelligent, yeah, heavy adolescent use is linked to an average eight point IQ decline by midlife. So this is the Dunaidin cohort. they tracked people from the ages of 3 to 45. That's huge. So this shifts someone from the 50th percentile to the 29th.
[0:45:10] The average for whites is 100, takes you down to 92. That is rough. That is rough. Persistent deficits accrue in memory, learning, attention, and executive function. 63% of heavy lifetime users show reduced working memory activation. Again, 2025 JAMA study. This is awful. And of course, as you can see from the right hand of the bell curve here, heavy adolescent use is linked, to the average 8-point IQ decline. What that means, of course, is that you are almost completely unlikely to be anywhere in the more intelligence. I mean, you could say, like, going from 130 to 122 is not the end of the world, except think of all the things you could have done with those extra IQ points.
[0:46:03] Lifetime consequences of the IQ drop. When looking at the majority of the population, IQ 85 to 115, each point in IQ drops lifetime income by 10,500 to 13,100.
[0:46:18] IQ is significantly genetic. It's 80% genetic by late teens, and it only goes up from there. So you are harming the physical infrastructure of intelligence. An eight-point IQ decline thus results in a lifetime earnings loss of $84,000 to $104,800. In other words, if someone gave you $100,000 to not smoke weed, would you take it? Because in some ways, that's what you're dealing with, right? But it's not just the money. The money is, in fact, the least of it. Lower IQ is associated with lower marriage stability, higher divorce, reduced parenting quality, and child outcomes. And, oh, sorry, this is a little bit of annoyance because I've been talking about this stuff for many, many years in public.
[0:47:06] When people lie to themselves, they can't be close to others. You can't be close to other people if you're lying to yourself. And so if you're like, hey man, it's all natural. It doesn't do me any harm. It doesn't do anyone else any harm. Then people who know better can't talk to you and they lose respect for you. At least smokers say, yeah, it's a terrible habit. I'm just addicted. But marijuana users, it comes not just with the physical addiction and the brain damage and the schizophrenia and psychosis risk and so on, and IQ drops and all of that. But it comes with an entire infrastructure of belief systems that it is somehow superior or better, or people who don't try it as squares, or it's the same as coffee, you know, this crazy stuff. So it is the lying to yourself. Addiction is fundamentally about lying to yourself. Because if you don't lie to yourself, you can deal with the addiction. And if you lie to yourself, other people can't get close to you, especially if it's the dominant aspect of your life like weed.
[0:48:05] Lower IQ is also associated with increased criminality risk, 10 to 15% higher violent crime odds. Lower IQ is also associated with taking less good care of your health, and it's just terrible, terrible stuff all around. This decline would compound with existing racial IQ averages. So yeah, around IQ 85 is tragically the sweet spot for criminality. So you don't want to go from low 90s to mid 80s.
[0:48:37] Cannabis, and executive function. So, a large study of over 1,000 young adults used fMRI to measure brain activation during several cognitive tasks. Heavy lifetime cannabis use was associated with altered activation patterns compared to non-users. The figure below shows the key brain regions involved in different mental functions – attention, memory, decision-making, emotional processing, etc.
[0:49:04] So, this is working memory, relational, logical reasoning, mode of function, reward, theory of mind, emotion, and language. So, let's break those down. I mean, I wouldn't expect you to know what they are, so let's break them down a little. Working memory is holding and updating information in your mind while ignoring distractions. Remembering a phone number while someone is talking to you or keeping track of several things during a meeting. Rational, sorry, relational or logical reasoning, understanding how things relate to each other, figuring out patterns or analogies like A is to B, SC is to D. Motor function, simple movement and coordination tasks, tapping fingers in time with a visual cue. Reward, how the brain responds to potential rewards or wins, reacting to winning money in a game or anticipating a pleasurable outcome, fundamentally tied into motivation, right? Theory of mind, understanding what other people might be thinking or feeling, interpreting social situations or someone's intentions. Emotion. Processing emotional faces or scenes, recognizing whether someone looks angry, sad, or happy. Language. Understanding and processing language, reading sentences, or deciding if two words are related in meaning.
[0:50:12] It's one of the things that happens with weed people is they will ascribe a theory of mind to other people that is utterly false. So when I talk to people about the dangers of marijuana, I'm not a square who doesn't know how to relax and doesn't understand how to open my consciousness to other things and doesn't... like, they don't understand my perspective. I view them as being in the grip of a self-medicating tragedy of early childhood trauma for the most, right? For the most. So they don't understand my mindset. Now, understanding someone else's mindset doesn't mean that you have to agree with them. But if you have a false theory of somebody else's mind, you can't have a negotiation with them. If I think that somebody is talking to me just because they want to sell me something, as opposed to they have no financial interest in it, they're just trying to share information, I'm going to have a different response to them as a whole. If I view someone as being manipulative when they're just being honest and direct, I'm going to have a different response to them.
[0:51:15] So if you can't have an accurate theory of somebody else's mind and their motivations, you can't have relationships. So it's really, really, really tragic. So yeah, these are just very different as a whole, right? So this is the difference in, if you're just listening to this, you can see this on the screen, the difference in what lights up in marijuana users versus non-marijuana users. So non-users, zero to 10 uses, this is the triplicate thing, non-users, 0 to 10 uses, moderate uses, 11 to 999 uses, heavy users, 1,000 or more uses. So for a 22-year-old who started at age 16, this would equate to a minimum of three to four times a week over that time, which is just under the threshold of a daily user. For a 36-year-old, that would mean just about once a week at minimum, so heavy use casts a fairly wide net. So it's not a lot. It's not a lot.
[0:52:21] Lifetime versus recent use. So the first chart below shows brain activation differences based on lifetime history of cannabis use, comparing heavy users to non-users. Heavy lifetime use was linked to lower activation during the working memory task. Performance of heavy users was equivalent or worse than non-users. The second chart shows differences based on recent use. There's a scale difference. Recent use was also associated with lower activation on working memory and theory of mind, along with poorer actual task performance. So here you can see on the right-hand side, the graphic shows differences between, the, the first chart is the lifetime history. So this is the Cohen D measures how big the difference is between two groups. 0.2 is a small difference, 0.5 is a medium difference, 0.8 or more is a large difference. The first chart, lifetime history, this compares people with heavy lifetime cannabis use over a thousand users to those who have barely used. The clearest difference shows up in the working memory, which is the bottom. And remember, there's a scale difference here, right? On the x axis. Heavy lifetime users had lower activation in key control regions of the brain. The more someone had used over their lifetime, the lower the activation tended to be. Second chart is recent use.
[0:53:46] This looks at people who had THC in their system at the time of scanning versus those who didn't. Recent users also showed lower activation on working memory, and to a lesser extent on theory of mind, and they performed worse on the actual task. What lower activation means here, those these prefrontal and insular areas normally ramp up when the brain needs to hold information, stay focused, and manage mental effort. Lower activation suggests these control systems are not engaging as strongly during demanding cognitive work. So, as you can see, the activation is very different among those who've been long-term users and those who are currently high.
[0:54:31] Cannabis use and cortisol. THC acutely raises cortisol, the body's primary stress hormone, within minutes and can keep it elevated for up to an hour. This is one of the reasons why it doesn't help you much with stress. With frequent or heavy use, the HPA axis becomes dysregulatable. What does that mean? The hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, it works to regulate physiological responses to stress. Stress triggers the release of CRH from the hypothalamus. CRH then stimulates a secretion of ACTH from the anterior pituitary, which further prompts the adrenal glands to produce cortisol. The resulting accumulation of cortisol activates a negative feedback loop, which reduces these releases, ultimately terminating the stress response. You're startled, you calm down, right? Long story short.
[0:55:23] Chronic users of cannabis often show higher baseline cortisol, a blunted response to actual stressors, and a flattened daily cortisol rhythm. So this is the people like this, a loud noise, they're like, huh? Right? It's a blunted response to actual stressors. Reminds me of a guy, oh, brutal story. In junior high school, there was a guy who did a lot of weed, and there was another guy who developed early, could pick up the murder ball with one hand, whipped it at the guy. He didn't even really see it coming, the stoner, and it hit him in the nether regions. And all he said was, oh man. And then just kind of slid over sideways like a tipped stack of Jenga blocks. And it was rough. So he didn't really see it coming, didn't notice the stressor until a second or two after it had arrived. So again, we see these things and we get these stereotypes and there is some stereotype accuracy.
[0:56:21] So this pattern, higher baseline cortisol, blunted response to actual stressors, flatten daily cortisol rhythm, this pattern can impair the body's natural ability to manage stress over time, directly contradicting the common claim that cannabis helps with long-term stress release. So you can pause and zoom in on this and you can ask AI about it more in general, but this becomes dysregulated. In other words, normally there's a stimulus, a stress response, and then the body immediately starts to tamp down, fight or flight, right? But if you remain permanently on higher baseline cortisol, blunted response to actual stressors, then you end up with the kind of uneasiness that is the norm if you stop. And that's one of the reasons why people don't stop.
[0:57:08] Blunted cortisol awakening response, smaller morning spike, and flattened dirunal slope, less dynamic variation across the day. Early onset use has been linked to more pronounced flattening in some data. So this is non-users versus users. It's a higher cortisol as a whole.
[0:57:26] Effects on male sex hormones. Heavy or chronic cannabis use is linked to 10% to 30% lower testosterone in men. Lower testosterone can cause reduced libido, erectile dysfunction, loss of muscle mass, increased body fat, fatigue, and mood issues. Some studies show that cannabis can also lower estrogen in men, which is associated with reduced libido, erectile dysfunction, increased body fat, and poorer bone health. Ah, yes, menopausal ladies and bone health. Make sure you keep track of it. Cannabis use can also disrupt prolactin, impairing libido and erectile function while raising the risks of gynecomastia when levels are elevated and contributing to immune dysregulation when levels are reduced. That's actually, sorry to use a coarse term, you may remember this from Meatloaf in Fight Club. Gynecomastia is referred to as bitch tits, right? You get the breasts as a man.
[0:58:33] These hormonal disruptions are generally dose dependent and often improve after stopping use. Often, not always. Risks of smoking marijuana. Well, paraseptal emphysema is large. Apical bullae, documented even in younger heavy users. Bullae are large air pockets in the lung. Elevated risk of spontaneous pneumothorax, collapsed lung. I feel like I'm auditioning for a medical drama. Chronic bronchitis, airway inflammation, bronchial thickening, and mucoid plugging. One study found emphysema on CTs in 75% of marijuana smokers versus 5% of non-smokers. Paraseptal emphysema is emphysema along the edges of the lung lobules right next to the thin walls that separate them. It tends to form larger air spaces and bullae, the big air pockets, especially in the upper lobes. This pattern is more strongly associated with cannabis smoking and carries a higher risk of the lung collapsing, which can make your day... not good as a whole.
[0:59:40] All right, CT of a 25-year-old male with healthy lungs, CT of a 66-year-old marijuana tobacco smoker. Now, again, this is mixing some categories, but if you look at the top scan of healthy lungs, the tissue appears mostly dark because it's filled with air, with white lines and dots representing blood vessels and airways. Those dark areas should look fairly uniform. In the diseased lungs we're looking at below, you can see larger abnormal dark pockets. These are big airspaces called bullae. They're not supposed to be there. They can rupture as well, which is why heavy cannabis smokers have an increased risk of a collapsed lung. The arrows on the bottom CTs show a bullous emphysema and bronchial thickening. Smoking marijuana causes real visible damage to the lungs. CT studies show bullous emphysema, large air pockets in the upper lobes, in heavy users sometimes at surprisingly young ages. This carries a higher risk of spontaneous pneumothorax. Chronic bronchitis, wind, and airway inflammation are also common. While not every user develops bullae, the risk rises clearly with heavier, longer-term smoking.
[1:00:59] So, emphysema in a marijuana smoker and a tobacco smoker. So this is a CT of a 44-year-old male marijuana smoker with paraseptal emphysema, and a CT below of a 66-year-old female tobacco smoker with centrolobular emphysema. Paraseptal emphysema, this emphysema along the edges of the lung lobules, which we talked about before, this is putting you at risk of lung collapse. Centrilobular emphysema, emphysema that starts at the center of the lung lobules around the small airways and blood vessels. It appears as patchy areas of destruction within the middle of each lobule. This is the classic type seen with long-term cigarette smoking.
[1:01:45] General vaping risks. While vaping does not, of course, carry the same risks as smoking, it has its own risks independent of drug use. Ultrafine particles, aldehydes, including formaldehyde, and flavor chemicals penetrate deep into the lungs. Inhalation of heavy metals and toxic chemicals from coils and flavor compounds. Respiratory symptoms include coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath. Cannabis vaping risks. Cannabis vaping is linked to a 1.8-fold higher respiratory symptoms compared with never-vapers. Higher potency and faster delivery raises risk of acute anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, psychosis, and vomiting.
[1:02:29] Unique contaminants such as a thickener used in illicit THC cartridges that caused the 2019-2020 EVALI crisis, 2,807 hospitalizations, and 68 deaths. Vaping creates the conditions to convert CBD into a toxic compound, CBD-Q. This is rarely present while smoking. Ground glass opacity. So the top is healthy lungs. The lower pair of images comes from a 20-year-old with a history of vaping presenting with shortness of breath. In these CT images, you can see areas where the lung tissue looks hazy or cloudy instead of the normal dark. These hazy regions are called ground glass opacities. These indicate inflammation or fluid in the tiny air sacs of the lungs. In more advanced cases, you may also see a crisscross pattern on the top of the haze, which is referred to as crazy paving. The findings here were bilateral ground glass opacities with subpleural sparing affecting all lobes. This means the hazy areas don't quite reach the very outer edges of the lungs in some places.
[1:03:43] All right. Comparisons to alcohol and tobacco. This comes up in discussions about marijuana. So tobacco results in 480,000 US deaths a year, primarily from lung disease, cancer, and cardiovascular damage. Alcohol causes 178,000 deaths per year. About two-thirds of the deaths, 117,000, are from accumulated body damage, liver damage, cancerous heart disease, and stroke. The remaining third of the deaths, about 61,000, are acute, driving while under the influence, falls, alcohol poisoning, suicide, homicide, and other injuries. DUI accounts for 12,000 to 13,000 of these deaths. Heavy use of cannabis in any form results in 25% higher heart attack risk and 42% higher stroke risk. The high risk also means heart attacks and strokes can happen younger. Instead of a heart attack in your 50s, it can happen in your 40s. Onset of stroke typically happens at 65 to 70. With cannabis, it can happen in your 30s or your 40s.
[1:04:45] DUI and road safety impacts. Driving while high doubles overall crash risk, impairs reaction time, perception, and attention. In 2018, 12 million Americans drove under marijuana's influence. Again, probably more, but that's just the data we have. The numbers on THC-related deaths are not available at this time. Victims of THC-intoxicated drivers are not yet. Count it. Fatal crashes where THC is detectable ranges from 25% to 42% of drivers. I mean, that's catastrophic.
[1:05:20] In fatal crashes, THC-positive drivers doubled in Washington post-legalization from 9% to 18%. Fatal crashes in Colorado more than doubled, up 138% from 2013 to 2020. A 2025 study found that 41.9% of deceased drivers were THC positive, average 30.7 NG per milliliter. The legal limit of THC is typically 2 to 5 NG per milliliter. And I think everyone who cares about anyone, especially parents, we hate people who drive under the influence because it puts our children, ourselves, our lives, our family in mortal danger. Don't. Frickin'. Do it. Workplace and job impacts. Employees testing positive cause 55% more industrial accidents and 85% more injuries. See, you're not just affecting yourself. The only way that you can think that marijuana only affects yourself is if you're on a desert island, where you're probably unlikely to get marijuana, but everybody exists as part of a social whole. And if you show up stoned or with the after effects of marijuana still in your blood, you're going to hurt people.
[1:06:45] Marijuana was detected in 7.3% of post-accident drug tests in 2022, a 204% increase since 2012. Occasional users one to two times a month are 57% more likely to miss work. Heavy users miss work 75 to 83% more and risk being fired 2.18 times more. I mean, I got pretty good at this, although I didn't see it too much in the tech field. Like I was a tech CEO, for those of you who don't know, I interviewed like a thousand people, I hired like a hundred people. And if I even got the vaguest sense that the person was a drug user, I just wouldn't hire them because it's just taking on a massive liability.
[1:07:31] Legalization of marijuana has been linked to an increase of 10% of injuries among workers aged 20 to 34 and rising workers' compensation claims. It affects everybody, the taxpayer, the other people you injure, everybody. Again, I don't mean this to be shaming language, but it is selfish in that you're, putting your own relief of trauma above the safety of others.
[1:07:53] But wait, there's more! Sexually transmitted diseases, or what used to be called VDs or venereal diseases when I was younger, cannabis use is associated with higher rates of risky sexual behavior, including more sexual partners and inconsistent condom use. Past year, marijuana users had significantly high rates of chlamydia and trichomoniasis. Studies show that people who use marijuana, of course, multiple new partners using condoms less consistently, and this is horrendous. So it means if you're sleeping with somebody who does weed, you're much more likely to get diseased.
[1:08:29] So women. Baseline 2.9% for non-users. Women have 7.4% rates of chlamydia and trichomoniasis. Men, 4% versus 1.1%. So again, almost 400% increase. Much of the elevated STD risk appears driven by behavioral changes rather than direct biological effects on immunity. The strength of the association may vary by gender and population studied.
[1:08:58] Fertility. Men who use marijuana more than once per week show approximately a 30% reduction in sperm count and sperm concentration, along with reduced motility and abnormal morphology. Yes, that's right. Even the sperm are stoned and don't show up for work. Women who use cannabis had about a 40% lower fecundability, chances of conceiving per menstrual cycle, in one study. Only 42% of cannabis users became pregnant during the study period compared to 66% of non-users. Findings on fertility are mixed overall, with some large studies showing little effect on time to pregnancy. So, but why take the risk? For what? Go to therapy!
[1:09:45] Pregnancy. Babies born to mothers who used cannabis during pregnancy weigh about 140 to 150 grams less on average. This is roughly a 4% reduction compared to the typical 3,400 grams or 7.5 pound birth weight. Yeah, I was 8.1 pounds of brain. The rest was not that important. Cannabis use is associated with a 50 to 75% higher odds of low birth weight. Increased odds of preterm birth before 37 weeks by about 40-50%. High likelihood of babies being small for gestational age, smaller than expected for the number of weeks pregnant. Major medical organizations recommend avoiding cannabis during pregnancy due to these risks.
[1:10:28] Family and child welfare concerns, perhaps the meat of the matter. Parental heavy use and cannabis use disorder are linked to lower positive parenting and more hostility and lax control. Children of heavy users were 2.5 to 4.4 times more likely to start marijuana early. This goes up to 7.1 times, not percent, times if both parents are heavy users. You're crippling your children and harming their brains, sometimes permanently. The median age of children of heavy users starting marijuana decreases to 16 from 18. Children of heavy users have higher odds of other substance use. A California study found past-year users had nearly a threefold increased risk of physically abusing their children, hitting, slapping, and burning. All that executive function, impulse control, and so on.
[1:11:21] Regional and legalizational effects. Emergency visits and poison control calls surged post-legalization. Youth visits doubled in some states. National poison control calls for cannabis increased 272% accidental ingestion, symptoms like vomiting, lethargy, hallucinations, or seizures. Marijuana was legal in 24 states by 2025. Hotspots in New York and Colorado show amplified youth and heavy use impacts.
[1:11:55] The path to legalization. This is from James, who works with the show. He says, personal anecdote. I lived in Colorado, starting in 2009. It's a beautiful state. Over 300 sunny days a year, the air is thin, clear, and dry. There's great hiking, a pretty decent public transport system for America, and lots of bicycle paths. Going to downtown Denver and walking the 16th Street Mall was great. There were always people around, but it was quiet, clean, and you could always find something to do or just relax. In 2012, almost immediately after legalization, I was walking down near the bus station and there was this unmistakable skunk lingering in the air. In fairly short order, the 16th Street Mall changed. It became crowded, dirty, smelling of weed, with more and more homeless and beggars lining the streets. It was no longer a nice place to go, no longer a place to relax. Pot went from being an occasional whiff you'd catch when walking by apartments or college dormitories to practically inescapable. I smelled it while hiking in the foothills. I smelled it walking around downtown areas. I smelled it around the apartment I lived in. I used to enjoy having my windows open--not after legalization. Just about the only place I could escape outside of my home and the office was on the bicycle paths. And that's probably only because they let you get away from people, for the most part.
[1:13:17] 1970s. How did this become legal? Well, it's not organic and it's not accidental. Grassroots activism begins in the 1970s. Eleven states decriminalize personal possession. The stated focus is on personal liberty. 1990s. Medical marijuana breakthrough. California Prop 215 in 1996 passes as the first statewide law for serious illness, AIDS, cancer, and pain. This is framed as compassionate access. 2000s. Medical laws expand to 13 states and more. Early ballot campaigns receive significant funding, not organic. And look, it's one thing to legalize marijuana. It's another thing to legalize marijuana when society is forced to pay the bills, right? When you get welfare, when you get disability, when you have to hit the taxpayer for your medical issues and medical bills. I'm a big fan of freedom, liberty, personal choices. If you legalize drugs while still having semi or socialized medicine and a welfare state and disability and so on, then you are really doing damage to society as a whole.
[1:14:24] 2012 to 2016, first recreational legalization in Colorado and Washington in 2012. Commercial sales begin, shift from medicine only to adult use markets. Present day, 24 states plus DC have legalized recreational use in the commercial industry has exploded, though of course slowly and lazily. So, advocacy groups all have left-leaning or progressive alignment. Destabilize society. NORML founded in 1970, Marijuana Policy Project founded in 1995, split from NORML to choose big donor money for lobbying and ballot measures. Drug Policy Alliance founded in 2000. Stated themes: criminal justice reform, racial equity, anti-incarceration, harm reduction, social justice.
[1:15:13] And the Open Society's Foundation's stated motivations for legalizing drugs: prohibition and punitive criminalization fuel violence, corruption, black markets, mass incarcerations disproportionately affecting minorities, and public health crises while violating human rights and civil liberties. A just support to drugs, they say, must focus on support, not punishment, treating drug use as a public health and social issue rather than a criminal one. They advocate evidence-based, humane policies centered on harm reduction, access to healthcare treatment, harm reduction services, and reducing overall societal harm instead of pursuing an unrealistic, drug-free policy.
[1:15:49] So... I mean, if you want to reduce drug use, you have to improve childhood for people. How do you improve childhood for people? Well, in education, you would talk a lot about parenting. You would not let people graduate without understanding the links between adverse childhood experience and adult dysfunction. You would do more support with parenting. You would promote more voluntary family. In other words, you don't have to spend time with relentlessly abusive parents and grandparents, which reduces the harm to your children and their grandchildren. And so there's a lot that you can do, which of course I've been doing, peacefulparenting.com for the free book on how to be a great parent, peacefulparenting.com. You would work on reducing childhood trauma rather than all of this stuff.
[1:16:39] So, funding behind legalization. George Soros funded about $80 million for legalization. Total funding is over $300 million, primarily to DPA. Peter Lewis, Progressive Insurance CEO, $40 to $60 million. His interest in marijuana was initially medical. He used it to treat pain from an amputated leg in 1998. John Sperling, University of Phoenix, founder, at least $3.5 million. His interest was also initially medical. He used it to cope with cancer treatments during the 60s and 70s. Now, both of these men shifted from medical marijuana advocacy to the broader recreational legalization efforts we saw in 2000s and 2010s. Soros, Lewis, and Sperling together covered about two-thirds of the funding behind the ballot initiatives legalizing marijuana.
[1:17:26] Political breakdown of legalization. Overwhelming support from Democrats, progressives in blue and purple states. Recreational legalization passed first and fastest in left-leaning jurisdictions. The left tends to be more hedonistic and want to escape negative consequences, which are two sides of the same coin a little bit more than the right. Medical laws later reach some red states. No major conservative or right-leaning groups provide a comparable funding or leadership. There is a precedent from the left for the use of drugs to destabilize enemies, such as declassified documents from Soviet Russia showing that they supported flooding the West with illicit substances to cause social decay. In the modern context, however, Russia and China have consistently opposed Western cannabis legislation with diplomats criticizing Canada and the U.S. States as violating international treaties. Marx, of course, was critical of drug use. He used a form of opium called laudanum purportedly to manage pain, and drugs were strictly prohibited in Soviet Russia, Communist China, and other communist regimes. Communist plans to flood their enemies with drugs could arguably be seen as yet another victory against the West since the West is increasingly addicted to drugs and demoralized.
[1:18:43] Russia and China are referring to the following treaties when they say the U.S. are violating, and Canada, Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961. Cannabis and its resin plants, etc. is explicitly scheduled and must be restricted exclusively to medical and scientific purposes. Non-medical recreation or use production and sale are prohibited. This is the main treaty Russia calls out as being breached by Canada's 2018 Cannabis Act. And there's more, we'll put them in the notes. Russia is the most explicit and vocal criticize in the West on this, framing it as undermining the rules-based international order and a drug-free society goal. Of course, there's also an opioid epidemic in the US where China played a part in allowing fentanyl precursors to be exported. They have joined the US in limiting the exports of these precursors, most recently via the 2025 tariff negotiations. But China also points out that the opioid crisis in the US is much more of a demand problem than a supply problem.
[1:19:43] So, anyway, geopolitical drugs is a little bit outside the context of this presentation, but it is a very, very big issue. And the breakdown of manufacturing and welfare and family breakup are all driven by government legislation. The breakdown of manufacturing was drawn by buying votes from unions, by giving them excessive powers, which made American and other manufacturing non-competitive. And the welfare state, of course, is social engineering of the first kind. And the welfare state also allows for dead towns to continue. I remember when I worked up north, you'd drive through these towns. I mean, it was always the same thing, right? You'd have the post office, you'd have the liquor store, beer store, and then you'd have the convenience store. And you'd pick up your welfare check back in the day, go and buy beer or alcohol, and then pick up your smokes and your snacks. And this stuff all survived from unemployment insurance, welfare. And so these towns where the industry died and moved away, normally people would move and change and so on, but they just got to stay there and this produced really existential crises of despair, and so on. It was a mess. It was a mess.
[1:21:07] Could we have known the risks? Mainstream institutions, media, academia, public health, largely echoed advocacy narrative. And again, I'm a, the less politics, the better, the less political programs, the better, the fewer, the better. So I am not for throwing people in jail for drugs. I am for throwing them in jail if they cause crashes and if they injure people, sure.
[1:21:37] But I am for prevention, not cure, right? I mean, you don't call your nutritionist when you're having a heart attack. You go to the ER, right? The nutritionist is about prevention. Hopefully, if you eat well, you won't have a heart attack young. But if you don't eat well, you don't call your nutritionist because your nutritionist is going to say, well, it's too late to fix. You've got to go to ER. So philosophy is all about prevention, not cure. I mean, if you don't exercise, your bones become brittle and you break your arm. You don't call a personal trainer saying, fix it. He says, go to the ER. Maybe we can fix it later or at least help. So it is about improving childhood, not throwing people in prison.
[1:22:20] So the risks of legalization remain secondary or underreported, despite historical reports and growing scientific literature. Similarities to other contentious topics can be seen with pornography or IQ data. Ideological framing prevents the public from having all the facts.
[1:22:36] Are cannabis companies immune? Well, they're not vaccine manufacturers. No special immunity for cannabis companies, unlike vaccine protections. Product liability lawsuits are now accelerating as seen with multiple 2024, to 2026, STIIIZY civil suits alleging failure to warn on cannabis-induced psychosis in teens/young adults and class actions on potency and labeling. STIIIZY is one of the biggest names in legal cannabis based in California. Bottom line for parents and teens, commercial incentives plus incomplete risk messaging created today's high-potency landscape. Personal responsibility exists, but informed consent was undermined.
[1:23:17] So, the takeaways. Ah, this is what you all come for, is my ramble tangents at the end. Look, usage has surged dramatically, especially heavy use among vulnerable groups. This is going to have ripple effects for people's entire lives. Potency has skyrocketed, amplifying addiction, psychosis, and physical risks. Early use locks in irreversible brain and IQ damages. Heavy use piles on health, accident, family harms. Legalization, increased access, and brought increased social dysfunction without a doubt. And the references to all of this, fdrurl.com/marijuana, we can get to all of that.
[1:23:53] Is there more to add here at the end? Not in particular other than to reiterate, that drug use is almost always self-medication for a heavily traumatized childhood. We can't fix this down the road very easily. It's like trying to move a shadow. You blocking the light. And what blocks people from having calm, happy, positive lives without the needs for drugs is bad childhoods, traumatized childhoods, unhappy childhoods.
[1:24:28] I mean, look at the messaging of, "The planet is going to die!" Every 10 years! When I was a kid, we were going to run out of oil, we were going to mass starvation, the cities were going to turn feral, there was going to be an ice age, now there's global warming, now it's any kind of change. Telling children that the world is going to end fuels and feeds their nihilism. And drugs are a way of saying, I feel bad now, I want to feel better, and I'm not going to do necessarily the work to feel better in the long run, which often involves feeling worse. If you've come from a bad childhood and you dig in and deal with that bad childhood, well, you're used to staving off the negative feelings in order to survive. And then you go to therapy, which I'm a big fan of. I mean, I don't know about new therapists, seem a little, little sketchy, a little ideological, but the data in the past was pretty solid.
[1:25:14] But when you come from a bad childhood, you're used to keeping all those bad feelings at bay. And then you go to a therapist or you do some sort of work to deal with this sort of stuff. And you have to absorb and accept all those bad feelings and work through them. And then you can be happy, but it feels like voluntarily stapling your fingertips to a table. It just feels terrible. And so people want to avoid those negative feelings for reasons, of course, I can completely and totally understand. I did for years as well, too, until I finally bit the bullet and went into some very intensive therapy for a couple of years. Really, really well worth it, by the way. Best investment I ever made in my life. hugely, hugely recommend it.
[1:25:51] So we have to improve childhoods. We have to move the statue and not try and move the shadow. We have to deal with the cause and not the effect. This playing whack-a-mole is only going to give government more and more increased power. Because you legalize weed and then there's all the social dysfunction to say, well, we need all these social programs to help people with all the social dysfunction. Whatever, whatever the problem is in life, in society, in government, in policy, in habits, in culture, whatever the problem is, the solution is always one and the same. Respect property. Do not initiate the use of force. More freedom is always the answer.
[1:26:33] I'd love to know what you think. Let me know your stories, your anecdotes, whether you got better, how you got better, how you cured yourself. I'd love to read all of these in the comments below, and I'm sure I'll do a show reading all of those. I really do appreciate your time. If you find these presentations helpful, useful, valuable, freedomain.com/donate. Would hugely love your support in spreading philosophy, freedomain.com/donate. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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