Speaker 5: 0:07

As more states legalize marijuana, its use is becoming increasingly normalized, even among teenagers. Among the latest data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, one in four high school seniors reported using cannabis in the last year. On today's episode of Grieving Out Loud, a grieving mother. Is sounding the alarm.

Speaker 6: 0:28

He said, you probably don't remember, but you told me many years ago that marijuana would hurt my brain and it's ruined my mind and my life. And I am so sorry, mama. I love you.

Speaker 5: 0:41

Laura Stack was not able to save her son from a crippling addiction. In fact, she blames marijuana for her son's death Now. She's determined to raise awareness about the dangers of the drug on the developing brain. Today she shares her heartfelt and emotional story, and we'll also hear from addiction medicine specialist Dr. Vivek Anad.

Speaker 7: 1:04

We need to make sure that kids understand the dangers of cannabis smoking, so cannabis can increase risk of psychosis, increase risk of disorders like schizophrenia. It's actually a toxin for the memory.

Speaker 5: 1:21

I am Angela Kennecke, the host of Griving out loud, and founder of Emily's Hope. If you or someone you love is struggling with substance use disorder help is available. Please don't wait. Your life matters. You can find a list of helpful resources on our website, Emily's Hope Charity, and we've put a link in the show notes of this episode. Well, Laura, thank you so much for joining me on Grieving Out Loud. I'm anxious to hear your story because it's something that I talk about a lot and I get a lot of pushback on publicly if I even say anything about how marijuana is not for the developing brain. It's probably not that great for adults either, but there's an entire group of people out there that are, you know, pro cannabis and people think it solves every problem under the sun. And my daughter started with marijuana and I believe that that led her to, in addition to using Xanax, led her to use other things that were much more harmful for her. So I'm anxious to talk to you about this issue.

Speaker 6: 2:33

Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, you know it, there's so much misinformation out there and I think a lot of people are caught a, in kind of the boomer weed, the stuff that we used when we were kids. You know, I used weed when I was 17. My buddy Jim was growing plants illegally in his basement, and I remember him rolling the joints. There were eight of us. We shared one joint, and I remember kind of. Giggling a little bit and going to Denny's, and I think that's what people believe weed is. And I think when we voted on it here in Colorado, when it passed in 2012, I think people were voting on the boomer weed and that's not what our kids got.

Speaker 5: 3:20

Well, you know, if you just read a little bit about it, we know that the amount of THC is so much stronger in what people are getting today. Then what maybe you or I, if there was an experimentation, you know, and when we were younger happened, and I think it's also just so culturally accepted,

Speaker 6: 3:38

kinda like alcohol. Yeah. Yes. For the first time though, we just saw a few months ago a Gallup poll where there's been a 5% flying in acceptance in the United States where people are finally starting to see that these concentrates, these. Very high potency products, vaped that dabs, the waxes, the showers, the edibles, the things that we didn't have when we were kid. You know, we just had the flower. We just love joints. And Jim's basement reads gone. Those products are causing harm and we know it. It's evident. You know, a kid takes a dap today on a pen. It is the same as smoking 55 0 joints from when I was a kid. And that is changing the entire face industry. And there have been studies after study, after study about the harms of these products and there are zero, zero studies for these new products showing that there's any benefit, especially for the developing brain.

Speaker 5: 4:47

Laura wasn't always so passionate about this issue, but after witnessing firsthand the devastating effects of marijuana on the developing brain, she's made it her mission to educate others. It's a path she never expected to take, especially since her son Johnny seemed to be on the right track growing up.

Speaker 6: 5:08

He was a straight in student. He had perfect SAT score in math 800 OUTTA 800. I mean, this is a. Brilliant young man. Charming, handsome, sweet, popular, you know, just an athlete. He ran across country, ran track. He could play the piano, the guitar. He was very involved in our church. He was a wonderful young man. He had a scholarship. Colorado State University, I mean. Every protective factor that you could think of

Speaker 5: 5:37

despite having so many protective factors in place. Johnny tried marijuana for the first time at just 14 years old during a high school party. It was 2014, the same year. His home state of Colorado legalized marijuana for adults 21 and older voters had passed that amendment two years earlier. And Laura says, many people in the state weren't concerned about the potential side effects of the drug.

Speaker 6: 6:07

I know because he told me we were very close as a family. I was his person. He came off from the party and said, you know, mom, all the boys wanted to try to get high, and I didn't know what to do or say, and I just want you to know that I did, and it was so easily accessible to him. I, I mean, it's far easier to get. Alcohol. I mean, you really already get alcohol, but it's super simple to get weed. Is that because parents have it? Is that why? And many parents also buy into misinformation and they think that it's going to help their child chill out or reduce their stress or feedback.

Speaker 5: 6:51

One thing that really angers me, I'm gonna share something personal with you that I found out when it came to my daughter, and as you know, my daughter later died from fentanyl poisoning, but when she was in high school, she had this boyfriend who was dealing marijuana, and at the time it was marijuana. He's since gone on to heavier substances. But I found out from a friend of hers that they smoked marijuana with his mother. Like it was completely acceptable.

Speaker 6: 7:17

A lot of parents think, oh, it's just this bonding thing. Or you know, a lot of the young people, I'm, I mostly do school assemblies now, so I talk to Hoover, me too teens, and they're very candid, you know, and they say, look, from the time I was 11, you just paint around in the living room, you know, and people hand it to you. And I don't think that most parents really understand the harm that they're doing to their child's brain and why. They don't understand the science. They don't understand CB one receptors. They don't understand the adeno cannabinoid system. They don't understand tetrahydrocannabinol, they don't understand molecular structure. I mean, none of that, they dunno. The science, all they think is, oh, it doesn't hurt me, so I was not gonna hurt my kid. You know, let's get high together. Ha ha ha. Meanwhile, you know, I do these parent programs and they come up to me in tears crying, you know, like. Oh my gosh. I had no idea that I was doing that to my child's brain. I'd been sharing mine.

Speaker 8: 8:20

Wow.

Speaker 6: 8:20

So yes, that and dealers, I mean, it's super simple for them to buy on Instagram, on Snapchat.

Speaker 5: 8:30

That effortless access to marijuana made it easier for Johnny to keep using the drug. Meanwhile, Laura struggled to find the right solution to help her son stop.

Speaker 6: 8:42

We would find pipes, we would find vapes, you know, we would discipline him, we would remote privileges, we would keep him away from. Friends, you know, blah, blah, blah. But then he loved marijuana like right away. He just loved it. And it's so addictive and it's so compulsive. And the kids that I talk to tell me it's so hard to quit. Doctors will tell you, in many cases, it's harder to quit THC than some of these harder drops.

Speaker 5: 9:17

Well, and cannabis use disorder is definitely a medical diagnosis, and I, we have an addiction medicine physician on our board at our nonprofit, and we talk about this quite a bit. This is a real thing and a real problem, and we don't know. All of the effects yet.

Speaker 6: 9:31

That's what people don't understand, that they, oh, it's just weed. It's not addictive. Well, it didn't used to be. In fact, it wasn't adding to the DSM five as cannabis use disorder until 2013. It's a newer addiction that people don't realize that once it crossed that threshold. A 10% THC. The average flower in the dispensaries now is 20%. It was 2% in the eighties, 1% at Woodstock.

Speaker 9: 10:00

You know all of this. Now, you didn't know all of this.

Speaker 6: 10:04

Oh my gosh. I was clueless. In fact, when Johnny told me he used weed at the party, kind of my first reaction was. It's just weed. Like, I mean, I didn't say that to him,

Speaker 5: 10:14

don't

Speaker 6: 10:15

get me wrong.

Speaker 5: 10:15

Kinda like a, a rite of passage, right? I think a lot of parents think kids are gonna smoke weed or drink alcohol as a rite of passage,

Speaker 6: 10:21

you know? I did too. And it, it didn't hurt me. I had no idea. I was so ignorant. I was so uneducated. I mean, I, like, I smoked weed in. 30 years. You know, I didn't know.'cause it wasn't in the culture. I wasn't in the industry. I didn't know that things had changed. I was so naive.

Speaker 5: 10:46

Laura says she wasn't the only one unprepared for the rise in marijuana addiction. She struggled to find resources including treatment centers that could offer the help Johnny needed.

Speaker 6: 10:58

This was, you know, a long time. Now there are, there are lots of programs for cannabis and just closeness you, cannabis use disorder. But back then there was nothing. And Johnny would go to, you know, treatment. With people who were using meth and cocaine and they would mock him, it'd be like, you're just addicted to weed. You can't even be addicted to weed. And they would make fun of him, and he went wrong, crying. I mean, it was, the whole thing was just completely tragic.

Speaker 5: 11:31

Meanwhile, Johnny's addiction continued to worsen, bringing serious mental health struggles and behavioral issues.

Speaker 6: 11:40

Once he turned 16, you know, it gets a little trickier because you want them to start, you know, journeying and you still want them to go to school, but you can't watch them 24 7. And he started becoming just more defiant. His personality starting to change. Very gradually he started to drop out of activities he used to enjoy. He's starting. Changing some his friend groups. He started not being as interested in school, which was really unusual for Johnny. And the weird thing was he was able to keep his grades. And so Jock never thought Johnny was gonna ever have any problems. He's just like the kids today, because of course they're invincible. And of course this would never happen to them.

Speaker 5: 12:30

Yeah, this all sounds like things that I went through with my daughter as well. You know, finding out about the weed, the marijuana punishing, the change in personality, the defiance, the horrible defiance that I felt like it came outta nowhere,

Speaker 6: 12:44

andro and verbally abusive and calling names that I made. It just started and it's very predictable. I mean, right now our little non profit. Have them Were 1800 parents whose children are in cannabis induced psychosis right now in mental hospitals across this country, 1800. And I didn't know anything about any of this. I thought Johnny was just being an ax. Like, you know, he's a teen boy and you know, they sleep a lot. They, they grunt, they're irritable, they smell like I never. Expected him to use drunks like that. And I didn't know that it couldn't cause problems like that. But then he started having more just violence. How do we, you know, we put locks on our bedroom doors. He became very scary, carried around a switchblade. We were like, God, he could end up in our bedroom and like stab us in the middle of the night. Oh, he would run away for two weeks at a time. Finally, when he turned 18 and he was a senior, he moved out and he is like, you can't keep me from using and you can't make me go to school and I'm not gonna live here anymore. And then he got robbed and someone took all of his stuff and all of his money, and so he came to our home and we were gone and took our dog and he said that he was going to kill it if we didn't pay his rent. That's how scary

Speaker 5: 14:20

he became. That just breaks my heart. And I imagine you're at your wit's end not knowing what to do. I mean, what could you do? Oh my

Speaker 6: 14:28

gosh. I mean, they were like, do I call the cops? And eventually people would turn him in at school, you know, text a tip on him. Unbeknownst to me he was producing his med card. So he was getting away with stuff because he was legally entitled to habit, and he was the school drug dealer. I mean, the whole, it was just a disaster. Anyway, he graduates with four D's his senior year, second semester because his GBA was so high, he walks the stage with honor chords and had gotten four Ds. Unbelievable, and goes off to Colorado State University, and he's there for two weeks. He texts me, I'm not making friends, I'm having a hard time. And I said, that's normal, honey. You know, you will make friends. You're a good friend. And he said, I've been dabbing nonstop with my roommate for two weeks and I feel like killing myself every day. I give this in a text. So this is the first time where like he was starting to have a mental. And you have to understand, Johnny never tested positive for any other drugs. I mean, every time something would happen, he'd go to the mental hospital. You know, they test him. He got tested for the geno mine.'cause they thought, well maybe you've got schizophrenia in your family. And we didn't know of anybody and we didn't test for any genes. We now know that the pathways for the developers, Trinia and Drug-induced thc, cannabis induced psychosis are different. That you don't have to have the genes.

Speaker 5: 16:06

And we have articles about that on our website about how marijuana cannabis use can cause schizophrenia.

Speaker 6: 16:12

Yes.

Speaker 5: 16:12

So there is a correlation

Speaker 6: 16:14

that label cannabis induced psychosis is probably more appropriate because whenever Johnny stopped using those thoughts would go away. He did go to a mental hospital for suicidality. They let him out. He did try to kill himself. This was 14 months before he died.

Speaker 5: 16:32

Johnny was hospitalized once again, but Laura saw a silver lining for the first time in years. He was forced to take a break from cannabis,

Speaker 6: 16:43

and for the first time in years, the THC leaves his body. See, this is another thing people don't understand. Alcohol stays in your system for two days 'cause it's water. Solut C is fat soluble, so it stays in your brain for four weeks. So he was four sunburn and he came back, like Johnny came back, but he was sweet, he was wonderful, and he was scared. And this was the first time he was like, whoa, I am never gonna use this stuff again. And he threw away all his. Vapes and dabs and pens and everything, and he was sober and he was fine. He moved home, he got a job, and he's like, I can't just live here with you the rest of my life. I'm gonna go back to school. So he applies for another school. Against our wishes, we were like, you just had a suicide attempt. You know, you're, you're newly sober, you need to stay home for a while.

Speaker 5: 17:37

Have you lost a loved one to overdose or fentanyl poisoning? I'd like to invite you to share their story. On our new Emily's Hope memorial website called More Than Just a Number, they were our children, siblings, cousins, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, and friends. So much more than just a number. You can submit a memorial today on more than just a number.org. Against Laura's wishes, her son decided to go back to college this time at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

Speaker 6: 18:13

I hate him. A scholarship. He wats off and he's only there for a couple months and he tells me that he's gone back to using, and I'm like, why you, you know, you know what this did to you? And he is like, oh, I'm fine. My brain's fine. I'm we're recovered and beside it's the only way you make friends around here. So, just broke my heart that he wasn't willing, you know, to try to make friends the normal way. Just starting using, I mean, he could have been okay.

Speaker 5: 18:44

About a month after Johnny started using marijuana, he called his mom acting strangely. It's a conversation she'll never forget.

Speaker 6: 18:53

It's three o'clock in the morning and he's like, mom. Dave booked my dorm room like whatcha talking about? He goes, this is an FBI base. And I realize my son has just lost it, like completely delusional. He is spouting the most ludicrous things I have ever heard, and I realized that he's, he's lost it. His brain has. Completely lost it. He, Brian is breed, so of course, long story short, he loses that scholarship back to the metal hospital. He keeps saying the mob's after him and the FBI knows who he is and, and he's famous and he just had all these delusions. They had to put him on an antipsychotic psychotic because he couldn't stop thinking like this and it worked. It was like, oh, he came back years later. Whoa. So same thing, sober again. Stopped using again, was fine. Again. Started going to another community college here. He got a job, he got a dog. I mean, he could have been okay. And then met up with an old girlfriend and she got him back to daddy. It's so addictive, and this is what people don't understand, you know, even if they don't go on to use other drugs like your daughter did, and by the way, there's a new study out about that. The Centers for Disease Control now say lifetime marijuanas is now the number one predictor that a high school. Senior will have abused opioids in the past 30 days.

Speaker 5: 20:29

See, and I'm not surprised by that at all because every time I've talked to people who suffer from opioid use disorder, they have all told me they started with marijuana and everyone says, oh, it's not a gateway drug. Well, maybe not for some people, but the first or second time that they smoked marijuana, they found their answer and they went on later to use opioids. Well, my daughter went from marijuana, Xanax to heroin.

Speaker 6: 20:53

Yeah, you ask me, buddy, did you just start shooting them with heroin? I'd be like, of course not. I started with marijuana. Yeah. The hack of people happen with Gateway is if you use marijuana, it doesn't mean you're going to use harder drugs. What it means is for people who are using harder drugs, most of them started with marijuana. It goes the other way, and so people get really hung up about that. The definition of it really doesn't matter. The point is now that it's over alcohol lifetime, marijuana use now predicts whether high school seniors abuse opioids.

Speaker 5: 21:30

Johnny May never have moved on to harder drugs. Laura says marijuana destroyed her son's life at 19 years old. He started to realize that after getting into a fight with his girlfriend.

Speaker 6: 21:43

They got into big fight, punched him in the face. He had to get a restraining order against her. He realizes again, my gosh, this stuff is ruining my life. I took him to Billy Joel, came to Denver, and I was celebrating with him his sobriety.'cause he is like, I am never gonna use again. I'm never gonna smoke again. I'm never gonna smoke cigarettes again. I'm never gonna drink alcohol again. Like he went on my slime. Total, I'm gonna change my life and be a better person kind of thing. But unbeknownst to us, he also stopped taking that anti-psychotic like that just stopped it, and they wanna wean you off of it. When you have canvas to do psychosis, they wanna wean people off. It takes usually nine to 12 months of titrate. It's kind of like stopping an anti-anxiety or an antidepressant. You don't just stop. Sure. You have to. Wean off of it. So we didn't know that when he was on this jag of, I'm not gonna take anything ever again, that he also meant his antipsychotic. So I think probably some of those, the Bob is after me. Thoughts were probably coming back. I will actually never know because when he came over for dinner three days before he died, and we didn't know any of this at the time, that he wasn't taking his meds. And he said, mom, I just want you to know that you were right. And I'm like, about what? I didn't know what we were talking about. And he said about the marijuana, he said, you probably don't remember, but you told me many years ago that marijuana would hurt my brain and it's ruined my mind and my life. And I am so sorry, mom. I love you. So that was probably. Suicidal.

Speaker 5: 23:35

I missed it. Well, yeah, you just think he's had this realization, you know, and great. He's had this realization and he's not gonna use it again. Yeah. For the next three days, Laura says, everything seemed normal. Johnny went to work, ate out with his mom, played with his jog, and even got his car's. Oil changed hardly. The actions you would expect of someone contemplating taking his own life

Speaker 6: 24:07

and then. I get a, a knock at the door and it's Douglas County Sheriff and he said, Mr. And Mrs. Stack, I'm so sorry to tell you that your son is deceased. And we found out in the middle of the night that Johnny had sent on a Snapchat and he had blocked me on his Snapchat. So I didn't get it, but my other son got it, our younger son and Johnny digging a picture of his car odometer, which read 1 3 3, 6, 6, 1, and. The people who have studied his, his writing and his work and stuff.'cause he did a YouTube channel and a blog and a book and all this stuff. It was very brilliant. They think that he probably added those two degrees together and saw the number as 1 6, 6, 6, 1 on his odometer and that to him somehow that was a magic number. And that maybe he had meant he wouldn't die and that he was magical. We will never know. But he, uh, there's a video or him that I'll never watch, but the corner. He did a blow by blow for me, and basically he thought that he could fly and jumped off the top of a six story building.

Speaker 5: 25:17

Oh my God. And he made a video about that.

Speaker 6: 25:20

The parking garage video caught it.

Speaker 5: 25:24

Oh, the parking garage.

Speaker 6: 25:25

I never watched it. He described it so then I could understand that he was clearly having a. Episode of some kind, and this is what people don't understand. The psychosis rewires your brain with one or two uses. It changes the way that prefrontal cortex forms, it causes thinning. In fact, we know now that people who use youngest age, highest frequency, highest zy, have brains that way. 30. Percent. Yeah, less.

Speaker 5: 25:59

Here's addiction medicine specialist, Dr. Vive, who says marijuana can have long lasting effects on the developing brain, including changes to brain structure and function.

Speaker 7: 26:11

Marijuana is another one, you know, that can cause so much damage, particularly with adolescence. And children. So lately, children are being exposed to cannabis through cannabis pens or flour in general due to, you know, the more favorable response towards the drug. And that has led to the more kids using and there's been a spike in cannabis use within the school community. But we need to, during these educational seminars, while we are delivering the curriculum, we need to make sure that. Kids understand the dangers of cannabis smoking so cannabis can increase risk of psychosis, increase risk of disorders like schizophrenia. It's actually a toxin for the memory and the structure in the brain that is responsible for a memory shortens by 10% when you're exposed to marijuana over time. Then there's some research from New Zealand that folks when they started using marijuana in their teenage years and continue to use it for years, actually lost around eight to 10 IQ points over time, and that can make a huge difference when it comes to executive ability, you know, academic potential, academic learning, and so on.

Speaker 5: 27:19

Dr. Anad says those side effects are even stronger when it comes to the developing brain.

Speaker 7: 27:25

Using cannabis after your brain has developed does not have as much consequences as it does when your brain is developing and your brain is developing until you are in your mid twenties. And so that would absolutely be the time to not use it. Now the other thing is the marijuana now is much more potent than marijuana. Back in the years, it went from 4% THC content to now up to 40. And you know, those pens have 80% potency. So that is like such strong amount of marijuana. And if you're using that in your adolescence years, it is absolutely going to cause problems. The only thing is we do not know about the problems yet because these things are so new and just got introduced that we will only figure it out a decade down the line

Speaker 10: 28:10

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Speaker 5: 28:40

While some still debate whether marijuana is a gateway drug, Dr. Anad has seen the research and real patients. Here's what he has to say.

Speaker 7: 28:50

It is addictive. It is a gateway drug. There's a lot of people who are addicted to marijuana. They are dependent on it. When they stop using it, they go through withdrawals, which can be like feeling sad, anxious, not wanting to eat, irritable, fatigued, chills. So it is absolutely has all properties of a drug. And you know, there's a cannabis use disorder for the same reason.

Speaker 5: 29:16

So what can parents, grandparents, and educators do? Dr. Anad recommends starting conversations with kids early, not just about the dangers of drugs, but about making healthy choices for both the mind and body. That's exactly. What our Emily's Hope, K through 12 substance use prevention curriculum is designed to do the age appropriate lessons build on each other, covering topics like how the brain works, prescription medications, drugs, and peer pressure. For more information, just visit our website, emily's hope edu.org. You can also find the link in the podcast show notes.

Speaker 7: 30:01

Now from biological perspective, when a child is born, they have so many number of neurons, and over time there's pruning and then pruning of neurons starts at when they're around five years of age. So that's a child who's in kindergarten. So when pruning starts, pruning essentially is like the brain cells that you're using. They're firing together. They get strong and strengthened and reinforced over time. So the information that we provide from this age onwards has a whole lot of meaning because this coincides with the know their emotional biological development over time. So starting early is the key. So most experts would say start as early as you can. Some even say, you know, you can start at ages three or four, but since the school usually starts at four or five, you know, that is a proper starting age. These things, if we want them to stick over time, these things needs to be reinforced and have to be multi-grade. So you start from kindergarten, first grade, second grade. But yeah, certainly, you know, if you start early, it's gonna stick better and stick longer. So you start young students about teaching them about healthy habits. So what is healthy? How do they define healthy? What would be some healthy habits that they can start on with? You know, healthy habits can be washing your hands, you know, eating vegetables, putting on a helmet when you are riding your bike, and that can segue into what is healthy for your body. You know that everything that you put in your body has a consequence and you want to put healthy things in your body. That can be things that you surround yourself, that would be your peers that you surround yourself, or even things that you actually put in your body.

Speaker 5: 31:40

Meanwhile, Laura has channeled her grief into action. She founded Johnny's ambassadors, the nonprofit named in honor of her son, aims to educate parents, teens, and communities about the dangers of today's potent THC products and their impact on the adolescent brain.

Speaker 6: 31:59

For me, I believe Johnny told me that because he knew I was gonna go tell others. You know, he knew me and he made a point of telling me that. So I feel like I have to, to honor him, that that was his wish and he wanted me to know. And you know, I, I don't get upset when I talk to the kids because I use Barry Lane, non-car non, you know, so I don't. Ever want, you know, the kids to be upset. I've never had like somebody leave, but it's hard, you know, it's hard every day. I know it is for you. Um, I mean, I was basically in a fetal position for six months and for us it was really hard because it was COVID and. We lost Johnny right before Thanksgiving in 2019, and we barely had time to have his funeral and go scatter his ashes, and then we were locked down and it was horrible. I mean, we were alone. We didn't have anybody in our grief, and I was in bed most of the time. But as you said, I, I was a writer and a speaker before, and the only thing I know how to do is write. And for me, I was desperately afraid I was gonna forget Johnny's life and his story and my grief. So I just started writing and I just wrote and wrote and wrote, and I wrote all of Covid. And then in the end I had a book, I had 300 pages. I wrote about Johnny and what happened, and a blow by blow so that you know, the naysayers would understand 178 scientific notations. I mean, I talked. Interview doctors and experts. Addiction psychiatrists called me all over the world. That's how I first formed my board. I have, you know, sir Ramen Murray from the uk, the world's foremost researcher in campus sciences on our board, and you know, Dr. Marta Defore, all these incredible people who helped me understand what happened to my son. You know, it finally all came together and we started our nonprofit. Six months after he died. I had already started. Excerpts of my book to my friends on Facebook, and we started our nonprofit. So pretty quickly, six months after he died, I said, in my power, everything I can do, no other child would lose their life to this. And I mean, either we, how for the rest of my life, crying like I've done for the past six months, or I'm gonna get mad that, you know, Johnny was a. He was a really good kid. He made some pretty stupid decision. I mean, he made really bad decisions, but he should never have had access to this stuff. It shouldn't even be legal. You shouldn't be able to make un malignant ancy and allow 18 year olds to legally buy this stock. It's a for-profit addiction, predatory industry, and they need to go down.

Speaker 5: 35:12

What can be done now because the cat is out of the bag. How do you stop this? How do you stop it from getting into the hands of kids?

Speaker 6: 35:21

Right. You can't stop the legalization, I don't think.

Speaker 5: 35:24

Um, well, yeah. I mean that's been an issue in my state. My state actually passed it. We have medical marijuana, but the recreational was passed. The legislature came in and overturned it. It was voted on again, and this time it was voted down. Maybe because there is more awareness about the harms of it. Now, this was more recently, but so many states have it legal, and the medical, like as you said, is legal in most states, so, so what do we do now?

Speaker 6: 35:51

Yeah. I mean, look what happened with tobacco, you know, right? There wasn't addictive. I mean, it took 70 years before tobacco. Kate out said it was addictive. I mean, if that happens with this stuff, we are gonna lose generation children to psychosis. To suicide. The number one cause of death now in our youth in Colorado is suicide, and the number one substance in their tox is tears. So there's a direct correlation that we have seen now in Colorado. Didn't used to be that way. This is since 2021. I did PSAs, I did one for Florida. It was rejected. Turned it down. North Dakota turned it down. South Dakota turned it down. You know the voters are, are speaking out, but the thing is the cannabis industry isn't gonna go away.

Speaker 5: 36:37

There's a lot of money in it. Yeah.

Speaker 6: 36:38

All about the big bucks. And they really don't care about their kid. They will be happy to sacrifice their mental health on the altar of their profits.

Speaker 5: 36:49

In order to raise awareness. Laura hasn't just spoken at schools and captured national media attention with her story. She's also made an appearance on the talk show, Dr. Phil.

Speaker 11: 36:59

It was nearly three years ago when Laura Stack's 19-year-old son Johnny died.

Speaker 6: 37:05

So we have all these contacts that were fee information to. So that they could get this out into the public. I was on Dr. Phil. You know, I just did a Scholastic article for 25 million teens who do know what cannabis induced psychosis is. Now we know with current data we can extrapolate, our doctors have calculated. There are currently 1.1 million teens in the United States with cannabis into psychosis. So there's more awareness around it, but that's what we're trying to do, is then we're out there sounding the alarm. What this stuff can do to your brain, what it can cause. We don't say, oh, it causes suicide, but we see associations and we can show that data from the Colorado violent death to a courting system.

Speaker 5: 37:50

Yeah. Well, I appreciate all the work that you're doing to educate kids and everyone else. I. I'm so sorry for the loss of Johnny

Speaker 6: 37:59

too. And it doesn't, you know, I could have actually guessed that she had started with marijuana because almost every story, um, you know, parents that come our way, join and say, my kids started here, you know? Yeah. And with a, you know, a fentanyl overdose or opioid or heroin or something.

Speaker 5: 38:17

We're in our seventh season for the podcast now, and I've talked to countless parents. And most of the time it was always starting with marijuana, so

Speaker 6: 38:27

well.

Speaker 5: 38:27

So thank you very much.

Speaker 6: 38:29

Thank you for having me,

Speaker 5: 38:31

and thank you for taking the time to learn about this very important issue. If you'd like more information about Johnny's ambassadors, check out the show notes of this podcast. While you're there, we'd appreciate it if you take a moment to rate and review this episode along with sharing it with friends and family. Today we can raise awareness. And save lives. Thanks again for listening. Until next time, wishing you faith, hope, and courage. This podcast is produced by Casey Weinberg, king and Marley Miller.