Marijuana has long been portrayed through film and television as a relatively harmless substance associated with relaxation, laughter, and the “munchies.”
But BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler says the scientific evidence tells a much darker story, and Alex Berenson’s book “Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence” is what ultimately changed her mind.
“Alex Berenson changed my mind on marijuana almost single-handedly,” Wheeler says, before pointing to a study on the drug.
“A recent study shows that if a man uses marijuana, then — even once a week, if he smokes marijuana — then his wife is twice as likely to miscarry. So, even if the woman, the mother, never uses pot and the man smokes once a week, his wife is twice as likely to miscarry,” Wheeler says.
As devastating as that is, it’s not all marijuana is linked to. The drug is also known to cause psychosis, schizophrenia, and violence.
But most people have no idea.
“The reason that most people think of pot and they think chill and munchies is because of that propaganda that I mentioned that was paid for by this humongous marijuana lobby who obviously stood to profit enormous amounts of money if they were able to farm marijuana,” she explains.
“They first, you know, tried to normalize it by making it a medicinal thing, medical marijuana, and then once it was kind of normalized as medicinal, which obviously had a positive connotation in people’s minds, their goal was actually just recreational legalization,” she says.
And in Colorado, where marijuana was legalized recreationally, Wheeler explains that crimes, car crashes, and ER visits are up.
“I would argue that it’s a net negative to society. It’s certainly a net negative to this channel. It causes me to lose subscribers any time I mention this,” she adds.
And anecdotally, Berenson’s wife worked in medical care and would “come home and tell him about these psychotic patients that she had and how there was always a connection to marijuana.”
“He scoffed at her. He said that is ridiculous. Like, marijuana is not tied to psychosis. It’s not tied to mental health. It’s not tied to violence. It’s like, you just smoke it, and then you get hungry. And so he tried to prove her wrong,” Wheeler explains.
But when he started researching it, he was shocked by what he found.
“And when he started researching it, that’s when he began to put the book together because he found that the actual research contradicts the narratives that we’re all pretty familiar with around marijuana,” she says.
“What Berenson actually found in the scientific literature was that it does … lead to psychosis and schizophrenia and ultimately violence, particularly violence committed by men against women,” she continues.
“I don’t think my position is extreme, that if it’s a dangerous drug that leads to these things, if it’s a net negative to society, then yes, we should ban it,” she adds.
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