If Republicans truly want to honor Charlie Kirk, they will help a generation of young Americans by standing up, as Kirk did, to the THC industry preying on them. Last year, the conservative activist exposed “The Four Big Lies of the Marijuana Industry” on his show and concluded that contrary to the industry’s promises, legalization has made our communities more dangerous, increased youth use, strengthened cartels and opened a gateway to a larger drug culture. He also demolished the rationale for President Joe Biden’s proposal to reclassify marijuana as a less-dangerous drug, a proposal that appears to tempt the Trump administration as well.
Kirk asked: “Is this making America healthier?” As he knew, the answer is an emphatic “No.” The facts show THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, is addictive and is causing serious psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia, particularly in young men. It promotes suicidality even in young adult users who are not depressed to begin with. Studies indicate that it is causing lung disease and multiple cancers, along with heart disease, strokes and damage to major blood vessels, regardless of how it’s ingested.
Just this month, a study of four million adults showed that cannabis users had quadruple the risk of developing diabetes even after controlling for other major risk factors. The costs to the taxpayers to regulate this unscrupulous industry are just a fraction of the downstream costs from increased use.
Like the potency of the industry’s products, the case against THC keeps getting stronger. Yet now some Republicans like Gov. Greg Abbott are siding with the hemp industry and against the health and safety of all Texans and the fiscal interests of all taxpayers.
Joshua Jahn, the anti-ICE Dallas shooter who killed two detainees last week, was once apolitical and “all about the weed” his former boss reported to the New York Post. After a felony marijuana conviction, he left Texas to work in the THC industry in Washington state, which was one of the first to fall into marijuana legalization and the drug culture that follows. In recent years, Jahn apparently gravitated back to Texas and Oklahoma, which have now both become de-facto sanctuary states for a legalized THC industry.
Jahn’s violence adds to a long list of killings with this common thread. Just in Texas we find evidence of its possible role in the Uvalde elementary school massacre, the shooting at a Sutherland Springs church and the murder of “American Sniper” Chris Kyle. It makes no difference whatsoever to the human brain how the THC binding to it is purchased, labeled or regulated.
As Kirk knew, facts are stubborn things, but opinions can be changed. The public, long smoke screened by industry propaganda, is now seeing the issue more clearly. A recent Gallup poll shows pro-marijuana sentiment peaking three years ago. A majority now recognizes that marijuana use is hurting individual users and society. Republican strategists should note that young men moved right last November while the Biden-Harris administration was still enticing them with reduced restrictions on marijuana.
Principled conservatives like former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson are speaking out against marijuana rescheduling and recognizing the drug’s contribution to homelessness. In a recent Fox Business interview, Carson cited “recurrent episodes of violence that no one can really explain other than the fact that these people are using this substance.”
Perhaps we would better recognize this connection if the shooters themselves would just document ahead of time that THC is inducing the psychosis prompting their violence. That’s exactly what Minneapolis Catholic school shooter and former cannabis industry employee Robin Westman did, writing in his journal “Weed and gender (messed) up my head. I wish I could stop vaping but I can’t! If I could stop vaping, I could stop myself from doing this attack.”
The final question Kirk was asked on this earth was about the rising tide of mass shootings in our country. We never got to hear his answer. But we know he would have made a principled stand based on the facts regardless of the consequences.
Republicans like Abbott should do more than eulogize Kirk. They should emulate him.
Orginally published at: star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-co