Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1022 | Robert Morris Resigns, Potheads vs. Karens

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

Today, we discuss the resignation of Pastor Robert Morris in light of his past sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl. Does forgiveness require restoration to previous positions of power? And does worldly success indicate someone is pleasing to God? On a lighter note, we discuss how horrible marijuana is, particularly its devastating effects on teenagers. Are there any good reasons to legalize weed? Is marijuana possession actually a criminal justice issue, or is this a myth? Plus, we discuss the different types of "Karens" and defend those who are actually necessary for society to function. Get your tickets for Share the Arrows: https://www.sharethearrows.com/ --- Timecodes: (01:04) Robert Morris update (18:34) Truth about weed (29:15) Weed's effects on teenagers (38:26) Cannabis & psychosis (45:10) Medical marijuana (47:32) Weed moms (48:43) Colorado & California (52:33) In defense of Karens --- Today's Sponsors: A’del — try A'del's hand-crafted, artisan, small-batch cosmetics and use promo code ALLIE 25% off your first time purchase at AdelNaturalCosmetics.com. Jase Medical — get up to a year’s worth of many of your prescription medications delivered in advance. Go to JaseMedical.com today and use promo code “ALLIE". We Heart Nutrition — nourish your body with research-backed ingredients in your vitamins at WeHeartNutrition.com and use promo code ALLIE for 20% off. My Patriot Supply — prepare yourself for anything with long-term emergency food storage. Get your new, lower-price Emergency Food Kit at PrepareWithAllie.com. --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 1021 | #SBCToo? Another Accused Megachurch Pastor https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1021-sbctoo-another-accused-megachurch-pastor/id1359249098?i=1000659436070 Ep 1003 | What If We Decriminalized Drugs? | Guest: Christina Dent https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1003-what-if-we-decriminalized-drugs-guest-christina/id1359249098?i=1000655712524 Ep 983 | What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Antidepressants | Guest: Brooke Siem https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-983-what-doctors-arent-telling-you-about-antidepressants/id1359249098?i=1000652056518 Ep 984 | Is the OnlyFans Model-Turned-Christian the Real Deal? https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-984-do-30-year-old-women-hit-a-wall/id1359249098?i=1000652179415 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Mega church pastor Robert Morris has officially stepped down after being accused of sexually molesting a 12-year-old in the 1980s. Also today, we are talking about weed, the effects of weed, the consequences of legalizing weed, and how the cairants who stand against things like weed are, in fact, the sentinels of our civilization. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use code alia. Check out. That's good ranchers. code Alley. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. All right. I've got an update on the Pastor Robert Morris situation. We went in depth on that incident yesterday, but there have been some development. So just a quick recap for those of you who may have missed it. Gateway Church founder and pastor Robert Morris was accused by a one named Cindy of molesting her in the 1980s when she was only 12 years old. She says that the abuse happened from age 12 to age 16 and she told her parents about it. Her dad went to the

church leadership where Morris was a pastor at the time and said, if you do not remove him from ministry, I'm going to go to the police. As I said yesterday, you should have gone to the police because child molestation is not just a sin, it is a crime. It should be reported to civil authorities. Civil authorities gave us civil authorities in order to help keep evil in check. So that should have been the process there. That wasn't the process. He left ministry for two years. He was restored as a pastor and has been a pastor for these 40 plus years. And he was the pastor. He was the pastor. of the largest church in America, Gateway Church. It's based in Dallas. It has over 100,000 congregants on a weekly basis across its many campuses. And so her story came out last Friday, Gateway Church

released their statement, including Robert Morris's statement, in response to her story. They did not deny the accusations. However, what he described, what Robert Morris described, he said that this was inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady when he was in his 20s. But as we talked about, if her accusations are true, that is not a correct description. Sexual behavior or sexually inappropriate behavior with a young lady implies that it was consensual sexual interaction with an adult. And really, this is an accusation. of the sexual assault of a preteen. So his statement, gateway statement, really didn't hold a lot of water.

It got a lot of backlash, people pointing out exactly what we did on this show, that no, this is a very big allegation. This is not just an extra marital affair with another adult. This is a crime. It was not handled correctly. He has not walked in truth for all of the. these years of his ministry. This is a big deal. He is not qualified under God's qualifications that he lays out in scripture for the position of an overseer, a bishop, a pastor. And so as of yesterday,

Robert Morris has resigned. The South Lake Church's board of elders, that's where Gateway Church is located in South Lake, Texas, announced in a statement that it had accepted. Morris's resignation and that it's working to fully understand the events between 1982 and 1987. They said regretfully prior to Friday, June 14th, the elders did not have all the facts of the inappropriate relationship between Morris and the victim, including her age at the time and the length of the abuse. The elders prior understanding was that Morris's extramarital relationship, which he had discussed many times throughout his ministry, was with a young lady and not abuse of a 12-year-old. So that's what they said. They're saying, they're saying,

after they found out all of these details, they forced him to, uh, force him to resign. Even though it occurred many years before Gateway was established, Gateway was established in 2000. As leaders of the church, we regret that we did not have the information that we now have. We are heartbroken and appalled by what has come to light over the past few days. And we express our deep sympathy to the victim and her family. However, Cindy, the alleged victim had something to say, about their response. She claims that, oh, no, the leadership of Gateway Church absolutely knew. She gave a statement after he had resigned. She said this. She said, I'd like to thank the many people who have sent me messages of support these past few days. This has given me in my family much strength and hope. I have many mixed thoughts and feelings upon the hearing, upon hearing the news of Robert Morris's resignation. Though I am grateful that he is no longer a pastor at Gateway, I'm disappointed that the board of elders allowed him to resign.

He should have been terminated. Okay, that's a fair point. As I have previously stated, I have been seeking this for years. My family and I have gone to leaders of very prominent churches and well-known ministries with this information, hoping that someone would hold him accountable and remove him from ministry leadership. The leadership at Gateway received actual notice of this crime in 2005, she says, when I sent an email directly to Robert Morris's Gateway email address. Former Gateway Elder, Tom Lane, received and responded to my email acknowledging that the sexual abuse began on December 23rd, 1988 when I was 12 years old. She says again in 2007, my then attorney, Genter, Genter, Drummond, the current attorney general of Oklahoma, sent a letter to Robert Morris with the hope

that he would help reimburse me for the thousands of dollars I had expended on counseling as a result with this abuse. His attorney acknowledged the dates as well and then attempted to blame me, for the abuse at the very least, both the Gateway Pastor and at least one elder had specific notice that I was sexually abused beginning when I was 12 years old. She goes on to talk about what the abuse was, how she did not like many of what she describes as inaccurate descriptions that were in Gateways and Robert Morris's original statement after her story came out in the Wartberg watch last Friday. Again, if you want all the details on that, go ahead and listen to our watch yesterday's episode. She also responds to the announcement by Gateway Church in their most

recent statement that they're going to conduct an investigation. They said that they've retained the law firm of Haynes and Boone, LLP to conduct an independent, thorough, and professional review of the report of past abuse to ensure we have a complete understanding of the events from 1982 to 1987. Well, she has something to say about that. She says, she says, why not expand the investigation to his entire tenure at Gateway Church? Why limit the investigation to his conduct between 82 and 87? also why have they retained a law firm that specializes in crisis management?

So this is from the website of the law firm. It is critical to have a highly skilled and experienced legal team able to quickly assemble and focus on the immediate long-term strategies necessary to mitigate financial and reputational loss and stabilize in a crisis situation and to coordinate the efforts of specialized consultants to mitigate harm. So what she's pointing out is that they've basically hired a PR team, perhaps not a team, a legal team. It is technically a legal team, but they are functioning kind of as a crisis PR team rather than an investigative team that is really going to try to uncover the truth.

That is her concern. She says this does not appear to be an independent investigation and this deeply concerns me. She says this is just the beginning. I wholeheartedly and sadly believe I am not the only victim. Now, she might have more information that confirms her. her suspicions there and she's just not able to say, or maybe she just really does have a hunch because it is extremely rare for a child molester to only molest one child, extremely rare. If her accusations are true, by the way, which again, they have not yet been denied by Robert Morris or anyone else. I encourage anyone who has been sexually victimized by a leader at Gateway Church to take the bold step forward and say something, now is the time. I agree with her. Please know that you will be supported and will not walk.

this journey alone. I hope and pray that the leadership at Gateway will echo this encouragement. To the congregation of Gateway Church and the countless who have followed Robert Morris online, my heart is equally broken for you. Please remember our faith is in Jesus, not an institution or a man in the pulpit. Keep your faith. One thousand percent agree. Jesus will never fail you, even when pastors do. However, this is a hindrance to many people's faith. This is faith, soul-crushing for so many people. And I know it's easy to say, well, your faith shouldn't be in man, shouldn't be in pastors. It should only be in Jesus. Yes and amen. However, when someone is a steward of the gospel, when someone is a shepherd of the flock, it can, of course, chip away at your trust. We are supposed to be

able to trust the person who has been ordained by God to be a minister. of the gospel to be a shepherd of his flock to take care of his sheep, we are supposed to be able to trust that person. While we don't believe that that person is our intercessor, we don't believe that person is our go between us and God because Jesus is our soul mediator according to scripture. That person is in a position of leadership and is in a way a representative of God in our lives. to function not only as a shepherd, but as a counselor, as a trusted expositor of God's word. And so when he not only has a moral failing, because, I mean, all pastors are going to sin, they're all going to fall short because we all fall short. But when that pastor lives in

perpetual dishonesty and deceit and hypocrisy, as is apparently the case here, that. And also, So it's not just that that I think is soul crushing. It's also when other people around him that you trusted seem to cover for him and to not care about victims and potential victims, that can really, really mess with someone's mind, crush someone's heart. And that matters. That matters to God. Injustice also matters to God. Abuse also matters to God. And I actually think that this whole thing is a great mercy for Robert Morris, that his sin has found him out, apparently. I pray that God uses this to humble him, to bring Robert Morris close to himself so that he walks in true liberation from his sin, true liberation from dishonesty, because living with that

kind of deceit in your life, in your past, really can put an obstacle between you and the intimacy of your relationship with God. And so this could be spiritually, eternally, the best thing to ever happen to Robert Morris. I hope that it also brings justice to potential victims out there. And God really is. He is separating the wheat, from the chaff. He is bringing accountability. He is bringing transparency. And we should simply see it as God using these events somehow beyond what we can see for the good of those who love him, Romans 828, and also to bring glory to himself and to somehow advance his kingdom. So that's the latest on that. I think it's good that he is no longer going to be pastor as we talked about yesterday.

forgiveness need not include restoration to your previous position as pastor. If you truly are a child molester, you do not, or even if you, if it just happened one time, whatever it was, you do not need to be in a position where you are going to be around children. You don't need to be in a leadership position. You can be restored to the body of Christ. You don't need to be a pastor again. So pray for Cindy. Pray for other people. If there are other victims, pray for their comfort. pray for their peace. Pray also for Robert Morris and his family. Pray also for a gateway church that they would continue to cling to Christ and his gospel. You know, wherever there is, wherever there is bureaucracy, wherever there is power, wherever there is some kind of

personal, self-motivated intention to, remain in a prominent position, there is always going to be the imminent temptation for corruption, manipulation, deceit, hypocrisy. That's a temptation for all of us. But when your career, when your reputation, when your fame, your wealth is tied to remaining in a particular position, it can make manipulation, it can make covering up sin really easy. You can even justify it by saying that the ministry that God has given you is so fruitful. It's so big that clearly God has favor on your life. And so it would mess everything up.

And perhaps you convince yourself that it would somehow deter the gospel if you came forward with the sin that you have been covering up. And I think it's really easy also to mistake earthly success, like numerical success, how many people are in your church, how much money you have, how many books you've sold with God's approval of your life. I see that not only with pastors, but I also see that with like athletes, with celebrities who will pay lip service to God and they'll say, you know, God did this for us or God did this for me. I have the favor of God, but their life doesn't at all align with Christianity. look, your earthly success is not necessarily an indicator of God's approval of you or God's approval of your behavior or even God's favor in your life. They can be blessings from God. They can also be the very thing that is actually hindering you from living in truth and intimacy

with God. Remember, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, not money itself, but the worship of money, the idolatry of money, doing anything for financial gain, no matter what you have to compromise, that is the root of all kinds of evil. And gosh, that verse comes to my mind multiple times a day as I look throughout our government, as I look throughout our health institutions, our hospitals, as I look to many of our churches, the love of money, idolatry, worship, service of money is the root of all. kinds of evil. I'm not sure if that's the case here, but again, when it comes to these major institutions where power and prominence are really kind of at the center, you often see

cover up of sin. And I hope that more transparency, that our future is characterized by more transparency. Okay, let's talk about weed. It's Weed Wednesday. It's Weed Wednesday here Unrelatable. It's not where we smoke weed. It's where we make fun of it. And we talk about how awful it is. And I talked about this on Instagram a couple weeks ago, and I got such a big reaction. We've been meaning to talk about weed.

Should we legalize weed? What's the future of weed? And you guys, you had so many responses to it. But we just haven't been able to talk about it because there's been so many things that have come up that we've needed to discuss. But today we are finally going to talk about cannabis. and why I think cannabis is awful. And I know there's going to be people out there that are like, well, my dog used to have

seizures until he started, you know, smoking Mary Jane every morning. And now he's great. He's back in his prime. I know there are people who say that it's really helped them. Although I'll get into that because I've also talked to some medical professionals who say that medical marijuana is not a thing. I know. That's scandalous.

I had no idea that that was a perspective of some doctors. I thought it was totally legit. So I know some of you out there in the comments are going to be like, no, it's completely changed my life for the better. Whatever. In general, I think weed makes otherwise smart and driven, capable people stupid and lazy and fat. That's my general take on it.

But it turns out it's not just that. It's actually that it has a terrible effect on the mind and the body. especially when weed is smoked by young people. And the fact that we are trying to deregulate it, that we are trying to legalize it, that there is a weed shop on every corner and the libertarians are cheering saying this is great. No, it is just another sign of our societal decay. It's bad in every way. I've never heard a good argument for legalizing weed.

And I get the same reaction to this subject, by the way, as I get when I talk about the detriment of porn and how awful porn is. Like, have you people no shame? When someone talks about how awful porn is, that is not your sign to be like, well, actually, no. The same thing about weed. Why do you not care that you are telling on yourself that you are a weed smoking porn addict? There used to be something called stigma in society. Stigma is a very important societal construct that has been passed down to us by

wiser generations before us. Not every stigma that we have is good. Not every stigma that we have has to be stuck to. But many of the stigmas and the shames that exist in a society exist so that people behave themselves without the law having to come in and saying you're under arrest. At this point, though, we have to put people under arrest for, say, I don't know, being barefoot on airplanes because we don't have stigma and shame anymore. If we have stigma and shame, then people end up having their own self-control. Unfortunately, we have no self-control as a society. We have no agreed upon social contract. We have no agreed upon objective universal morality. And we are also saying, well, we're just going to make a bunch of things legal again like

weed. It's a recipe for disaster. Maybe you could have done this 150 years ago and things would have been fine. You can't do this today because we have too many derelicks in society who, again, have no self-regulation. So let me tell you a little bit about weed. Why we're talking about this and why it's so awful. We're talking about this because this has been a conversation even among conservatives about legalizing weed for the sake of freedom and also as a criminal justice issue because apparently there are so many people rotting away in prison because they just possessed a little bit of weed news flash that's just not really true it's not really true most people have been they say that they're in jail because of weed but really it was because they had cocaine on

them or there was a much more serious crime and they have been pled down to that charge so they would get less time in jail there aren't all of these people rotting away because they had like a little bit marijuana on them. That's just a myth that you hear a lot. We're also talking about it because we have seen how it has harmed once beautiful cities like the city of Denver. They've got a weed shop on every corner and homelessness and poverty and crime and ER visits are all up. Now, you could say that's a correlation causation fallacy, but the timeline matches. up a little too much for you to invoke that accusation, I would say. So let's get into it. First, let's look at the effects of cannabis. Cannabis refers to all products derived from the

cannabis setiva. Is that how you pronounce it? Wido's out there. Plant. This includes its dried flowers, leaves, stems, and seeds. The plant contains over 500 chemical substances and CBD is one of those chemicals. Marijuana refers to the parts of or products from the cannabis setiva plant that contain substantial amounts of tetrahydra cannabinole. THC. This is the main chemical cannabinoid that causes mind-altering effects, makes you feel high. Marijuana is one of the most used drugs in the U.S., particularly among young adults in 2021. 35.4%. That's crazy. Of people, aged 18 to 25, 11.8 million people reported using marijuana in the past year. Scientifically, there are many unknowns regarding marijuana.

Researchers are still studying the long-term and short-term effects of the substance. Scientists have historically classified marijuana as a hallucinogen. However, not all instances of marijuana use cause hallucinogen-like effects, like LSD and ecstasy. The FDA, which I understand we don't trust the FDA on everything for a good reason. But they classify marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance. This means that it has no currently accepted medical uses and a high potential for addiction. The Biden admin is currently working to make it a lower tier substance schedule two. Of course they are because the Biden administration is hell-bent on the destruction of American society and everything that is good, right, true, and healthy they are going to oppose.

cannabis is currently legal in 24 states for recreational use. So like in the South, it's mixed. Only in a few states is it fully illegal. Only in a few states, North Carolina, South Carolina, Idaho, for example. It's fully legal in several states. It's mixed in several states. And so most places in the United States today, you're going to walk around and you're going to smell weed. Unfortunately, if you go downtown anywhere, you are going to smell weed. Weed smells awful.

We tried to rent a car the other day. I forget where we were. A couple weeks ago, we were traveling. We rented a car and we got to the Hertz place and we got to the car that was designated for us. We opened the door and it reeks of weed. Reeks of weed. Well, no, we're not going to take that car. We ended up getting another car and we told them this reeks of weed. I'm not sure why they didn't fix that, but it's very hard to get the smell out. And I said at the time on Twitter, which got a lot of people mad, a lot of pot heads mad, I said, weed is so trashy. And it is. Does that mean that I think that if you smoke weed, you're not a valuable person made in the image of God. That's not what I'm saying. It is just a trashy substance. You cannot tell me that it makes someone more put together.

and more successful, more sober-minded, more caring and considerate, a better citizen, a harder worker, a better mom or dad. I'm sorry, no, no. And I don't want to be around it. Like, you should be able to go to a park, even in a city, walk downtown with your kids in a stroller without worrying about being absolutely oppressed by a wall of the smell of weed. that is a society in decay. It's a society in decay where you cannot escape the stench of drugs. There are also some very serious side effects with marijuana that we never hear about. You think of like the surfer dude or the ski bomb, people who just want to chill out, man,

and it's all good. It makes you actually happy. It makes you a better person, a better friend. Cooler, chiller, not as stressed. But that's actually not the effect that it has on the mind, especially long term. All right, this is according to NBC. This was an article that was published May 22nd, 2024.

Teens who use marijuana more likely to suffer psychotic disorders. Great, that's what we need, right? We need more mentally unstable teens. Awesome. Our future voters. A study published in May, led by researchers from the University of Toronto, found an 11 times higher risk of developing a psychotic disorder among teenagers who used cannabis compared with those who did not. When the analysis was limited to just emergency room visits

and hospitalizations, there was a 27-fold increase in psychotic disorders in teenagers who had used the drug. Wow. Wow. When I see youths with psychotic symptoms, they're almost always using lots of cannabis, said Dr. Leslie Holvershorn, a child psychiatrist and chair of the psychiatry department at Indiana University who was not involved with the study, so she just commented on it, it would be unusual to see someone to present with psychotic symptoms to a hospital and not have smoked cannabis. Okay, so she has seen this so much that she says she almost never sees a child, a young person, come in with some kind of psychotic episode going on who wasn't smoking weed. Oh my goodness.

The new research published in the respected journal Psychological Medicine includes data from over 11,000 teens and young adults who were ages 12 to 24 at the beginning of the study. The authors pulled from the annual Canadian Community Health Survey focusing on 2009 to 2012. The participants were followed for up to nine years after the initial survey. So this is a large survey, okay? This is not like a few people over the course of a few months. We're going all the way back to 2009, 2012, all the way until recently. of the past couple years. And so you can't even just say, oh, these psychotic episodes had nothing

to do with the weed. They're just looking in 2023, 2024. Maybe mental health disorders have increased because of COVID. No, this goes a long way back over 11,000 participants, apparently. Of the teens who are hospitalized or visited emergency rooms for psychotic disorders, roughly five and six have reported previous cannabis use. New York City psychiatrist, Dr. Ryan Sulton, says that in over the last decade of diagnosing countless young patients with new psychotic disorders, I can't think of a single one who wasn't also positive for cannabis. So this is another psychiatrist, another doctor saying the same thing as the Indiana University doctor said. While it's possible, this is according to that Dr. Holvershorn, while it's possible

that teens who are prone to develop psychotic disorders could have also been more likely to use cannabis, it's unlikely because of how striking the association was. The magnitude of the effect here is just hard to believe and it's not related that it's not related to cannabis. There was no association between cannabis use and psychotic disorders in people ages 20 to 33 in this particular study. So what's really talking about those formative years when the brain is still so rapidly developing. Again, that's in this particular study by the way. That doesn't mean that those psychotic disorders are not more likely in that adult range, but in this study, they were proven more likely in the teenage range.

This study really put the fine point on delaying cannabis use until your 20s, put the fine point on delaying cannabis use in your 20s until your 20s may mitigate one of the most potentially serious risks, kind of worded weirdly, but you understand. Nearly one in three twelfth graders reported using it in the previous year, according to the 2023 monitoring the future survey. Wow. One in three 12th graders, y'all, I don't even know if I knew what weed was when I was in high school. I would have had no idea, even if I had wanted weed. I would have no idea where to get it. I would have had no idea. I'm like the I'm like Robert De Niro and meet the parents when Ben Stiller tries to the, his character explains to him, oh, puff the magic dragon.

Puff the magic dragon. That's the song about marijuana. And Robert De Niro is like, what are you talking about? This is about a little boy in his dragon. That's what I was in high school. I don't think I knew what weed even was until like, I don't know, years later into my adult life. But you know why, and this is important parents, I think, is that I also. wasn't drinking at all in high school. I didn't go to any parties where there was alcohol. I was never

around alcohol. My friends were not around alcohol. I wasn't hanging out with people. By the way, we had at our school a 24-7 policy, which now people are like, oh, that's so archaic. That's so awful. But we had a 24-7 policy at our school that if you were caught at any point at any time in the year, at any time of the day, having sex, drinking, or doing drugs, you would be expelled from school. That was the kind of Christian school that I grew up in. And even though that was not the thing that stopped me from doing those things, I just wasn't in that crowd. Of course, I had very involved. And I would say, I would have said at the time strict parents who gave me a curfew and cared about where I was and put

rules in place that I know that I thought at the time were absolutely ridiculous. And so I was protected in a lot of ways, but I guarantee you, for some students whose parents weren't as involved in their lives, that 24-7 policy stopped them from doing drugs and drinking, partying, having premarital sex in high school. And so you can laugh at that rule all you want to. I guarantee you, though, that at least for some and probably even more so today, that rule protected teenagers from smoking weed and dealing with suffering from these psychotic side effects that are now being discovered through these scientific studies. So I'm thankful for that.

So my lesson there is parents, don't be afraid to be involved in your kids' life. to care about where they're going, to care about who they're hanging out with. And I would say that alcohol is the gateway to weed. And that weed is, I know it's like people say, oh, it's such a boomer thing to say that weed is the gateway to other drugs. It is because it is highly addictive. I know people say that it's not. It is.

It's highly addictive. And once you lower your inhibitions, you, of course, have worse. judgment. And once you have worse judgment, something like harder drugs becomes more attractive to you. I don't think that anyone can deny that smoking weed lowers your inhibitions, right? It changes your state of mind. You become high. You might say that you become happier, but you also become more carefree, which may feel good in one way, but in another way, it is also inhibiting your judgment, your wisdom, your ability to make good choices. That's why you shouldn't drive. That's why you shouldn't operate machinery while you're smoking weed. That's why you shouldn't do a lot of things while you're

smoking weed. The same thing with alcohol. When you're around alcohol, especially when you are a teenager, your state of mind changes, you're lowering your inhibitions. You're more likely to smoke wheat and then you're more likely at least over time eventually to do other things. It's never a good choice. And so I know some people think, well, alcohol, even as a teenager, it's no big deal. It's just what kids do. Look, with the availability of drugs now. I mean, alcohol, of course, in general, before you're 21, while it's a crime, it should never be engaged in.

But it's not even, even if you set that to the side, it's not harmless. It's not innocent. It causes all kinds of problems. And as I said, it can lead to the use of drugs. And with the availability, accessibility of drugs today, because of their legality, you are setting your child up for failure. And not only that, but a lot of times nowadays, we are seeing weed that is laced with fentanyl and all kinds of drugs like Xanax

that are laced with fentanyl that kids are getting from other kids at school. We're talking even at like Christian private schools, this kind of thing is happening. I mean, this is a consequence of open borders. This is a consequence of absentee parents. In some cases, not all cases. This is a consequence, again, of the legality of weed. This is a consequence of social media and these things becoming popularized there.

It's a consequence of lots and lots of things, of godlessness, of all of that. But one factor in this is certainly the marijuana, and I don't see any good case for making it easier for young people to access this psychiatric drug or this drug that can cause psychiatric disorders, rather. evidence from separate Danish and British studies, this is also according to NBC this year, among others, suggest a link between heavy marijuana use and psychiatric disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. T.HC levels in marijuana have been getting stronger for decades, so it's not the same. It's not the same as what you saw maybe 30 years ago when it really was just ski bums getting a little high.

We're definitely seeing a rising cannabis-induced psychosis among teenagers, said child psychiatrist Dr. Christian Thirstone. She's an addiction specialist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver. The more potent the cannabis products, the more likely users are to have adverse effects, said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. There was a European study published in 2020 that found that high potency cannabis products carried a greater risk of hallucinations and delusions compared with lower potency types. as many as half of people with cannabis-induced psychosis may go on to develop either schizophrenia

or bipolar disorder research suggests. So even if it's not acute, even if it's not immediate, it could actually have such an effect on the brain that you later develop these disorders that will affect your life, that will affect the lives of everyone around you. The more marijuana somebody is exposed to, especially in adolescents, the greater risk, the greater the risk of developing psychosis, schizophrenia, and severe mental illness. You know, it holds just, make so much sense, why the powers that be, why the left wing zeitgeist wants to legalize and make more accessible marijuana, why our adversaries want to make marijuana more accessible, more legal in the United States, because you'll have a dumbed down, numbed out populace that

cannot defend itself, that doesn't want to defend itself, that doesn't want to reproduce, that is, in many ways, probably unable to reproduce, that has to depend. depend on all kinds of narcotics and antidepressant medications that can actually exacerbate the mental issues. It makes them pretty useless when it comes to defending their communities, defending their republic, defending their freedoms. If you can drug them out, then you can guarantee that they are easily controlled. They're not critical thinkers. They don't have the energy to research. They certainly don't have the energy to try to defend themselves intellectually, but also physically. So marijuana in the 60s, 70s and through the 90s was 2 to 3

percent. Nowadays, the commercialized products are 20 plus percent, 10 times more potent. And again, very often being laced with other stronger, deadlier drugs. There's no longer any scientific debate that marijuana can not just be psychologically addictive or habit forming, but also physically habit forming. It's a substance that produces tolerance, so people have to use more and more to have the same effect. About one in ten people who begin using cannabis will become addicted. Oh my goodness. We have been lied to for so many years about weed, and we have all been called Karens for saying that weed is bad, that it shouldn't be legalized. We were right.

Karen is so often, right, y'all? All right, so cannabis linked to psychosis. Scientists believe that cannabis is interfering with our brain's ability to distinguish between what's going on in our heads versus the real world. One theory as to why it affects adolescents so much is that disruptions to the endocannabinoid system in adolescents may make psychotic symptoms more likely. The endoc cannabinoid system is a complex signal. system in the brain that marijuana targets. That's interesting. That could make it harder to

distinguish reality from what is going on inside the head leading to symptoms such as hallucinations, hallucinations, which is how schizophrenia usually manifests itself. And it does seem like, it does seem like these symptoms persist throughout someone's life. And I know some people will say that there is a safer marijuana that has different kinds of ingredients, but there really isn't a widely accepted standard of this. So I would say that that's not really true. There are some other stats and studies about this. A study from 2008 titled cannabis use and the risk of developing a psychotic disorder found that it's much more likely to develop a psychotic disorder when you've been using weed, that the data suggested that in young adults ages 18 to 25,

legalization of marijuana is leading to higher rates of cannabis use, particularly in Oregon and Washington. This is according to an analysis published in 2023 in the journal Substance Abuse. And then daily marijuana use among young adults has risen to record highs, of course, leading to many of these psychotic episodes. Now, for those who say, well, what about medical marijuana? Isn't that fine? Like, shouldn't I let my teenager or shouldn't I indulgence of medical marijuana because it is helpful to me?

So according to the New York Times, medical marijuana is not regulated as most medicines are. Experts in the many specialties in which medical marijuana is said to be helpful have only rarely been able to demonstrate its purported benefits in well-designed scientific studies. For example, in Oregon, where both recreational and medicinal marijuana can be sold legally, all recreational marijuana must be tested for pesticides and solvents, but such tests are not required for most medical marijuana. That's not good. Most of the same health concerns raised decades ago about using marijuana therapeutically are still unresolved, even as the potency of the plants intoxicated an ingredient tetrahydrohacanabinol, known as THC, has increased fivefold. Proponents of medical marijuana argue that cannabis is relatively safe and less expensive

than licensed pharmaceuticals. It's often used for conditions for which effective therapies are lacking or inadequate. Opponents say that what is most lacking or standardized marijuana products and randomized controlled clinical trials that can clearly establish benefits and risks. Some people say it helps them with pain management, which of course, I guess if you're high, you might not know that you're in pain. Some people say that it helps with MS. Some people say that it helps with glaucoma.

And I'm sure there are doctors and there are patients that would say that that works for them. And I am okay with experimenting with alternative medicine, absolutely. However, there just aren't a lot of studies that are proving that it is helpful right now. And even if we were to put that on the side, though, even if we were to say, okay, it can be used in controlled situations as prescribed by a doctor under stringent regulations, it still would not justify the mass legalization of weed, which I think absolutely is detrimental to society rather than helpful. You'll remember the story that we talked about, I don't know, a few

weeks ago about the cana moms. The cana moms, these are the moms smoking weed to try to deal with the stress of motherhood. These are moms who admit that using marijuana makes them better parents. They refer to themselves as cana moms. It's a term you may not have heard of, but their budding movement has been in motion for several years. It helps them deal with the craziness of motherhood. This was published in W-E-S-H in 2023. And there have been a few articles about this, apparently, which I think is just toxic mommy culture. You need community. You might need church. You might need fellowship, help from your husband, a better marriage. Maybe you need to work less, but you don't need a substance that is going to alter the state of your mind. That

speaks to a much bigger issue there. It's just a band-aid on the stress rather than getting to the root cause of why you feel so incredibly strung out. Your kids deserve a sober parent. Your kids deserve a sober parent. Denver, Colorado, as I said earlier, has kind of been one of the pioneers of legalizing pot. Cannabis was legalized in Colorado in 2020. Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper says on his website, Colorado set the standard for legalizing cannabis. The results have been overwhelmingly positive. And now Congress must follow suit by removing cannabis from Schedule 1 classification. Colorado's other Senator Michael Bennett said in a May 2nd statement,

Congress should follow Colorado's lead and bring our nation's marijuana laws into the 21st century. However, the data does not show overwhelmingly positive. results. There's also been a crime rate surge from 2012 to 2022, up 21.6% as eight neighboring state saw crime rates plateau or decrease. Traffic fatalities increased 57% over the last decade. The state has seen a decade-long increase in marijuana-related hospitalizations, emergency room visits, poison control calls, and fatal crashes involving drivers impaired by THC based on data from the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice. And while we can't say that all of that was caused by marijuana, it's likely, but we don't know that it was all caused exclusively by marijuana.

The correlation should absolutely at least raise our red flags. And plus, there are some things that just can't be measured. Like, we can't measure the number of children who choose pot over athletics or other extracurricular activities, the lost opportunities resulting from people choosing a drug for recreation as opposed to Colorado's other options for constructive activities according to this article. But also, we don't know how grades are affected by this, how relationships are affected by this, how people's ability to reproduce is affected by this. There is so much that we don't know and so much risk that can't even right now be properly measured that I believe legalizing weed presents. And I know we had a guest who was very wise and very sweet on this show a few weeks ago who argues for legalizing

many drugs, not deregulating all of them, but legalizing them. And you can go back and listen to that conversation. I won't give the full recap, but I fully disagree with that. I don't want to live in a city. I don't want to live in a place where there's a weed shop on every corner. I just fail to see how that is beneficial to anyone. Yeah, it might keep some people out of prison who are going to use weed anyway, but also prison can save people's lives. Prison can reroute people's lives. Prison can get people clean. I just don't see a good argument for it.

And for people who say, well, alcohol is even more dangerous than weed, don't tempt me with a good time. I am ready to go back to the prohibition if you want to go there. I don't think that saying that alcohol is dangerous is an argument for legalizing weed. And by the way, you can drink a glass of wine. You can drink a margarito once a month and feel nothing. I don't see many patterns of people using weed in moderation and having a negligible effect on their mind. And so weed, I think, should continue to be banned. I hope that we see a reverse of the direction that we have been going. Now, all of this reminds me of a conversation that I've been

wanting to have about Karens. Because people who criticize weed are off. I was literally for the tweet that said that weed is trashy, someone was like, I can just tell you hate black people. I was like, what? What? Where did this come from? I do think a disproportionate number of weed users happen to be black Americans. I did not know that at the time. So I guess that's what that person meant. And so you are criticized as a Karen. But here's what I will say about Karen's. And we'll parse this out in a second. Cairns are the sentinels of civilization. Cairns exist because we have devolved into a chaotic state with no good customer service and with no one acting like they've been somewhere. Y'all did not have a grandma named Dot who told you to act like you been somewhere and it shows. I did. And so I know how to act like I've been somewhere. But those of you who didn't have that, you have to have parents. Tell you how to behave. I don't make the rules. Karen's do. And that is why they're necessary in today's society, unfortunately. They are a symptom

of our devolution of society. And we'll get to that in just a second. All right. We're going to end today's episode talking about Karen's and the different kinds of Karen's because there are Karen's that we absolutely should demonize. And then there are Karen's who, as I said, are necessary. But let me just say at the top. This name Karen came about as an anti-white pejorative. Like I'll just say that because it's whether you're talking about the liberal white woman Karen who none of us really like or whether you're just talking about like the sweet grandmother who tries to ask the cashier for the right amount of change. Like the term Karen has been slapped on white women as an anti-white, an anti-white, an anti-white

racist, if I may, term, name. And it's okay to denigrate white people, especially white women. That's the society that we live in, that demeaning people because of the color of their skin is totally fine, as long as you are doing it to white people. So in that way, do I like to use that term? I don't call people that turn. There are many of you out there named Karen, and I'm sure you're lovely people. No, but I also just, again, want to bring up that some Karens are in fact necessary. So here's our definition of a Karen. Most definitions of Karen are not politically neutral. Most of the left degrees Karens are racist, anti-vax, anti-mask.

Karen was a thing before COVID, but COVID really elevated the trend of posting videos about it. This is according to the Atlantic. Karens are the police women of human behavior. Karens don't believe in vaccines. Karens have short hair. Karens are selfish. Confusingly. Karens are both the kind of petty enforcers who patrol other people.

failures at social distancing and the kind of entitled woman who refuse to wear a mask because it's a muzzle. And oh, and Karen's are most definitely white. See, that's true. There are two different types there on the right and the left. According to the BBC, Karen has a recent years become a widespread meme referencing a specific type of middle class white woman who exhibits behaviors that stem from privilege. See, it's also just like a little bit classist there because it's the person who is unsophisticated, the unsophisticated white woman. We've got like this meme of the triggered white woman

that has really been famous since, I don't know, since 2015, that's sometimes referred to, referred to as a Karen. And then we've got poor Kate from John and Kate Plus 8, who is like typifies the Karen haircut. She has also been used as a meme for several years. Okay, here is. is an example of a Karen's out one.

Get off the trail. There are so many families on this trail. You are not supposed to be on here with motors. Get off the trail. Get off the trail. Hey, no. This is a bicycle. Get off the trail.

Have you heard of the term caring? How are you? Okay, so I don't know all the details of that situation. However, I would say that she's probably right. They're on motorized bikes there, and it's dangerous. You've got kids that are. are on tricycles, you've got kids that are walking around that's really hard to stop. If you're not paying attention and you're on a motorized bike, I don't know.

Maybe that's allowed there. But this is an example of what I'm talking about that Cairns have to police people who are irresponsible and only think of themselves who not only in certain situations don't provide good customer service, but they are violating the social contract that is necessary in a high trust society. And as I said a few minutes ago, because we don't live in a high trust society that honors the social construct or contract, we have to have these people who enforce rules. Enforce rules through yelling, enforce rules through shame. And it really makes for a very chaotic society.

And yet that is, that's where we live. Here's that too. What's going on? You see yourself? Yeah. I live here. Yeah. And I'm a teacher.

So what's up to do with me? And you like keeping me up. So you go away before I call the police. All right, cool. Go. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. See, this person is also being castigated and condemned as a Karen because she's trying

to sleep and you've got a bunch of youths outside playing loud music, keeping her awake when she has to wake up for work the next day. A Karen apparently is anyone who stands in the way of you doing what you want to do and having fun because a Karen has responsibilities. But if it weren't for Karen's, if it weren't for Karen's, no one would get in order. No one would do what they need to do because they are all just thinking about themselves.

There was this video going around on Twitter a few months ago. And it was this British woman. She was following this couple. It looked like a couple. It was a young woman. white girl and the races are relevant to this conversation. And it was a tall black man. And the man was leading this young woman. This young woman looked scared. And this woman was following them, behind them and say, what are you doing with her? Where are you going? Where are you going? Where are you

going? Why are you walking with her? Do you know her? Do you know her? Do you know her? And the man was like, leave us alone. What are you doing? And the girl was just standing there. She wasn't looking up. she wasn't saying anything while this so-called Karen kept on following them, kept on harassing them with their phone. Finally, the guy looked at her, walked away. The girl, this is all caught on camera. She looks at this woman and she just breaks down in tears. She says, thank you so much. Thank you so much.

I didn't know him. He kidnapped me. That's what Karen's have to do because we live in this disordered chaotic society. And so I agree with you, those Karen's who truly are just trying to police people's behavior who are telling you to put your mask on. and there was one lady the other day that I saw that like apparently elbowed this 12 year old kid on a sidewalk because he was he had like a maga hat on and carrying an American flag. If you want to call that person, Karen, that's fine. I'm just saying Karen is a necessary in many cases symptom of where we are as a society. Okay, so my question is, what do you call the person the left wing ideologue activist who harasses people for not following her rules. Apparently, we don't call her Karen because she's not white. But tell me this

isn't toxic behavior. This is up for. I have a question. Are you guys black owned? We're not. No, we're all Indonesian. Okay. Do you think using this, you guys are not using black culture to get, gain attention and getting custom? I don't think this is black culture. Is this Asian? Is this Asian culture? The common house is definitely an Asian culture. No, but it's the trap house, though. Is that Asian culture? Yes, it is. Trap tea, trap tea, trap tea, trap tea, trap tea, the gogo plug. You're using black culture to gain customers. I don't even, is trap house, is that black culture? I don't know what that means.

Doesn't that mean like a house where you do drugs? All right, okay. So this is something that went viral on X and on TikTok. It's these kinds of people that are policing from their place of self-victimization. and intersectionality that are very annoying. The women who are willing, knowing that they will be called names, knowing that they will be called a racist, are willing to say, hey, we got to follow some rules.

We got to respect other people. We should have some customer service. Those are the sentinels of civilization. The women who are willing to follow someone around and say, hey, do you know her? Do you know her because you look sketchy? the women who are not suppressing their intuition when they can tell something's wrong, the women who are willing to say, wheat smells bad and it's trash. Those are the women that we still need society and we still need men to stand up for those things too. And you can call them Karen's. You can call them anything you want to. But that is where we are. If you want to live in a civilized, orderly way, they're going to be gatekeepers. They're going to be rule enforcers. And so I don't think we should demean all people who stand up.

up for the vestiges of the social contract and demonize them as Karen's. The fear of being called a Karen has made many people suppress their instinct and the hope of being deemed some kind of cool ally. But I am not an ally with potheads or porn heads or any of the people who want to call the rest of us civilized people, Karen's. We need Karen. That is my entire message for at least the last half of this episode. And we've been wanting to talk through that subject for a long time when we finally got it out.

All right. That's all we got time for today. We will be back here tomorrow.