1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Jordan Harbinger Show – Episode 1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday

Release Date: April 20, 2025

Introduction to Skeptical Sunday

In Episode 1142 of The Jordan Harbinger Show, titled "Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday," host Jordan Harbinger teams up with co-host comedian Michael Rogiglio to revisit the complex and often contentious topic of cannabis. Building on the success and extensive feedback from their initial exploration, Harbinger and Rogiglio aim to demystify cannabis by dissecting its historical, legal, and societal facets, ultimately determining whether it is a medical marvel or merely a product of exaggerated fears.

Historical Perspectives on Cannabis

The discussion begins with an exploration of cannabis's long-standing presence in human history. Rogiglio highlights its ancient uses and cultural significance across various civilizations:

• Ancient China and India: "The first recorded use of Cannabis was in 2737 BCE... Emperor Sheng Nang of China prescribed cannabis tea, and ancient Hindu sects used it for religious purposes and stress relief." (06:27).

• Greek and Roman Medicine: "In 1440 BCE, Herodotus wrote about cannabis steam baths, and Greek doctor Galen prescribed it as medicine," Rogiglio explains, emphasizing cannabis's established medicinal role in antiquity (07:48).

The Path to Criminalization

The conversation transitions to the early efforts to outlaw cannabis, revealing the intertwining of economic interests and racial prejudices:

• Napoleon's Ban: Rogiglio notes, "Napoleon Bonaparte outlawed cannabis after discovering his soldiers using it, marking one of the first major prohibitions" (11:09).

• British and American Legislation: The British Empire's 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act labeled cannabis as dangerous, setting the stage for American prohibition. By 1913, California became the first state to ban cannabis cultivation (12:25).

Harry Anslinger and the War on Drugs

A significant portion of the episode delves into Harry Anslinger's pivotal role in demonizing cannabis:

• Racist Rhetoric: Rogiglio quotes Anslinger: "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men," underscoring the racial motivations behind cannabis prohibition (16:53).

• Economic Interests: Anslinger's crusade aligned with the interests of industrialists like William Randolph Hearst and the DuPont Chemical Corporation, who viewed cannabis as a threat to their petroleum-based products (21:17).

Impact of the War on Drugs

Harbinger and Rogiglio critically examine the societal repercussions of aggressive anti-cannabis policies:

• Mass Incarceration: "African Americans are arrested for violating cannabis possession laws at nearly four times the rates of whites," Michael states, highlighting systemic racial disparities [32:37].

• Supreme Court Rulings: The 1975 Supreme Court decision permitting up to 20-year sentences for cannabis offenses exacerbated mass incarceration trends (32:37).

• John Ehrlichman's Revelation: A chilling insight from former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman: "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black... by criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities" (30:07).

Legalization and Modern Usage

The episode chronicles the gradual shift towards cannabis legalization:

• Proposition 215: In 1996, California passed Proposition 215, pioneering medical cannabis legalization. Since then, 38 states have legalized medical use, and 23 have embraced recreational use (35:40).

• Current Legal Landscape: Despite legalization efforts, cannabis remains a Schedule 1 drug federally, complicating research and regulatory measures (28:46).

Understanding Cannabis: THC vs. CBD

Harbinger and Rogiglio delve into the science behind cannabis, explaining its primary compounds and their effects:

• Endocannabinoid System: "The endocannabinoid system regulates functions through naturally occurring cannabinoids produced inside the human body," Michael explains, detailing how THC and CBD interact with this system (36:37).

• Types of Cannabis:

  • Sativa: "Users feel more alert and focused... a head high," associated with stimulating effects (43:48).
  • Indica: "Indica is considered a body high... used for sleep disorders and anxiety relief," noted for its sedative properties (43:48).
  • Hybrids: Modern strains often blend Sativa and Indica traits, creating diverse effects (44:39).

Health Implications: Benefits and Risks

The hosts present a balanced view of cannabis's medical potential and associated risks:

• Proven Benefits: "Firm evidence suggests cannabis treats side effects of chemotherapy, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, sleep disorders," Michael lists, acknowledging validated medical applications (48:39).

• Potential Risks: Chronic use, especially during critical developmental periods, can lead to "depression, anxiety, and psychosis," with users under 25 facing heightened risks (53:36).

• Sobriety Challenges: Unlike alcohol, cannabis lacks a reliable sobriety test due to its lipophilic nature, complicating law enforcement efforts (55:04).

Economic and Social Considerations

The discussion highlights the economic benefits and social challenges of cannabis legalization:

• Tax Revenues: "Tax revenues from cannabis are directed towards education, environmental cleanup, and drug prevention programs," Michael emphasizes the potential societal benefits (55:42).

• Incarceration Costs: Harbinger reflects on the financial burden of incarcerating over 40,000 individuals for cannabis offenses, estimating billions spent over decades (34:31).

Conclusion: Reefer Madness Revisited

Harbinger and Rogiglio conclude that the historical demonization of cannabis, often rooted in racism and economic motives, has been largely debunked by contemporary research. While recognizing the legitimate medical benefits, they caution against the unregulated use of cannabis, especially among vulnerable populations. The episode advocates for informed education and policy reforms to address the lingering effects of the War on Drugs.

Notable Quotes:

• "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men." – Harry Anslinger [16:53]

• "We could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings..." – John Ehrlichman [30:07]

• "You want to know what the war on drugs was really all about? The Nixon campaign had two enemies, the anti-war left and black people." – John Ehrlichman [30:07]

• "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers." – Harry Anslinger [16:22]

Final Thoughts

Episode 1142 serves as a comprehensive exploration of cannabis, blending historical context with modern scientific understanding. By debunking long-held myths and addressing contemporary challenges, Harbinger and Rogiglio provide listeners with a nuanced perspective on cannabis—empowering them to make informed decisions and engage in meaningful conversations about its place in society.

Transcript

[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co host comedian Michael Rogiglio on the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. And our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker, especially here on Skeptical Sunday. During the week, we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers. On Sundays though, today, whichever day you're listening, it's Skeptical Sunday. This is where a rotating guest co host and I break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as acupuncture, astrology, recycling, toothpaste, crystal healing, diet pills, energy drinks, weddings, the death industry, and more. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, we've got some starter packs which are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion, negotiation, psychology, disinformation, cyber warfare, crime and cults and more that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Now you're probably going Cannabis. I swear I saw this in the feed earlier. This is our second attempt. We were still finding our feet with Skeptical Sunday. That was when we did round one of cannabis. @ the time we'd only done a handful of these things and I wanted to redo this one since it was Downloaded so many times, I got a lot of feedback about it. Positive, negative, great episode. Too corny. All this stuff we got put on blast from listener emails and that's how we learn and get better. So round two with cannabis. Here we go. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I was told that cannabis was the devil's weed. One should avoid it at all costs. Kids were dared to just say no. We were scared. With over the top ads today, some say cannabis is a cure all from everything from anxiety to chronic pain. So what is the truth? Are the alarmists right in their belief that cannabis is the downfall of humanity? Or are the herbalists of today onto something when they push the medical flower? Comedian Michael Rigilio is here to give us the straight dope on weed and let us know if it's a medical miracle or the hype is just smoke and mirrors.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yes. Hi, Jordan. Hi, Jordan.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Ah, I see what you did there. And we're going to be easy on the puns as I promised in the top of the show. But no, I'm a busy man with a lot to do, so I am not high in this particular moment. And like I said, I've been told never to touch this stuff, so.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Well, there are actually, nowadays there are some that will tell you that it's a shame that you're not high. As you said, cannabis today is purported have many attributes that are good for you. This, of course, is in stark Contrast to just 15 short years ago when we were told that our brains on drugs were not unlike fried eggs in a frying pan.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yes, I remember that ad with the very serious guy who says, this is your brain holds up an egg and then cracks it in the pan and then says, any questions? Like, oh, man, this guy, he means business. But they didn't say cannabis, man, they said drugs.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Aha, yes. But the problem being that for the last 53 years, we have classified cannabis as a Schedule 1 narcotic. That's the same as heroin, meth, coke, all the bigs of the drug world. Now, the Biden administration did finally reclassify Cannabis as Schedule 3, which means it incurs much lower penalties for possession and use. For example, Tylenol with codeine is schedule three. So I don't know anyone doing hard time over possession of Tylenol codeine. So clearly this is an improvement. But it's actually a long road before cannabis is officially reclassified.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I remember I had my tonsils out as an adult and they were like, we're going to give you codeine and I'm like, I think I've heard of this. Doesn't Tylenol have this? Like some Tylenol? And they're like, it's a controlled substance. And I was excited. And also, like, they take it real serious. They give you a special pad to go and get it from the pharmacy. So I took this thing and I went to the pharmacy and they gave me what I can only describe as a bucket of codeine. Yeah. I was like, really? There's a lot in here. And they're like, yeah, and if you need a refill, we can refill it. And I'm like, how long am I going to be out? Because this is quite a bit. And they're like, oh, yeah, you're going to be under for like three weeks. I never touched the stuff because it scared me a little. And also, I guess I have a high pain tolerance. This was like a terrible sore throat. But my doctor who took my tonsils out said it was worse than having kids. I would say just having seen my wife recover from having kids, that is definitely not true for me, or wasn't true for me. Maybe my mouth just healed fast, but I just thought it was hilarious. The absolute gasoline can of codeine that they gave me to recover from this operation. And it sounds like I could have sold the stuff and the penalties would have been okay. Could have maybe added a couple thousand dollars to my top line revenue that year, but I ended up dumping it down the sink.

[Michael Rogiglio]

They gave me morphine when I broke my rib and they only gave me three pills. To this day, I still have one left because I was so freaked out about having something that addictive.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, I don't know what to tell you about that. I guess if you have a really bad headache one day, just eat a quarter of it and see if it still works. We probably shouldn't be talking about this in this podcast at all. Well, anyway, yeah, all the fun stuff is on schedule. 1. Even back in the days of just say no, it seemed ridiculous that marijuana was grouped up with that. Cannabis has always just had a bad rap.

[Michael Rogiglio]

I'm going to just say no to that notion, actually, because cannabis historically always had an excellent reputation and it's been around for, like a really long time. The first recorded use of Cannabis was in 2737 BCE or as historians say, a long ass time ago.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, easy on the academic jargon there. It's an audience of laymen. But wow, what is that? Like almost 5,000 years of cannabis? Pretty impressive. Wow. Yeah.

[Michael Rogiglio]

And legend has it that Emperor Sheng Nang of China believed to have ruled around 5,000 years ago. So you nailed it. Prescribed cannabis tea. The earliest Hindu sects in India used cannabis for religious purposes and stress relief. Ancient physicians prescribed cannabis for everything from pain relief to earaches. In fact, Hindus believed that the God Shiva brought cannabis to Earth and not just for humans to use. Turns out the God Shiva was also a big fan of this plant God.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Needing to get high is a little strange. And by the. Is Shiva the one with all of the hands? Because I feel like that would probably come in handy when rolling a joint.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Absolutely would.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Michael Rogiglio]

But look, different cultures consumed cannabis in different ways. Some cultures mixed it into food. In India, they made a drink called Bang Bang.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Definitely sounds like a dodgy energy drink you get at a truck stop.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I would be willing to bet that in our lifetime, we will see a sketchy energy drink called Bang. Yes, but in 1440 BCE, Herodotus wrote about cannabis steam baths. In the second century, Greek doctor Galen prescribed cannabis as medicine. And Chinese doctors used cannabis for surgery.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm hoping they used it on the patient. The patients used it for surgery.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Exactly. I assume so. Although, interestingly enough, that was one of the PSAs of the 1980s that today it plays more like a Saturday Night Live sketch. A surgeon stands over a patient smoking a joint while the narrator opines, if your surgeon was smoking pot, would you still consider it harmless?

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's a pretty silly point, because if your surgeon was drinking Jack Daniels during the surgery, would you still consider it harmless? No. I don't even want that guy texting while performing surgery.

[Michael Rogiglio]

No, exactly. Interestingly enough, the Chinese made cannabis into a kind of wine. It's versatile. During the Middle Ages, Muslims in the Middle east use cannabis, which is very interesting because the Quran strictly prohibited alcohol, but there was no mention of cannabis.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So is it true? Is it okay for Muslims to smoke pot? Or is it okay, drugs are haram, and alcohol is kind of the only thing we have around? So we're going to name that one. But I'm curious if it's okay or not. I've never heard that before.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, me neither. And I did some research. But let's just be clear. In the olden days we're referring to, it was actually hashish that they were smoking, which is basically a potent extract of cannabis. The first known mention of hash is in a pamphlet published in Cairo in 1123 accusing Nizari Muslims of being hashish eaters. So does that work?

[Jordan Harbinger]

You can eat it. All right.

[Michael Rogiglio]

I Don't know, maybe. But it may be just was an ancient insult being like, your mother eats hashish. I'm not sure I see either way, hash was big business, with Morocco and Afghanistan being the biggest exporters of this potent concoction. But as far as the modern Muslims go, it's still debated. Most people agree that using cannabis for recreation goes against Islamic law. But using it for medicinal reasons is a different matter. In 2014, the Grand Ayatollah Saeed Mohammed Saidiq Hossani Rouhani of Iran.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Close. I'm pretty sure it's Sayyad Mohammad Sadeq Husseini Rouhani. Really close.

[Michael Rogiglio]

He issued a fatwa, or a legal religious ruling. In it, he stated spiritual plant medicines and psychedelics are halal for Shia Muslims with supervision.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So for people who don't know what halal is, it's basically Muslim kosher. And for people who don't know what kosher is, it just basically means the religious law says it's okay to eat or consume or use. So with supervision, basically. An imam has to watch you tripping. It's interesting that it's psychedelics too. I wouldn't expect that.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Look, if you're going to trip, I guess you got to do it with your imam. Both the French and the British, by the way, had their colonists growing cannabis in the new World.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So our country was founded in some parts on weed.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah. And other parts on slavery and misogyny.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah. Yikes, I forgot about that part for a sec. I don't know if we can group those things together. Maybe that's what we're trying to do. I don't know.

[Michael Rogiglio]

No, I don't think the anti cannabis people probably would, but I would say they are. I think smoking a little pot would make you less racist and misogynist myself.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Feel like our research bears that out, but we'll get there.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah. In the 1700, doctors widely prescribed cannabis as medicine in the Western world. The Irish Dr. William O'Shaughnessy popularized its use as pain medicine.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And it probably works about as well as Irish whiskey. Maybe lasts a little longer.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah. Which probably worked better than what I tried smoking in high school, because back then cannabis was illegal. Which gets me to the first person to outlaw cannabis. It was actually Napoleon Bonaparte. When the little French general learned his soldiers had brought cannabis back from Egypt and were getting high, he outlawed it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So no cannabis for the French.

[Michael Rogiglio]

That's correct. Napoleon was onto something, though he may have been a little harsh on hashish, so to speak. But people in his time realized that drugs and alcohol use was problematic. In 1868, the British passed the first drug laws banning some drugs. Around this time, people thought that cannabis use caused mental illness. This actually, as we'll see later, that's still debatable.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So are we still debating reefer madness? You remember that whole thing?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, well, not so much debating it as looking at the data. That's a better framing of it, right? Now, in 1894, the British were concerned about cannabis use in India. In lieu of keeping those they colonized in line, the British established the Indian Hemp Drug Commission. The thing is, they found that moderate cannabis consumption was not detrimental and found no link to mental illness.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So no reefer madness. Besides, you'd think if you're trying to subjugate a population like the Brits were doing in India, you'd be fine if they were stoned all the time and lounging around and shoveling snacks into their mouth and just, like, philosophizing about dumb things like you do in your dorm room in college, instead of, I don't know, marching on your colonial forces wanting human rights and all that stuff.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, excellent point. But it does indicate that the tide was turning. In fact, the smoke was starting to blow in the other direction as far as cannabis reputation went. So much so that in 1906, the US government passed the Pure Food and Drug act, which said cannabis was dangerous and must be labeled before being sold. And because history loves irony, in 1913, California became the first state to buy ban growing cannabis.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Wow. Well, I guess California was super conservative back then. Maybe. That has to be it.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Maybe. But look, the whole country was going that way because in 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Tax act passed and Congress tightened restrictions on drugs in America.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It really was a free. For all I know, there was cocaine in the cola around then, maybe, and heroin and cough syrup. So maybe tightening restrictions on narcotics wasn't that out of line at the time. It's not like they only picked on cannabis during that period.

[Michael Rogiglio]

There was also the Mexican revolution, which brought many Mexicans north to the United States. And just like any group entering America, they were met with racism and xenophobia.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, the Statue of Liberty says, send me your poor and you're tired, but it does not say anything about people actually being nice to them when they get here.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, I guess that fine print is on the back of the statue.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yes, and it's probably in French. I always find it almost comical that Irish and Italians, who you could never tell apart, now in New York, right, we're like, you're one of them and it's like, really? You guys could be brothers for all I can tell. One guy's slightly more pasty than the next. One guy lives in Hell's Kitchen, and the other guy lives three blocks south. And it's, you're the enemy. It's just so dumb. It was so ridiculous.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, well, speaks to the tribalism that is inherent in human beings, I think.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And how arbitrary it all is as well.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, for sure. People aimed their ire at Mexicans. One of the things that people attacked was that many Mexicans smoked their cannabis and they didn't call it cannabis. They had their own word for it, a scary foreign sounding word. They called it marijuana. The racists seized on this and demonized both the Mexicans and their marijuana. And by 1925, 26 states had outlawed the evil marijuana.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I guess if they couldn't outlaw Mexicans and, you know, they probably wanted to try back, then they could take away their fun. And I wonder how things would have been different if Mexicans had called it like freedom flowers, instead fleeing to America to enjoy their freedom flowers that they brought.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yes, branding is everything.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Indeed.

[Michael Rogiglio]

And that might well have worked. Certainly worked with freedom fries. The next blow for cannabis came with Harry Anslinger. Okay? He was the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and a racist piece of garbage, and he had cannabis directly in his crosshairs.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So he had a problem with cannabis because he didn't like Mexicans also.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Oh, no. Anslinger was an equal opportunity racist. But don't take my word for it, take his. Now, this is a little rough, but here is a quote I found from him. There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others. End quote.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, make sure we know that those are not your words. So it does bear out marijuana, makes you not racist and cool and sexy, which candidly sounds like an argument for marijuana, which I assume was not this guy's intent here. I don't know. Do you think podcasters count as entertainers asking for a friend?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Oh, by the way, Anslinger was not finished. There's also this little gem quote. Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Wow, maybe we stop quoting this guy. His guy is terrible. Holy smokes.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, no more Anslinger quotes, okay? Mind you, cannabis was still legal in some places, but it was on its way out. Anslinger famously collected wild and exaggerated stories about cannabis use and then placed them in the press. And in 1936, the film you've already referenced came out Reefer Madness.

[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, that propaganda worked. And not surprisingly, the following year, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax act, which was written in part by Anslinger himself. The other force behind the 1937 Marijuana Tax act was the petrochemical industry, the DuPont Chemical Corporation in particular.

[Jordan Harbinger]

DuPont, who makes a lot of products in my garage. You remember the Stainmaster carpet ad that was all over TV in the 80s? You couldn't get away from it.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yes, that Dupont. In the 1930s, Dupont invented cellophane made from petroleum as well as nylon made from petroleum. Cellophane was set to become the standard packaging for most American goods. And nylon standard for most American fabrics. Around the same time, Henry Ford was promoting chemergy, which fuses industrialization with raw materials, the best being cannabis.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Really? Why did Ford consider cannabis the best raw material? I've never thought about it like a thing you could make things out of.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Oh, no, tons of things are made out of cannabis. Hemp is what they refer to as the fibers. The cannabis plant produces. And the outer fibers of the cannabis plant can be used to make clothes, fabrics, ropes, and packaging. All better than nylon, by the way. The inner fibers of the cannabis plant can be used to make wood for construction.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So let me guess. Ford was not homeboys with the Duponts or Anslinger and had a different opinion about all this stuff.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Right. Cannabis was suddenly a huge threat to the Duponts and other business moguls like William Randolph Hearst.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The printer.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, the guy that owns the Hearst Castle, which is. Don't get me started. I hate the Hearst Castle.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Really? Who hates the Hearst Castle?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Me. Because you go on the tour and they're just talking about how, like, he took these ancient pylons out of Egypt. He basically robbed ancient treasures and shoved them into a castle that he just hoarded to show off to his rich and famous friends. And then when they couldn't pay the bill on this, they dumped it on the California taxpayers. Now we own.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I did not know that. I didn't know he just looted and plundered. I thought he just had a really nice house that he built into a castle and now we can get tickets and go see it. That's really tacky.

[Michael Rogiglio]

It is really tacky. And because of whatever agreement they have with the state, the film about him that they play you there calls him like this great man. And then you look into him and you're like. I think you're using that word subjectively.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay, great is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this particular film. Gotcha.

[Michael Rogiglio]

And so William Randolph Hearst owned most of the newspapers and paper mills at that time, and he viewed cannabis as competition. The US Secretary of Treasury, Andrew Mellon. That name sounds very familiar to me as well.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, Carnegie Mellon.

[Michael Rogiglio]

So Mellon was heavily invested in the DuPont company and feared cannabis costing him money. But they were in luck because Mellon's son in law was none other than Anslinger. So Mellon was able to get Anslinger easily appointed to the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which developed the Marijuana Tax Act.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So the Treasury Department basically went to war with weed over private money. So these guys had investments and they were like, let's use government power to protect them.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Exactly. Pretty much. So Hearst, Mellon, Anslinger and the duponts had a lot of reasons to hate cannabis, and a lot of those reasons were, like you said, financial.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So big business is just looking at the bottom line, which, candidly, that is reefer madness more than anything else that we've spoken about so far. That's ridiculous. I had no idea. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, right?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Reefer madness. Business as usual is what we should call that kind of reefer madness. Except Henry Ford, but he was in the minority. Dupont was the number one shareholder in Ford's major competitor, General Motors. Even the Rockefeller family of Standard Oil viewed cannabis sourced ethanol as competition. Henry Ford's first Model T used cannabis to make the acrylic skin upholstery and ran on cannabis based ethanol. Were it not for the Marijuana Tax act, we would today at the very least be seeing a line of Ford cars run on biofuels.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, for the last hundred and fifty years almost as well. Which is. I don't even want to go down the rabbit hole of thinking about how different things would have been. Instead of oil rigs spilling in the Gulf, we would just have massive amounts of weed being grown and then turned into fuel and then used for the. Wow. The course of history would have been changed by this. We wouldn't have needed as much plastic because we would have hemp plastic vehicles. Wow. It's almost depressing to think about how different things would have been.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Instead of tapping into oil wells, we would have been growing plants which breathe in CO2 and breathe out oxygen.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So we would possibly not even have the same sort of climate issue as we have now. Okay, so besides Ford, was there other opposition to criminalizing cannabis?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yes, of course. The other opposition to the legislation was from William Woodward from the American Medical Association.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What do those guys know? The American Medical Association? Never heard of it. Was it a bunch of doctors?

[Michael Rogiglio]

What he said actually reads rather logical by today because he said no evidence existed that cannabis was dangerous and that outlawing it, quote, loses sight of the fact that future investigations may show that there are substantial medical uses for cannabis. End quote. So he was of course defeated. And on October 2, 1937, a man named Samuel Caldwell became the first person in American history to be arrested for selling cannabis.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Sorry, Sam. It would seem you have started a tradition since then as well.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, a big tradition 23 million people have followed and continue to follow. Here's the thing. Our government knew all along that cannabis wasn't nearly as bad as the hype. Take the findings of the LaGuardia Report. In 1939, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia commissioned a report on the effects of cannabis. The New York Academy of Medicine issued an extensive research report declaring that contrary to earlier research and popular belief, the use of cannabis did not induce violence, insanity, sex crimes, or lead to addiction or other drug use.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, but what about listening to jazz music? Did they get to the bottom of that one finally or what?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Sadly, that part remains inconclusive. But Anslinger trashed the report, calling it unscientific. And don't forget, Anslinger had a powerful ally, William Randolph Hearst, who put his media empire to work demonizing cannabis.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Demonizing cannabis and plundering historical artifacts. You gotta love that a politician who stands to make a boatload of money off of demonizing something can just take a report from the Academy of Medicine and be like, nah, I don't like that science. So I'm just gonna say it's not scientific, because I. No one's gonna say anything. And I also have this very loud microphone publisher guy who's gonna say whatever I want him to say, and they just trash this. At least Hearst wasn't against cannabis for racist reasons, just pure greed. I'm not actually sure that's better, but these guys are terrible.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Objectively American history. Yeah, man, we got some skeletons in the closet. In 1951, Congress passed the Boggs act, which created a mandatory minimum for all drug crimes. In 1956, the Narcotics Control act passed, which gave stricter mandatory sentences for cannabis related crimes. And just like Prohibition did for alcohol, these laws were making cannabis more popular.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Is that true? Was it the laws that were making cannabis popular? Because it seems like this just caught fire on its own because it's fun.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Look, there's no way to say for sure, but there's certainly some correlation. When the US government prohibited alcohol, drinking went up. When they did the same with cannabis, came out of the jazz clubs and into the counterculture. Enter the 60s. In the 60s, both the counterculture of the hippies and the American soldiers in Vietnam became big fans of cannabis. Congress then passed the Controlled Substance act, which made cannabis a Schedule 1 drug, incurring all the same harsh penalties as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, et cetera, as we talked about at the top of the show.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right. And that sure makes things unnecessarily difficult, because now these people aren't just sort of minor offenders that can be rehabilitated. They're like scary junkies.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Oh, absolutely. And doing scary serious time, as we'll see in a bit. At this point in our history, we're just getting to the next bad guy in this story of cannabis, Richard Nixon.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Nixon, a bad guy? You don't say. This guy, he was prolific with the crap he did wrong. I gotta say, I gotta hand it to him, just one thing after the other.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, he was good at being bad. In 1970, two, the Shaffer Commission, founded by Richard Nixon, found that cannabis was, in fact, not as dangerous as other drugs and recommended it be decriminalized. This, of course, did not play to Nixon's hand, because arresting hippies was his way of controlling the protests against the Vietnam War and quashing opposition to his administration. So instead of decriminalizing cannabis, he did the exact opposite. He declared a war on drugs and established the Drug Enforcement Administration, or what we call the dea.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Ah, yes. I feel like we need a dun, dun, dun. Hold on. This has been decidedly non cheesy, the episode. So I wanted to add something like that in there. All right, so he knew what was right, and he did the opposite, just for political gain, which is classic politician move right there.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yes, it absolutely is. And there's this rather damning quote from former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman that pretty much puts everything into perfect focus. He said, quote, you want to know what this the war on drugs was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that had two enemies, the anti war left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This guy said that on record?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Holy moly. That is so blatant. That is nuts. I'm shocked. And I didn't think I would be shocked by anything coming out of the Nixon administration, but that is just as black and white as it gets. We wanted to make being black illegal, but we knew we couldn't get away with it, so we decided to just associate them with drugs and then arrest people. That is crazy. God, that is messed up. Next level messed up. Okay. I used to work in Detroit, and I worked with a lot of these people who are in a group called Nation of Islam. And they really don't like white people and they really, really don't like Jews. And it was a weird relationship because I didn't understand that. And I was just like a normal, nice person to them. And they were also quite nice to me because I was a kid. I was like, 18, 17. And they would explain these crazy conspiracy theories to me. They were like, we know you're Not a part of it. But do you know that the CIA drops crack into black neighborhoods? It would be like one thing after the other that was just kookier than the next thing. And this is one of the things that they had said, and they were just not making this one up. This one was real. I remember them telling me a lot about this alongside the how bad Jews and white people were. But this definitely adds a layer of color and credibility over those conversations. Yikes. Wow.

[Michael Rogiglio]

It really happened. And actually, it gets worse because in 1975, the Supreme Court ruled it permissible to give out sentences for cannabis offenses for up to 20 years in prison.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I am legitimately angry about this. This is horrible. I wonder if you add up how many people are in prison just for cannabis. If it's like thousands of years of human lives that we're just paying to incarcerate.

[Michael Rogiglio]

It's crazy. That is part of what Biden did to reclassify Cannabis as Schedule 3, doing with the reclassification, relooking at a lot of people's sentence for cannabis over the years. So there might be some amelioration of that, but we'll see. But let me add this in as we're talking about these harsh sentences that existed. African Americans are arrested for violating cannabis possession laws at nearly four times the rates of whites. Yet both groups consume cannabis at roughly the same rates. And while I'm on it, even though cannabis is legal in many states, cannabis today is half of all drug arrests. Someone gets arrested for cannabis every 58 seconds in America. This is despite the fact that the majority of Americans live in a state where cannabis is legal.

[Jordan Harbinger]

My God. Okay, so I'm looking at something right now. There's a huge page on this called Last Prisoner Project. They're trying to get people not locked up for marijuana because it's such a wasteful thing. And I can't read the whole page while we're doing the show, but there's more than 40,000 people locked up at any given time in the US and they say, we don't know it's more than that, but we don't know by how much. Like, it could be a hundred thousand, and they're just not sure because it's really hard to get down to brass tacks on this. But imagine 40,000 people are in prison, and each one of those people costs us like, 30 to $40,000. I mean, it's just hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars spent incarcerating these people over decades. And all the lives ruined. And of Course those people's earning potential. I mean, it's just disgusting. Okay, so I'm. I've gone from sad to angry to even more angry.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, look, it is rage inducing. In 1980, Reagan was elected and conservative values came back into vogue. And not like in a lovable Alex P. Keaton kind of way, but Nancy Reagan's Just say no campaign. The DARE movement and the Partnership for a Drug Free America became completely mainstream. Law enforcement cracked down even harder on cannabis with the previously mentioned racist disproportionality.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's morning in America and everyone's in jail for marijuana or weed. Or cannabis or whatever we're calling it for consistency's sake.

[Michael Rogiglio]

But it really was a new morning in America at that point, because attitudes changed at that point and they changed fast. I don't know if it was just the bad hairstyles of the 80s that people were running away from, but beginning in the 90s, a real pushback against these draconian cannabis laws began to flower and bloom. Exactly. Thank you. And in 1996, California passed Proposition 215. The first state to outlaw the cultivation of cannabis became the first state to re legalize it medically in this case.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What a turnaround for California. No surprise. I guess California turned nice and blue from, what was it, 1913 when they made it illegal, to 1996.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, and now it's turning nice and green.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yes, nice and green.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Look, and we all know what happened next, because since then, 38 states allow medical cannabis, and of those, 23 allow recreational use.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay, so this might seem a little late in the show for this, but I have to do it. What is cannabis? Everybody knows in a broad sense what it is, but what makes a person high is probably what I should be asking.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Okay, so actually, the more appropriate question is, what are we?

[Jordan Harbinger]

It sounds like we're getting all Sam Harris over here, but. Okay, let's see what you got.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Okay, maybe it's more, why does cannabis interact with us the way it does?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yes. The scientific route. I can dig it. Let's do it.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Okay, so the answer is the endocannabinoid system.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I feel like I've heard about that, maybe in a biology class or a dispensary or something. What is the endocannabinoid system? It's like a human body anatomy thing, right?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Exactly. It's a biological system in the body that helps regulate and balance key bodily functions like mood, energy, balance, and appetite. It runs completely through our brains and our bodies.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So it's like the nervous system, receptors and all that stuff?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yes. The endocannabinoid system regulates functions through naturally occurring cannabinoids produced inside the human body. These natural cannabinoids interact with cannabinoid receptors, of which there are many.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So I'm with you so far.

[Michael Rogiglio]

So cannabinoids also exist in other places in nature, such as cacao, which is why dark chocolate makes us feel a certain way. It's interacting with our cannabinoid receptors.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So is being a chocoholic kind of a real thing?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yes, it actually is. In fact, I have my 6 month chip from Chocoholics Anonymous. Sadly, they made it out of chocolate and I ate it. So I'm back to my week one chip. Look, cacao isn't the only plant that produces cannabinoids.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah. Is it cannabis?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Correct. Cannabis has over 100 different cannabinoids. But for our purposes today, we're just going to be talking about the big two, THC and cbd.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So I'm pretty sure everyone's heard of those. If you listen to podcasts and you haven't heard about CBD, I'm envious that you haven't heard 10,000 commercials for CBD. I won't run them on my show, but I hear them all the time.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, that's interesting. And look, that's cbd. But I'm pretty sure that everyone knows what THC is. It's tetrahydrocannabinol. And everyone knows that THC or tetrahydrocannabinol is the one that gets you high. And CBD or cannabidiol is the one with purported health benefits.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You know what brings euphoria without inducing psychosis? The fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by NordVPN. We just got back from a family trip to Shanghai, which I'll tell you more about on the show. But let me tell you, trying to get work done in China without a VPN? Forget it. Luckily we had NordVPN. So not only could I access all the sites I needed for work, and yes, even sneak in the occasional episode of a show that's not available outside the US but it was fast and smooth sailing the whole trip. And NORDVPN isn't just about dodging digital roadblocks. It protects everything. Your passwords, your banking info, your entire online identity. Especially when you're bouncing between airport, WI Fi, hotel, WI fi, random cafe, WI fi. Basically, the sketchiest WI fi situations possible in the middle of a major world city. And the threat protection feature protects you from malware trackers, phishing sites, stuff you don't even realize is lurking in the background. You can use one NordVPN account on up to 10 devices, so we had it running on the phones, the laptops, the tablets. Bottom line, if you travel, if you work online, if you stream shows, you even just want to not get hacked at a coffee shop, NordVPN is a no brainer.

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[Jordan Harbinger]

I've got homes.com as a sponsor for this episode. Homes.com knows when it comes to home shopping, it's never just about the house or the condo. It's about homes. And what makes a home is more than just the house or property. It's the location. It's the neighborhood. If you got kids, it's also schools, nearby, parks, transportation options. That's why homes.com goes above and beyond to bring home shoppers the in depth information they need to find the right home. It's so hard not to say home every single time. And when I say in depth information, I'm talking deep. Each listing features comprehensive information about the neighborhood, complete with a video guide. They also have details about local schools with test scores, state rankings, student teacher ratio. They even have an agent directory with the sales history of each agent. So when it comes to finding a home, not just a house, this is everything you need to know, all in1place.homes.com We've done your homework. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment support our amazing sponsors. I told you how all that works before. All the deals, discount codes and ways to support the show are searchable and Clickable over at jordanharbinger.com deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code. Feel free to email me jordanordanharbinger.com it is that important that you support those who support the show. Maybe it's just in California, or maybe I'm being targeted by CBD ads because I'm in California. I don't know. There's a corner coffee shop here downtown. You can order a freaking latte with CBD at the coffee shop. And there's pet CBD that's for sale, I believe, at the same place. It's just everywhere.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, no, it's. CBD is absolutely ubiquitous in California. You probably can get a Happy Meal with CBD in it, but it's probably actually those products you're talking about, they're probably not doing anything because you need 100 grams of CBD for your body to absorb any of it. And products like lattes and teas and whatever you're giving your dog that you buy at the store, those tend to have around 20 grams or so.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So are the effects mostly psychosomatic, like placebo kind of thing?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Essentially, that's what my research showed, but I've had a few and it feels like it's more than psychosomatic. But the point is, our bodies and our brains already have the receptors in place to interact with cannabinoids. The thing is, cannabinoids like THC are way more powerful than the ones our bodies make. Thousandfold more powerful. When consumed, psychoactive components are absorbed into the bloodstream and cross the blood brain barrier. These effects are quick, way quicker than, say, drinking a Scotch and soda. Cannabis, when smoked, enters the brain within 30 seconds.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oh, man. Yeah, cannabis for when you want to get high and you don't have a second to spare. But also, that's probably why I don't like smoking it, because one, I use my voice. Smoking things isn't a good idea. But two, it does not make me feel good. It hits me like a hammer. It's like I just had five scotch and sodas and it's just all at once.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Actually, that's interesting you say that because what kind of high you experience depends on the strain of cannabis you've taken.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oh, yeah, you're referring to Indica and Sativa.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yes, of course I am. And you are right. The two main strands of cannabis are Sativa and Indica. There's actually also a strain called Ruderalis, but it's so seldomly used that we're just going to skip it. Sativa and Indica give different highs because they interact with our brains differently. Let's start with Sativa. Sativa plants are taller than Indica and have longer leaves. Sativa is considered more of a stimulant. Users feel more alert and focused when on it compared to Indica. Sativa is a mood elevator and makes people talkative, and some call it a head high. Sativa does this because it's activating receptors in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Sativa can reduce stress. It is believed to have some pain management properties and gives users a heightened sense of importance towards their activity.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, that sounds about right. It's interesting. You said head high. What kind of other high is there? I don't get it.

[Michael Rogiglio]

There's head high and then there's body high. Indica is considered a body high. It relaxes you physically. That's why it's colloquially called indecouch. Indica is more of a sedative. This is because indica suppresses the amygdala part of the brain and also shuts down the hippocampus. The indica variety of cannabis can lead to defects in memory. Indica is often used for sleep disorders and anxiety relief.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Ah, relief from the leaf. I've heard that before. So these are your options. You either get talkative and possibly really annoying, or you turn into a couch potato.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Not anymore, in fact, because it's actually pretty rare to find pure sativa air indica these days. We live in the age of hybrids. Through plant genetics, growers have souped up that boring old cannabis in cross sativa and indicant to many hybrids that have qualities of both plants.

[Jordan Harbinger]

To be honest, for years I thought that people who said, oh, man, you don't like weed. It gives you crippling anxiety. Oh, you're smoking the wrong stuff, man. I really thought those were just hippies who could not wrap their mind around the idea that this wasn't for everyone. That me panicking and trying to call my mom about homework I forgot to do in the seventh grade and telling her about how high I was was not a good idea at the time. But maybe they were onto something. I just really didn't think it was scientific. I thought they were just dorks. We dorks.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah. And the different strains do have different effects, but it's possible that marijuana in general is just not for you. But while we're talking about the genetic manipulation of cannabis, it's worth mentioning that they've also souped up the amount of thc, and that might be what's freaking you out. Whereas the THC and the cannabis we discussed at the top of the show might have been around the low single digits. Modern Cannabis is over 20 and 30% THC.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay, so it's not your father's pot, because I never have a mild reaction to it unless I have an edible that's 1 milligram. And I'm just like, I'm slightly relaxed now. It's been a long, long, long, long time. But if somebody passes me A J. And I try it. I'm just like, I have to go home now and curl up in the fetal position. Not fun.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, I think we've all been there before.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So not your father's pot, like I said, right? It's different now.

[Michael Rogiglio]

No, look, my father's pot was kept in a coffee can above the fridge and was loaded with seeds and stems. He was getting hosed by his dealer for sure. But as far as modern pot goes, growers have gotten so good at manipulating the plants that there are all new categories of hybrids. Type one, type two, and type three.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Ah, okay, so what do those types mean? I've never heard of this.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Those refer to the THC to CBD ratio. Type 1 has the most THC and a little CBD, type 2 has less THC and more CBD, and type 3 has very little THC, mostly CBD.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So I suppose now is a good time to ask, what is cbd? Actually, I know it's sold everywhere. It's everywhere. We talked about that. But what is the actual compound?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Okay, so cbd, just like thc, is a cannabinoid, only CBD doesn't get you high, but has other distinct effects. Many believe CBD has many great medical uses.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So you said many believe. Does that mean that there's no solid evidence to back up these claims? Is the science kind of new? What's going on here?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Okay, let me start by saying that there is a very effective seizure medicine on the market today that is derived from CBD. So, yes, CBD has medical merit, but according to Margaret Haney, Ph.D. professor of neurobiology at Columbia University Medical center and leading cannabis researcher, the claims are quickly outpaced by the research. Because cannabis is still a Schedule 1 drug. Though this stuff is actually really hard to study.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It seems like with the number of people using legal cannabis, the government should just make it easier to study. Who cares if we need to learn more about this stuff? It's not like people aren't going to use it if it's illegal, for crying out loud.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Well, I mean, most medicinal claims aren't always backed up with hard data. Plus, most of this stuff is just subjective. As we talked about the placebo effect. If you think it's helping you sleep, it helps you sleep. If you think it's calming you down, it calms you down. If you think it's helping, you write good poetry.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, you write really bad poetry. Got it. Placebo can't help you there.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Okay, fine, that part is true, but nothing can help you there. True but the fact remains that we're in the realm of the brain body connection and it's the intersection of things. We still have a lot to understand. It's still a murky area for medical science. Let's list a few proven positives of cannabis and cbd. There's firm evidence suggesting cannabis treats the side effects of chemotherapy, multiple sclerosis, spasticity, chronic pain, sleep disorders, neuropathy, appetite loss and inflammation.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I gotta say, a shofan sent me a bunch of supposedly CBD only gummies that were really mega dosed. And I took one because a show fan sent it to me and it was all wrapped nicely. As from a real company. I thought CBD is mostly a scam, but this is a megadose. We'll see what happens. This thing knocked me the hell out, man. I kept them for sleep aids. And it is like I can be over caffeinated or anxious or whatever and I eat half of one of these things and it absolutely puts me down. Maybe it's not just CBD in there because it is made in California, so it's not synthetic or whatever. But holy moly. Anyway, those pain relieving and sleep inducing benefits, that's all good stuff in my estimation. You got a sore neck, you can't sleep, you got back pain, take some CBD. Especially after like 60 years old. What do you got to lose at that point, right?

[Michael Rogiglio]

What do you got to lose? That's all true. Okay, so now let's talk about the bad things that are associated with weed. Most of the issues we're going to discuss are from chronic use and chronic use is considered to be more than twice a week. Got it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Chronic use twice a week sounds pretty tame compared to a lot of the stoners I know. I mean the guys back in college who were doing this stuff, it was wake and bake all the way through the day. It was twice before lunch.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, no, I know the dudes you're talking about, actually. Okay, little sidebar because I bet these guys all fell into this before we get on to the really bad things, you won't be surprised to learn this somewhat benign effect of chronic use. Stoner voice and stoner laugh, they're real and documented.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Stoner voice is a real thing. I mean, you hear it on Scooby Doo, but it's a real thing all over the.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Come on, man, we all know what I'm talking about.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's an actual medical condition. I'm very surprised. I thought that was just like de rigueur or stoner and they were leaning into it.

[Michael Rogiglio]

No, no. Chronic users experience disruptions in motor circuitry, which leads to stoner voice. It's not just Hollywood. It's actually real.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Wow. Funny and interesting, but not exactly life changing negative effects. You just sound dumb and checked out.

[Michael Rogiglio]

You do. True, but there are real negatives. So let me emphasize this. The most negative effects from cannabis come from when you smoke. At what point in the brain's development you use cannabis.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That does make more sense, right?

[Michael Rogiglio]

Let's start with the most crucial. In your mother's womb. It is just a bad idea to smoke pot when you're in your mother's womb.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay? So don't be a stoner baby.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Okay? Little joke aside, that's obviously the mother who's using cannabis. Experts say it's really bad. THC crosses the placenta. Fetuses, like adults, have cannabinoid receptors and cannot handle THC or cbd. Experts are very clear on this. Don't use cannabis or CBD when you're pregnant. Like, none. Yet, shockingly, women do it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That is insane. I know women out there who think it's harmless or maybe even good for their baby or they do edibles instead of smoking, which is. I don't know why they think that's okay, but yeah, that's really bad.

[Michael Rogiglio]

And like I said, the problem is the hype on medical cannabis and CBD is way ahead of the data. So there are literally people telling pregnant women to take a little cbd. It's just not good. And if you're fortunate enough to have had a mother who didn't use cannabis, you can still screw up your brain, especially for young men, by using cannabis at the other crucial time in brain development, youth.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, but that's obviously when young men try cannabis. Is it just men or is it men and women? It's gotta be young men and women.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Male brains and female brains develop differently. Young men's brains, it's the prefrontal cortex that develops more slowly, which actually is where one of the things is that we can run the movie forward and look at consequences of our actions. That's in the prefrontal cortex, which explains why young men not having a fully developed prefrontal cortex do stupid things. I certainly can speak for myself. And it is in youth that most people try cannabis. And I mean, it's fun when you're young to go out and experiment. And in fact, I did it. Full disclosure, that's exactly when I was trying cannabis. These effects we're talking about are far worse for chronic use. It can lead to depression and anxiety. In fact, chronic cannabis use makes people four times more likely to experience depression, especially amongst younger people. Studies show that early use of cannabis on a developing mind can lead to psychosis at later ages.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Psychosis, Yikes. That is terrible. I've heard about that, but you never know what's hype and what's not. But. But, yeah, that's not good.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah. And for those who use cannabis as young as 12 to 14, the probability of schizophrenic episodes more than doubles.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Ooh. So it sounds like reefer madness in those instances is real. Do experts understand why that's the case? That's really scary. Schizophrenia is no joke at all.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Studies show that adolescent cannabis use accelerates the thinning of the prefrontal cortex and gray matter. In particular, the more cannabis used, the more impaired those neural circuits are. And we talked about the prefrontal cortex and how important that is.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yikes. So basically, say no to drugs, at least until your prefrontal cortex fully forms.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, I mean, I feel hypocritical saying it, but that's a good idea. But here's the good news. If you're over 25, it's all good. Of course, smoking or vaping, anything comes with dangers, and chronic use is never a good idea. But these dangers, the ones we just talked about, they cease to be as serious. But I should mention that for people who are predisposed to mental health issues or violence tendencies, using cannabis can actually trigger these things. If you have these predisposed tendencies, you should never use cannabis. But this is a low percentage of people. If you're over 25, it's generally safe.

[Jordan Harbinger]

To smoke a little pot in moderation, I suppose. And that is good, because adults are gonna be smoking for the foreseeable future as weed becomes more and more legal. All right, so here is something that I've wondered about. Is there a sobriety test for cannabis? Is there gonna be a weed breathalyzer?

[Michael Rogiglio]

No, probably never, because the reason the breathalyzer works with alcohol is because alcohol is water soluble. Therefore, the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream or in our breath, it's a very good indicator of just how impaired you are. But cannabis is lipophilic, meaning it lives in the fat cells, and there is just no good sobriety test. So it will be hard to enforce as states legalize cannabis. But that one minor problem is insignificant compared to all the good those tax revenues will do for those states, which that scale. Really, the good news about cannabis, I.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Have to imagine those Taxes have the potential to do a lot of good. When you go to a dispensary and you buy legal marijuana, it's like 25% tax on what you buy.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah, no, it's very high. As it should be. Right? I'm all for that. And some of those cannabis tax revenue goes to education related initiatives like school construction, school food programs, before and after school enrichment programs, and public libraries, environmental cleanup, law enforcement, and drug prevention programs, among actually a lot of others.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That is the promise of legal cannabis, though, right? The tax revenue. Love that. Tax revenue from drugs is going into drug prevention programs. That is some delicious bureaucratic irony right there.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Yeah. And there's also the unseen revenue as well. All the money we're not spending on enforcement, court dates and in court and incarceration. Look, I know I've come off like a bit of a Nancy Reagan in this episode, but I believe the government actually has limited rights when it comes to adults doing what they want to do in the sanctuary of their own homes. Ultimately, I think the war on drugs has been a complete failure.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Not that surprising since it started with false pretenses and racist motivations, which I didn't even realize. And I think no one's going to argue the war on drugs has been a success, that's for sure.

[Michael Rogiglio]

I absolutely agree. I think adults should be free to do drugs or free to not do drugs. But education, that is the key.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Thanks, Michael. Appreciate that.

[Michael Rogiglio]

Thank you, Jordan. This has been a real joint effort.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay.

[Michael Rogiglio]

All right.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm gonna let you get away with one last poll. We started at the top. We're not gonna be punny. You got one. That was good. You smoked it. Thank you so much for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of skeptical Sunday to jordanjordanharbinger.com show notes on the website, transcripts in the show notes, advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show, [e-mail] deals. I'm JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm doing a lot more posting on LinkedIn as well. You can find Michael Rugilio at michaelrogigilio on Instagram. Tour dates are up now there as well and it will be linked in the show notes because, as always, nobody can spell Rogelio. This show is created in association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own and I am a lawyer but I am not your lawyer. Do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Also, we may get a few things wrong here and there, especially on Skeptical Sunday, so if you think we really dropped the ball, definitely let us know. We're usually pretty receptive to that. Y'all know how to reach me. Jordanordanharbinger.com Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love, and if you found this episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time. Want to master the art of communication? Charles Duhigg, author of Super Communicators reveals key strategies for enhancing your connections and conversations in this enlightening podcast episode.

[Charles Duhigg]

Why do some people manage to connect with everyone else so effortlessly? And then there's times when I talk to my wife and like, we cannot connect with each other. And it turns out it's just a set of skills, right? Like it's just literally a set of skills that super Communicators know and that any of us can learn and become super communicators ourselves. Looping for Understanding and has three steps. The first is ask a question, preferably a deep question. Secondly, repeat back what you just heard the person say in your own words. And thirdly, and this is the one everyone always forgets, ask if you got it right. And the reason why this is so powerful is because it proves that I'm listening to you. It's really easy to stop thinking about how we're communicating. It's really easy to stop thinking about what's going on until we get in the habit of it. Communication isn't something that happens just one to one. Sometimes it's one to many. But the same principles still hold up. You're still having practical or emotional or social conversations. Laughter is actually one of the non linguistic ways that we connect with other people. There's been studies that show that in about 80% of the time when we laugh, it is not in response to something funny. It's because we're basically in a conversation and we're saying to someone, I want to connect with you. Nobody is born a super Communicator. That's what feels tiring, is when you feel like you want to connect and you can't, right? This isn't a behavior. This isn't a personality type. This is a tool that once we learn we can use when we want to use it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Learn how to categorize conversations, improve active listening, and overcome communication barriers to build stronger relationships. Tune in and transform your interactions into meaningful connections. On episode 963 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.