Smoking a joint or popping a cannabis gummy is for many Americans harmless Friday-night fun, much like cracking open a Modelo Especial for shooting the breeze with friends.
But anti-pot campaigners say it’s more pernicious than is often assumed, and point to the tragic and disturbing revelations from a California courthouse this month as evidence of the threat.
In Ventura, a 33-year-old woman was sentenced over a frenzied stabbing, in which she killed her date with 108 knife wounds, and hacked into her own neck and her beloved husky, Arya.
The judge spared her from jail, saying it was not her, but the cannabis she had smoked, that was guilty — causing the hallucinations that pushed her into a deadly, psychotic rage.
Bryn Spejcher, an audiologist from Chicago, underwent emergency surgery after stabbing herself in the face and neck during a weed-induced coma
Chad O’Melia, a trainee accountant, was stabbed 108 times. He was said to be a ‘regular’ pot user
Kevin Sabet, an anti-pot campaigner and former White House drug tsar, not only blames the marijuana she smoked, but also the $30 billion-a-year business behind it.
‘Big Weed’ is pushing ever more potent versions of pot’s active ingredient, THC, on a generation of unsuspecting Americans, he warns.
‘The marijuana industry’s lies and misinformation are directly to blame for this unimaginable tragedy,’ Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, told DailyMail.com.
Worse still, he says, the drug is no longer taboo — adults can use it recreationally across 24 states and Washington DC.
This drives ‘perceptions that it’s safe and less harmful, but that couldn’t be further from the truth,’ said Sabet.
The brutal stabbing northwest of Los Angeles is just the latest body bag heaped onto legal weed’s mounting toll, campaigners say.
From Maine to California, stoned drivers are losing control of vehicles and killing road users, studies show.
Kids across the US increasingly end up in hospital poison units after mistakenly popping one of their parents’ THC gummies.
And ever-more teens and young adults get hooked on super-strength pot, scrambling their brains, dropping out of school, and even taking their own lives.
For Bryn Spejcher, all it took was a couple of hits on a bong.
Spejcher trained as an audiologist to help hard-of-hearing children like herself; she was born partially deaf
She was sentenced last week to two years of probation and 100 hours of community service at Ventura Superior Court for killing Chad O’Melia, then 26, in May 2018.
Judge David Worley said the remarkably light sentence was because Spejcher had ‘experienced a psychotic break from reality.’
The bong left her with ‘no control over her actions,’ he said.
She will spend the 100 hours educating others on pot-induced psychosis and two years on probation.
She’s promised to spend the rest of her life debunking the myth that cannabis is harmless.
In her closing statement, Spejcher said she wished she ‘had known more about the dangers of marijuana.’
‘I would never have smoked it that night or at all,’ she said.
Spejcher, an audiologist from Chicago, met O’Melia at a dog park in Thousand Oaks, and they began dating.
On the night in question, she arrived at his condo at around 10.30pm.
Caught in the crossfire was Spejcher’s adored husky Arya who suffered multiple stab wounds but survived, only to be hit by a car and killed months later
Anti-cannabis campaigner Kevin Sabet blames the multi-billion dollar weed industry for the tragedy that left O’Melia dead
O’Melia was a regular weed user. They went out to his patio at around midnight to smoke pot from his bong, a device that uses water to filter and cool the smoke.
Spejcher testified that she only felt ‘burning and coughing’ from her first hit.
She did not want to take the second hit, 15 minutes later, but O’Melia pressured her, she says.
She began to feel unwell and ran to the bathroom to vomit, before lying on the couch.
Then came a series of disturbing psychiatric symptoms — seeing and hearing ‘things that weren’t there,’ ‘feeling like I was a dead body’ and seeing her corpse ‘from up above,’ she said.
Her hands, which she used to grab the bread knife that pierced O’Melia’s abdomen, she saw as someone else’s ‘like in a movie.’
She continued to stab O’Melia, followed by her beloved dog Arya, and then herself in the neck.
Workers trim cannabis flowers at Glass House Brands trimming facility near Camarillo, California, part of a booming $30 billion-a-year industry
She only stopped when police arrived at the scene and hit her nine times with a baton.
During the ferocious attack, Spejcher recalled hearing voices saying things like, ‘keep going, don’t stop, you’re almost there, you can do this.’
She claims to not remember anything beyond this point — until she woke up in hospital having undergone surgery to repair catastrophic stab wounds to her face and neck, several hours later.
Arya suffered multiple stab wounds but survived, only to be hit by a car and killed months later.
Dr Kris Mohandie, forensic psychiatrist and expert witness, told jurors that the manic episode was a case of ‘psychosis.’
She had ‘lost touch’ with reality after taking cannabis, he said.
The frenzied stabbing has revived a debate about the dangers of a drug that’s ever easier to obtain.
Two dozen teens discuss cannabis, school and stress at a groups session in Charlestown, Maryland
Even some conservative-leaning states are among those to permit recreational adult weed use
Ohioans in November voted to become the 24th US state to legalize marijuana use for those aged at least 21 years.
With Ohio, 53 percent of the US population now live in a legal weed jurisdiction.
It’s still illegal under federal law, but that could change too.
The Drug Enforcement Administration says it’s ‘conducting its review’ about softening federal regulation of weed under the Controlled Substances Act.
It may be downgraded from Schedule I, where it’s classed as a high-risk substance alongside heroin and LSD.
Public attitudes are shifting fast. Gallup polling shows that an overwhelming seven in 10 Americans now say pot should be legal.
At the turn of the century, less than a third of Americans felt that way.
Cannabis advocates say it has health and social benefits and that making it illegal does little to stop consumption and only leads to high levels of pointless incarceration, often of young black men.
The results of this alleged driving-while-stoned crash in Hempstead, New York, caused the deaths of four people
US attitudes toward cannabis have changed beyond recognition in just a few decades
But critics say widespread use leads to higher rates of mental health problems, substance abuse — especially among teens and young adults — and even more stoned drivers on the roads, causing car crashes.
Millions more Americans got hooked on marijuana in 2022 and some 100,000 teenagers tried it for the first time, official data show.
The number of teens and adults suffering from cannabis use disorder jumped 14 percent to 19 million, says a National Survey on Drug Use and Health survey released in November.
New York City teachers say they’re battling a surge in students who turn up at high school stoned.
Incidents involving illegal drugs, drug paraphernalia, and alcohol in the city’s schools shot up 17 percent in the year until September 2023.
Officials pointed to the more than 2,000 unlicensed dispensaries that sprang up across the city since legalization in 2021.
Critics say the bright candy-like packaging of these gummies attracts children by design
Children increasingly end up in hospital after mistakenly popping a parents’ THC gummy
They sell strains of cannabis three times stronger than those on the illicit market 25 years ago.
Weed is also making the roads more dangerous.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says the number of car crash injuries rose nearly six percent in states that legalize recreational cannabis use.
Another recent study found that the number of young kids who ate marijuana-laced candy rose sharply in the US over five years, putting many in hospital.
Between 2017 and 2021, US poison control centers witnessed a 14-fold increase in calls about youngsters who got their hands on cannabis edibles, according to a 2023 study in the journal Pediatrics.
Though many of the children experienced only minor symptoms, like excessive sleepiness, researchers said nearly a quarter ended up in hospital and warned about the emergence of a new household safety hazard.
Still, America is not on a one-way street to legalization.
Voters don’t approve every ballot measures, as was the case recently in conservative Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Voters in Florida, Idaho, Nebraska could have their say in ballot measures in November.
In Oregon, lawmakers have been forced into an embarrassing U-turn in drugs policy.
The state became the first in the country to decriminalize the possession of all drugs including heroin and cocaine in 2020.
Now, they’re moving to re-criminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs in the face of rampant public drug use and overdose-related deaths more than tripling.
According to Sabet, it’s clear that breakneck legalization of drugs has failed.
Lawmakers need to start getting serious with Big Weed and protect children and young people from its super-strength products.
States that allow weed need to slap ‘strict potency caps’ on products, monitor the industry and make the public aware of the dangers, he said.
‘High-potency commercial marijuana and THC drugs simply aren’t safe,’ he added.
America’s $30 billion legalized cannabis industry is causing an ‘explosion’ of teen users
Teenagers in states that have legalized cannabis use more of it and are lured by colorfully-packaged candy-like products that leave them vulnerable to higher rates of dependency, psychosis and school dropouts, researchers warn.
A DailyMail.com analysis of research focusing on California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and other states that have legalized recreational pot shows experts warning of a ‘potential explosion’ of under-aged use — and more youngsters using it than in states where it’s illegal.
Renee Goodwin, a psychiatric and substance use epidemiologist who leads Columbia University’s research, says teen cannabis use grows faster after legalization
They are alarmed by the weak oversight of a $30 billion business and warn of a free-for-all market in which super-strength cannabis products are sold in cartoon-covered packaging that attracts youngsters, even as tobacco and alcohol firms are barred from targeting youths.
Data from the states that have permitted recreational pot this past decade, as well as others that permit medical use, indicates that teens and young adults there are using stronger products more often.
Not every teen who eats a pot gummy sees their life unravel. But they are more prone to addiction and dependency than adults, and greater availability and use means more cases of anxiety, depression, psychosis and even suicide.
‘Cannabis use is more common among youth and adults in states where cannabis use is legal for recreational use,’ Renee Goodwin, who leads Columbia University’s research, told DailyMail.com.
‘Legalization has moved from a social justice issue, to the other extreme of big business commercialization without any of the same restrictions that tobacco and alcohol now need to follow.’
Mary Maas, 57, from Washington, which legalized weed in 2012, told DailyMail.com how her son Adam, 26, spiraled into a devastating addiction to super-strength pot products worlds apart from the ‘Woodstock weed’ she recalls from the 1960s.
Now, she looks at the potent oils, vapes, dabs, drinks and gummies sold at a growing number of dispensaries, as well as the down-and-outs living in tents under Seattle’s I-5 highway, and urges other states to heed Washington’s lessons.
‘They’d better watch out,’ she said.
Adam Maas, 26, with his family in Washington. Mom Mary, 57, describes her ‘straight-A student’ getting hooked on super-strength cannabis products and ending up delusional, jobless and sleeping rough in Seattle
