Just for fun, next time you’re getting bamboozled by Google, punch in a search on “quotes on the harms of marijuana.”

You won’t find any. 

 If one didn’t know better, one would swear that some folks have an interest in manipulating the masses. 

 You know, sort of like those 50 former intelligence agency folks who swore that the emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop were a Russian disinformation campaign.

They were wrong, and never held accountable, but their duping assertion went a long way to securing The Big Man’s election and debilitating impact.

We’re getting conned today, too. This time it’s the pretense that marijuana is nature’s drug version of an organic spinach smoothie.

Sorry to break it to Drug City USA – Asheville – and surrounding communities, but that’s a lot of organic fertilizer.

Similar in silliness to state “tax on the stupid” lottery programs, marijuana has become this century’s latest and greatest effort to broadly downgrade our culture.

Sales pitches include notions such as (1) it can be regulated (2) it’s a natural herb with reliable health support properties (3) it’s a safe intoxicant (4) it will be a great revenue source for local and state governments and (5) it does not lead to maladaptive behaviors.

None of those things have proven true, but in today’s culture of illusion, when is truth a priority?

In the interest of irritating weed advocates, mind if I introduce 10 things that are true about marijuana?

• Anything that makes you feel good is addictive — Anything that makes you feel extra good is extra addictive. Marijuana is a highly psychologically addictive substance precisely because its short-term comfort impact is so dramatic. 

• Weed with a capital “W” — Today’s marijuana has been enhanced, modified, tweaked, and – irony of all ironies – bio-engineered light-years beyond anything Mother Nature created. It is super-charged and thus super-attractive.

• No state that has attempted to regulate marijuana has succeeded — Illegal sources grow in legal states at an exponential rate and no state has been able to intercept that equation of confusion. 

• Medicinal use of marijuana is on a popularity vs. reality tour — Unfortunately, like most short-cuts around the real world, assumptions of positive weed impact are based on spotty and often corrupted research. The standard for medicinal — as in scientific — application of any drug is derived from randomized controlled trials. In the case of cannabis-based medicinal products, such research in studies involving sufficient numbers, methodologies, and duration is non-existence. A similar “science is real” manipulation was used in selling the COVID-19 shot.

• Per the CDC, approximately three in 10 people who use marijuana have marijuana-use disorder — This is roughly twice the number of people who use alcohol and subsequently become alcoholics. Tolerance, paranoia, malaise, fragmented judgment and sleep disturbance are some of the signs of marijuana-use disorder. Spoiler Alert: Alcohol use allows for, and most often encourages, a measured and incremental “high” — importantly with marijuana use, full-on intoxication is the standard. 

• The adolescent and young-adult brain are highly vulnerable to the chemical mysteries of marijuana — THC, etc., in routine doses does two dangerous things to a developing brain (1) scrambles how it is fired and thus how it eventually is wired and (2) impairs the challenging development of internal coping methodologies. Unlike alcohol, marijuana not only impacts our grey matter, it camps out in our white matter. White brain matter matters – big time.

• Fentanyl-related overdoses testify to the dose difficulties associated with marijuana products — Whether ingested through smoke, THC concentrates, vape devices, liquor or food form, marijuana applications are fraught with inconsistencies in quality and quantity of impact. In the absence of certainty, for most people, “too much is better than too little” is a predictable marijuana ingestion strategy.

 â€¢ Routine marijuana use may or may not create a gateway to other drugs — But prudent students of the brain know that things that feel good – like good food or most recreational drugs – create a desire for more varieties of the same things.

 â€¢ Remember when prescription opiates were touted by MD’s/big pharma as “safe, effective and non-addictive” — Marijuana advocacy is another version of the same kind of disguised pretense funded by wealthy cultural predators – think George Soros – with a wealth of hidden “ain’t good” agendas.

• Higher numbers of people use marijuana in America than use tobacco products — Those noting the widely-recognized addictive nature of the latter might perhaps take note of the equally hidden and similarly manipulated power of the former.

Here’s the rub.

In every moment of life, we get a clear choice — comfort or growth?

We can’t have both at the same time.

Sure, both matter, but over the course of time our investment in growth pays dividends in achievement, safety, learning, health, opportunity, impact and contribution, while our investment in comfort produces mostly more interest in comfort.

Marijuana is 99 percent about comfort.