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(Listen to Aubree Adams’s full story and discussion with Newell)
“International cartels moved into our neighborhoods. Law enforcement was completely overloaded. We went from having maybe 3 or 4 marijuana busts the ten years prior to legalization to, in 2016, I think it was 127. We had marijuana cartels from China, Cuba, and Argentina. I had to pinch myself some days, like Did this really happen?’”
The quote you just read comes from my Wednesday interview with Aubree Adams, resident of Pueblo, Colorado and Director of Every Brain Matters. The organization, according to its website, is a “non-profit organization developed by families negatively impacted by commercial marijuana.”
Earlier this week, I reviewed an article that came out in the Wall Street Journal about the devastating effects of the legal marijuana industry in Pueblo, Colorado.
There was some pushback to my speaking out on the subject.
But I wanted to continue this conversation because regardless of where you live, this issue matters. Marijuana legalization continuously makes its way to the ballot, even in states that continuously reject legalization.
While the issue certainly has its staunch supporters, it also has staunch opposition, Adams being among the latter.
Adams minces no words. She opposes the legalization of marijuana, strictly based on the witness she bore on how it devastated her community and family. She claims that the descent of the marijuana industry on her town was swift, reckless, and treated the citizens of the town like test subjects.
Adams explains, “Pueblo was a beautiful faith community prior to marijuana legalization. My husband and I had a wonderful time raising our sons here….When marijuana legalization hit, it flipped our lives upside down, literally overnight.”
Aubree Adams explains how ‘pot migrants’ descended on the city.
By migrants, she isn’t specifically talking about people from other countries. Rather, the term describes people who moved to Pueblo for the sole purpose of being near the budding marijuana industry. Many were homeless, and while she states the community does its best to take care of those in need, the town was simply overrun. They weren’t ready for the number of people.
First, it hit the community. Then, her household.
Adams explains that not long after legalization, one of her sons started smoking dabs, which is oil or resin that contains an extremely high concentration of THC.
Her son started exhibiting strange behavior, but he wasn’t up front as to why.
Aubrey explains, “My son’s behavior started to change. We didn’t know he was using marijuana at first, but he got to the point where he was paranoid, irrational, and acting delusional.”
Then came a devastating day.
“He tried to take his life,” says Adams. “When we had him in the ER, we were inconsolable. He was laughing like a jackal…We were in a situation that we didn’t understand. He was held in a psychiatric unit, then released, but still suicidal. Police had to come get him and take him back.”
After a second trip to the psych ward, he finally admitted to using dabs. As a mother, Adams was furious at how her son, so young, could have such free access to these harmful drugs. After looking into it, she discovered he had access to them at school, at many of his friend’s houses, and throughout the neighborhood. In the span of a couple of years, the community went from virtually nothing to a pervasive marijuana problem.
“He developed the pediatric disease of addiction,” Adams says. “And he did move onto meth and herion for a short period. But he kept relapsing back to marijuana. Marijuana alone was enough to destroy his brain.”
Throughout this period, the family had to continuously have the police intervene at their house because, as Adams says, “He was in a cannabis induced psychosis.”
“The marijuana movement is very well funded,” Adams explains. “I knew this community embraced marijuana, not the health and safety of our children, so I took my son to Houston, where he went to a recovery high school and a recovery community.”
He managed to achieve 3 years of sobriety while in Texas. But after the passing of the 2018 Farm Bill, synthetic THC was legalized in Texas, and he relapsed shortly after. Fighting back tears, she explained that at this point, she went two years without seeing her son.
I urge readers to check out the full interview above and, regardless of your stance on the plant, hear Adams’s powerful story as it relates to understanding how this new era of industrialized weed is different and more dangerous than it used to be even ten years ago.
“}]] Director of Every Brain Matters discusses the implications of legalized marijuana with Newell Normand, along with the heartbreaking story of her son who developed a pediatric addiction to high-concentrate THC – Hear full interview. Read More
