American Thought Leaders

Former New York Times reporter and now independent journalist Alex Berenson is the author of “Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence.”

In this episode, we dive into the debate around cannabis and THC and President Donald Trump’s recent executive order directing the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug.

Berenson argues that it’s a bad move. Schedule I substances are defined as having high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. Schedule III substances, in contrast, have medical uses and are regarded as having only moderate to low potential for abuse.

Rescheduling marijuana sends the wrong signal, Berenson says: “Do we want to be a society that, in general, encourages drug use?”

He believes the use of drugs should be stigmatized, including the use of marijuana: “In the U.S. we can’t stigmatize. And not to stigmatize in this case, as in so many cases, means we can’t be honest.”

In my interview with Berenson, he provides an overview of the dangers of marijuana use and why these have increased dramatically over the last half-century.

“Fifty years ago, cannabis that was in a joint that you smoked at Woodstock ... that might have been 1 or 2 percent THC, so a few milligrams of cannabis in a joint. ... When I was growing up in the ‘80s or in the ’90s, it might have been 5 percent THC. Now, if you go into a dispensary ... the bud tender will sell you a product that is 20 percent to 30 percent THC, if it’s flower cannabis,” he said.

And if it’s not smoked but vaped, then “that might be 95 percent THC. This is not a plant at all. It’s just a chemical to get you high,” Berenson said. “Now you can walk around with this little device and inhale massive amounts of THC, and that really is a change that has made the product a lot more dangerous.”

There is also a well-established link, Berenson says, between high-potency, frequent marijuana use, and severe mental health impacts such as psychosis and schizophrenia.

There’s even research suggesting THC causes heart damage. “There is a link to myocardial infarction, heart attacks, and that link is pretty strong. You can find papers that show a 3x increase over a multi-year period,” he said.

But what about its benefits as a pain reliever? Berenson said that he was surprised to discover that placebo-controlled studies showed only small and short-term pain relief effects.

“What cannabis and THC are really good at is enhancing sensation ... but if you’re in pain, in the long run, enhancing sensation actually is not a good thing for you. ... And so the idea that cannabis is a substitute or a way out of our opioid problem is just not true,” Berenson said.

“We as a society have to ... be honest with ourselves about what we are doing and what we are encouraging kids to do,” he said.

In our wide-ranging interview, we also discuss the overprescription crisis in America, the dangers of SSRIs, psychedelics, and stimulants such as Adderall that around 10 percent of teenage boys are taking in the United States, and his thoughts on vaccine policy in America.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

At age 12, Chloe Cole began identifying as male and started socially transitioning. Soon after, she was put on puberty blockers. Testosterone injections followed at age 13, and she underwent a double mastectomy at 15.

Shortly after the surgery, she realized that it had all been a terrible mistake: “I didn’t believe that I was a boy ... until that idea was put in my head.”

When she decided to detransition, the community that once eagerly encouraged her to transition into a boy treated her like she was “subhuman,” she says.

“The moment that I detransitioned, I was human garbage to them,” she says.

Now she has become one of the most vocal critics of what’s been dubbed “gender-affirming care” for minors.

Under the Trump administration, several measures have been put in place to end the medical transitioning of minors: In January, President Donald Trump issued the executive order “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”

Earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposed a new rule that prohibits hospitals that perform “sex-rejecting” procedures on minors from participation in Medicare and Medicaid Programs. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently spoke out against such procedures for minors and described them as medical malpractice.

And days ago, the House of Representatives voted to pass a bill that could imprison health care providers for providing these procedures to minors.

Cole, who is 21 years old today, supports such measures to put an end to medical transitioning of minors, but she’s convinced that this is not enough: “This doesn’t end with bans. We have to go all out and hold everybody who was involved accountable.”

And that’s what she’s doing: Cole filed a high-profile lawsuit in California against her healthcare provider, Kaiser Permanente, as well as her surgeon, endocrinologist, and the psychologist who referred her to surgery, alleging medical negligence, lack of informed consent, and fraud in placing her on puberty blockers, testosterone, and performing a double mastectomy.

Her legal team, among them Dhillon Law Group and the Center for American Liberty, has added punitive damages claims, presenting her case as a test of whether “gender-affirming” treatment for minors will be treated as malpractice in U.S. courts.

“It’s something that has to be illegalized on both the state and federal level, so that no child ever is going to be hurt ever again,” she said, adding, “We have to go after the manufacturers or the drugs of the medical devices that they are giving to children.”

Since 2022, Chloe has testified before multiple state legislatures. She also testified in the 2023 U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing titled “The Dangers and Due Process Violations of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Children.”

“Testimonies of people like me, who come out of it, who speak to the truth, are so threatening to them, because it completely dismantles their ideology,” she said.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.