When Maureen Dowd bit into a marijuana candy bar in Denver back in 2014, she expected a mellow buzz. What she got instead was a terrifying encounter with high-potency cannabis that nearly broke her mind. An hour after eating the edible, the New York Times columnist was convinced she’d died. Her experience, marked by violent shuddering, confusion, and suffocating paranoia, seemed like an overreaction at the time. Social media had a field day. Another clueless Boomer who couldn’t handle her high, they said.

Nobody’s laughing now.

Twenty-three states and Washington DC have legalised cannabis since Colorado opened the floodgates. The industry promised a harmless product, something akin to the gentle weed of the 1970s, the Cheech and Chong variety that made you giggly, sleepy, and hungry for crisps. What we’ve got instead is something altogether different, and the consequences are playing out in emergency rooms, psychiatric wards, and crime scenes across America.

The Transformation Of Marijuana Into High-Potency Cannabis

Kevin Sabet has been sounding the alarm for years. The former drug adviser to three presidents, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, has watched high-potency cannabis transform from a niche product into an industrial behemoth. Some concentrates now contain near-pure levels of THC, the plant’s primary psychoactive compound. It’s a far cry from the 5% THC products of decades past.

“We’re turning a drug that used to make people pass out for a few hours and eat Cheetos into one that triggers psycho killers,” Sabet says. He knows how extreme that sounds. The 1936 propaganda film Reefer Madness became a punchline precisely because it exaggerated marijuana’s dangers. But Sabet points to a pattern that’s hard to ignore: look at almost any mass shooting in America, and you’ll find common denominators. One of them is strong marijuana.

Robert Westman’s case illustrates the danger with chilling clarity. Last August, the 23-year-old murdered two children and wounded 30 people at a Minnesota Catholic school. In his diaries, Westman, who both used marijuana and worked at a dispensary, blamed the drug for his violent tendencies. “Gender and weed fucked up my head,” he wrote. “I wish I never tried experimenting with either.”

How Strong Marijuana Links To Violence And Psychosis

Research is catching up to what people like Westman discovered too late. A 2025 study in the East Asian Archives of Psychiatry found a definite and growing link between US mass-shooting perpetrators and cannabis involvement. Younger perpetrators proved more likely to be connected with marijuana use, possession, or distribution. The researchers concluded that high-potency cannabis proves particularly harmful to vulnerable individuals prone to violent eruptions.

Even users who don’t commit atrocities face serious risks. A 2019 study in Lancet Psychiatry found that daily use of strong varieties significantly increases psychosis risk. King’s College London summarised the findings: in cities where potent cannabis is widely available, London and Amsterdam among them, a significant proportion of new psychosis cases link directly to daily use.

The mental health crisis has become impossible to ignore. The Guardian, which previously downplayed concerns, now regularly publishes warnings about marijuana’s adverse health effects. Recent findings show it doubles the risk of heart death. The newspaper recently profiled a pioneering London clinic dedicated entirely to treating cannabis-induced psychosis, a condition that goes far beyond typical “bad trips,” shattering minds and driving users to suicide.

Fighting Big Marijuana’s Political Influence

“We’re dealing with a fundamentally different drug,” Sabet explains, “that has been genetically modified and bred by a powerful industry that we’re now sanctioning and encouraging.” Despite bipartisan opposition from a pro-marijuana lobby led by figures like former Republican House speaker John Boehner, Sabet’s calls for limits have begun breaking through.

His most notable campaign targeted President Trump’s administration, urging them not to remove cannabis from Schedule I, the federal government’s most serious drug classification. Reclassification wouldn’t mean federal legalisation, but it would grant the drug a false stamp of safety whilst allowing Big Marijuana to enjoy tax deductions currently denied to them.

The campaign appears to have worked, at least for now. “This isn’t a priority for the president,” Sabet reports. “But there are lobbyists and maybe friends of his son-in-law and others in the business” who would benefit from rescheduling. The fight isn’t over.

An Unlikely Drug Warrior Emerges

Sabet’s journey to this fight began in an unusual place. Born in the Midwest to a Bahai family that fled Iran before the 1979 revolution, he grew up in a household where nobody even drank alcohol. The Bahai religion preaches total abstinence. When he moved to Orange County as a teenager, the culture shock hit hard.

At UC Berkeley in the mid-1990s, he witnessed what he describes as a “mini-epidemic” during the rave culture boom, linked to ecstasy use. As a student, he’d visit clubs handing out postcards showing scans of drug-damaged brains, with helpline numbers on the reverse. His activism caught the attention of Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton’s drug czar, who offered him a speechwriting position.

After earning his master’s degree at Oxford, the White House called again. George W Bush’s administration wanted him. “We want you to serve your country,” they said. “We know you’re not a Republican, but we also know you’re not a Democrat, and that’s fine with us.” The Obama administration later tapped him as senior drug-policy adviser.

During that time, marijuana legalisation transformed from fantasy into serious business. Sabet published Reefer Sanity to challenge the mythology surrounding cannabis, then founded Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), now Washington’s most visible drug-policy organisation.

Why High-Potency Cannabis Deserves Special Attention

Why focus on cannabis when fentanyl and heroin kill more people? “It’s the most dangerous drug in my mind because it’s the most misunderstood,” Sabet answers. There was a time when young people could experiment with marijuana during the transition to adulthood. “The marijuana of today is doing the opposite,” potentially derailing lives permanently. “It’s causing violence, it’s causing erratic people to lose any sense of reality.”

The addiction question remains contentious, despite mounting evidence. After one speech, an audience member told Sabet: “I use it every day, Kevin, and I’m qualified to tell you it’s not addictive.” The numbers tell a different story. Regular cannabis use has now outpaced drinking, with 18 million Americans reporting daily use, up from fewer than one million in the 1990s. That’s an 1,700% increase in just three decades.

Diagnoses of cannabis-use disorder have exploded. One in three users suffers from it, an insatiable craving that prevents them fulfilling ordinary responsibilities. Symptoms range from mild to severe, but the impact on lives is undeniable.

The False Comparison With Alcohol And Tobacco

Critics ask why Sabet doesn’t campaign against alcohol or tobacco with equal vigour. His answer centres on cultural and pharmacological differences. Alcohol has been ingrained in Western civilisation since biblical times, and for most people, it leaves the body within 24 hours. High-potency cannabis lingers far longer at a cellular level.

“That’s like saying my headlights are broken, and just to be consistent, I’m going to break my tail lights, too,” he says of the comparison.

As for tobacco: “Ninety percent of the people who built the Brooklyn Bridge were smokers. They could function. Maybe it even made them concentrate better.” Lung-cancer deaths were almost unheard of before the 1920s. Only with the rise of the cigarette industry did the smoking crisis emerge. The same pattern is repeating with industrial cannabis, he argues. Growers chase ever-higher THC yields whilst mental health consequences mount. Big Tobacco, eyeing declining cigarette sales, is preparing to enter the market.

Solutions Beyond Restriction For High-Potency Cannabis

Beyond restriction, a cause already lost in half of US states, Sabet identifies a deeper problem: “moral and spiritual breakdown.” Drugs offer too-easy answers to the search for meaning, or else numb the pain of modern life. Still, societies can erect guardrails, such as restricting strong marijuana advertising targeting young people.

For those already trapped, Sabet advocates behavioural incentive systems: programmes offering cash rewards for abstinence, or choices between imprisonment and rehabilitation.

“I’m calling for a new effort on drugs,” he says, aware of the stigma attached to the War on Drugs. “I don’t love the war analogy because wars have defined ends, or they should. This will never stop. We will never stop having to prevent drug use among young generations.”

He embraces aiming for a drug-free society, even knowing it may never be fully achieved. “We’ve never had a violence-free society, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to aim for that.”

The gentle marijuana of Cheech and Chong is gone. What’s replaced it, an industrial product designed to maximise THC content and profits, demands our urgent attention. Dowd’s terrifying experience in Denver was an early warning. The question now is whether we’ll heed it before more lives are shattered.

Source: unherd