News story about a recreational marijuana business that has opened in Fresno, but just
across the border from Clovis, storing the Fresno b the popular cannabis brand,
a popular cannabis brand which actually I don't even know that I want to like
say the name of the cannabis brand. I don't want to like give them
business. Anyway, A noteworthy cannabis business has opened up a flagship store in
a strip mall just off of Willow Avenue, across the street from Clovis city
limits. Now, the story goes on to talk about how basically it's right
across the street from Clovis, but Clovis still does not allow recreational marijuana storefronts.
And this was the way, this was the way a sort of California
law was set up with regard to legal marijuana sales. That basically, yes,
recreational marijuana was legalized in the state, but it's on a city by
city basis for allowing dispensaries, so licensed approved dispensaries storefronts to sell marijuana and
how many to allow, and that is left at the level of city government.
Clovis up to this point has not allowed storefronts for the sale of marijuana.
And I think that's good. I think the marijuana debate in California was
one basically because one side stood to make hundreds of gazillions of dollars through the
legalization of marijuana, and they were able to pitch California law makers on,
hey, it's a source of revenue for state coffers where you don't have to
compulsorily increase taxes on people. It's a tax on a completely voluntary product that
nobody needs to buy, so you can tax and it will be a source
of revenue for state government and for local governments. The side opposing it had
not much beyond a sense of Christian virtue. All they could say was,
hey, this is bad for people. It's societally bad. It leads to
more dys it leads to young people getting introduced to drugs at younger and younger
ages. It's going to lead to more kids using marijuana. Here's all the
bad effects marijuana has. But because the other side had all the money,
they were able to produce survey after survey after survey trying to argue all the
impacts aren't that bad, It's not that bad for you long term. Here's
all the ways, it's not that bad. But now as we get more
and more research into marijuana, we're seeing that the legalization of marijuana has been
a disaster in a lot of ways. Last year, the Biden Department of
Health and Human Services formally recommended moving weed to for Schedule one classification. Okay,
However, NBC had this big report about marijuana and the increase in teenager
psychosis as a result that basically the toxicity levels of marijuana that is sold today,
I mean, the stuff that's being sold today is I guess pure and
more potent as far as its THHC levels then the dubes your grandpa was smoking
at woodstock. Okay. A growing number of studies are linking heavyweed use with
depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. High doses of cannabis can lead to
psychosis and even lifelong psychiatric disorders. There's more and more data about increases in
DUIs as a result of marijuana. There's more and more data about all the
different harms individually and societally that legalized recreational marijuana has and everyone sort of blew
by it. Why because one side had all the money and had not just
all the money that they stood to make, but also all the money with
which they could tempt state government and local governments, and they could peddle some
sort of blowney libertarian arguments. So well, you know, people, adults
will make their own decisions, so why not why not just let them and
then we'll just ask them for it. So regardless, this is how marijuana
got legalized. But this is the other. But this is the thing that
I find interesting. Okay, So this particular cannabis storefront that's opening in again
right near Clovis, not in Clovis city limits, in Fresno city limits.
I'll say the name whatever I have to do it if I'm going to do
this story, right, So it's this brand called Stizzy I think s t
iii z y. Now the Fresno B story describing it as a piece by
Joshua tih in the Fresno B I think that's how you pronounce his name.
Steeze or Stizzy is one of the best known vertically integrated cannabis companies, started
in Los Angeles in twenty seventeen. That is to say, by vertically integrated,
what the heck does that mean? It operates across all aspects of the
industry, offering its products, notably vapes and battery systems, both in its
own flagship stores and at other dispensaries. So it's this entity that makes marijuana
products, but it also runs its own stores. So an industry report last
year Held said that nearly fifty percent of the state's vape consumers have bought Stizzy
products, with more than ninety percent saying they do it. Again, this
belies another idiotic argument that was always being made about legalized marijuana. Oh,
this was to help you know, mom and pop businesses open a mom and
pop small business owners to open up mom and pops small business cannabis farms and
cannabis storefronts. This is about promoting local business. And then, even more
absurdly, to try to argue this is about helping to promote you know,
minority owned business ventures. We need equity in the marri legalized marijuana dispensary industry,
and trying to argue that any of this was about promoting small businesses and
promoting like ACTI even like you know, promoting black owned businesses and blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah. All right, again, though, how did
marijuana get legalized? Let me repeat why. It was because one side stood
to make hundreds of gazillions of dollars getting in on the ground floor of a
brand new, lead legal weed industry in the state of California. And you
had venture capitalists seeing this opportunity and saying, yeah, I'll pay five hundred
thousand dollars for lobbyists this year if it means or however, many gazillions of
dollars for lobbyists this year, if it means I can make one hundred gazillion
dollars on the back end as a result of their lobbying. They're lobbying lawmakers
to get legalized. Recreational marijuana is an investment for me to make a gazillion
dollars off of things like vertically integrated businesses that are making money hand over fist,
not just with their own storefronts, has a big chain of these marijuana
dispensaries, but also selling products all up and down the place. I'm sure
there are big businesses who run the farms who do this. Do that.
This is not like California. You take almost any liberal cause that is painted
with this, that has this all truistic facade, and you scratch it,
and what do you find? You find some person making money hand over fist.
You look at the transgender ideology, scratch that, you know, altruistic
sad just a little bit. And what do you find? You find doctors,
hospital systems making money hand over fist, doing expensive gender transition processes,
expensive hormonal treatments, expensive surgeries. You scratch the abortion industry a little bit.
What do you find? You find people making a lot of money doing
abortions. Weed is the same thing. That's the whole point of this.
That's what's driving this bus. It's what's driving this bus. And I believe
it's what's been driving the research. If I mean, I think that's obviously
been driving the research. All the research that's favorable to marijuana gets heightened,
gets accentuated. Why because the people who stand to make a lot of money
selling weed accentuate it, heighten it. So yeah, of course, So
like we have this glowing article from the Fresno b about, oh wow,
this is such an interesting integrated business. Yeah, yeah, very interesting how
all of a sudden legalized marijuana has led to the development of massive corporate entities
making money hand over fist off of people who make poor decisions. And this
is the thing I hate about twenty first century governance in America is how state
governments and local governments are so desperate for some source of tax revenue without having
to increase taxes on people, that they're going to turn to any source they
can. And basically the main source they turn to is taxing people who make
really poor life decisions. That's what they've turned to. Let's legalize this terrible
decision, a lifelong weed addiction, and let's have the state make money off
of someone will incentivize people to make these poor decisions, and then we will
profit off of it. Let's incentivize people to gamble more, to give them
more opportunities for legal gambling, so that we can take advantage of their bad
mathematical decisions and make more money by taxing, you know, gambling earnings by
casinos. So and you see that state governments all over the place, there
are more and more and more and more casinos being built all over the United
States of America, all these different states legalizing gambling more and more and more
and more, all these different states legalizing weed more and more and more and
more I mean, one of the things that astonished me was a recent stat
I saw that the amount of money Americans spend on lottery tickets is more than
the amount of money they spend going to the movies, which is which really
kind of made me think, Wow, I am a pretty sheltered person,
given that I have never spent a single red scent on lottery tickets in my
life. I've just never I've never even I've never actually bought a lottery ticket.
But that's what these states are doing that this is modern American state governance.
Is we will get revenue, we will capitalize off of people making really
bad math or life or both decisions. So maybe we're fighting this lost cause.
But I commend the city of Clovis for saying, you know what,
no, we don't need pot dispensaries in the city. We just don't need
it. And I hope they also follow that up with cracking down on you
know, vape shops and all that stuff, because a lot of those places
are from what I've been reading, a lot of those places throughout the San
Joaquin Valley are just selling weed illegally out the back. That's the thing.
The legal weed industry has not actually demolished, which was the other grand promise.
The other grand promise will say, oh, well, we can get
the illegal weed industry, and we can. We can completely eliminate the illegal
weed industry. But just taking weed transactions and putting them out in the open.
Nope, there's still a six billion dollar per year illegal weed industry.
Why because potheads often don't want to pay top dollar for weed. They would
rather pay less money, and they're willing to pay for that illegally. When
we return how much marijuana use has increased in the United States and my grand
hopes for my children. That's next on the John Girardi Show. So the
shadow producers of this radio program, this radio program, as well as Right
to Life Radio on Saturdays, are often my wife Holly and my mom,
doctor Sharon, And today Holly messaged this story to me. Daily marijuana use
outpaces daily drinking in the US. A new study says, for the first
time, the number of Americans who use marijuana just about every day has surpassed
the number who drink that often, a shift some forty years in the making.
As recreational pot use became more mainstream and legal in nearly half of US
States in twenty twenty two and estimated seventeen point seven million people reported using marijuana
daily or near daily, compared to fourteen point seven million daily or near daily
drinkers, according to an analysis of national survey data of people who make poor
life choices no just national survey data. In nineteen ninety two, when daily
pot use hit a low, point less than one million people said they used
marijuana nearly every day. Alcohol is still more widely used, but twenty twenty
two was the first time this intensive level of marijuana use overtook daily and near
daily drinking. So the studies author Jonathan Culkins, a cannabis policy researcher at
Carnegie Mellon University Cannabis policy researcher, How do you get that job? Can?
I ask? How can I get an endow chair studying something so niche?
How does one find oneself in that kind of little corner? I guess
I've got an odd little corner of the universe sort of job. I've run
ProLife organization, I do like a daily radio show, and I do you
know, blah blah blah. Yeah, I guess how does anyone wind up
anywhere? Anyway? A good forty percent of current cannabis users are using it
daily or near daily, a pattern that is more associated with tobacco use than
typical alcohol use. Caulkins said, it's almost like cannabis has a addictive habit
forming quality. The research, based on data from the National Survey on Drug
Use and Health, was published Wednesday in the journal Addiction. The survey is
a highly regarded source of self reported estimates of tobacco, alcohol, and drug
use in the United States. From ninety two to twenty twenty two, the
per capita rate of reporting daily or near daily marijuana use increased fifteenfold. Caulkins
acknowledged in the study that people may be more willing to report marijuana use as
public acceptance grows, which could boost the increase. Most states now allow medical
or recreational marijuana, though it remains illegal at the federal level. The November
Florida voters will decide on a constitutional amendment allowing recreational cannabis, and the federal
government is moving to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, all of which
are terrible ideas. That's just me throwing in my opinion on this ap story.
Research shows that high frequency users are more likely to become addicted to marijuana,
said David A. Gorolic. It's a funny way of phrasing it that
if you use marijuana more frequently, you're likely to become addicted. Kind of
feels like a bit of a chicken and egg thing. Don't you think maybe
you become a really frequent user because you are getting addicted to it, or
no, you become addicted to it because you use it so often, says
David Gorolic, a psychiatry professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who
was not involved in the study. The number of daily users suggests that more
people are at risk for developing problematic cannabis use or addiction. Gorlic said high
frequency use also increases the risk of developing cannabis associated psychosis, a severe condition
where a person loses touch with reality. He said, So it seems like
it's basically they are a lot more what this study is telling us, there
are a lot more casual drink recreational drinkers in the United States. That is
to say, people who are not drinking on a daily basis. I probably
average one alcoholic beverage per maybe like one point five alcoholic beverages per week.
I usually have one drink, usually on Sunday, and maybe I don't know,
if I go out to dinner if I usually when I have we usually
have dinner at my mom's house, and usually I have a drink while I'm
there on Sundays. And then maybe if I go out with Holly sometime I'll
get a drink too. So I'm probably averaging about one point two and maybe
and maybe I'll have one weekday where I happen to drink, just have odd
drink at dinner or something. So I probably am averaging about one point two
drinks per week. There's a lot more of that with alcohol than with cannabis.
Basically, so the percentage of cannabis users who are daily users is much
higher than the percentage of alcohol users who are daily alcohol drinkers. So,
of the pool of people who smoke cannabis, who use cannabis at all,
a large percentage of that group are daily habitual users. Of the whole body
of people who drink, it's a relatively small percentage of them who are daily
habitual users. What does this mean, Well, it probably means cannabis is
more likely addictive than alcohol is it's more likely to become a sort of crutch,
addictive, habitual thing. That's what That's what it would seem to indicate
to me. This is not good and this is why, like I am,
I feel as though Biden this is all in the context by the way
that the Biden administration is looking into the possibility of reclassifying marijuana so that it's
no longer a federally in the federal FDA Schedule of Drug regulation, to move
it out of its current schedule so that it's not illegal at the federal level.
I think Biden is doing that for political reasons. I think he wants
young voters to vote for him. He wants pot heads, young, young,
younger marijuana smoking voters to go vote for him. And I do not
think this is a good idea. I reject. I realize, especially in
California, especially among libertarian people, marijuana has gained more and more and more
acceptance. Well, it's never going to gain more and more acceptance on the
old John Girardi Show, guarantee you that. And basically my and my wife's
thought on this whole thing was, you know, we're worried about our kids
and their education, and you know, we're homeschooling, and you know,
we're concerned. We want to make sure that they do well. And my
wife sent me that story, you know, daily pot users out pacing daily
drinkers, and she said, you know what, as long as these kids
can write a paragraph, read and don't smoke pot, they're probably going to
rule the world. And that's a comforting thought. When we return, I'm
going to cover a whole bunch of Catholic stuff next on the John Girardi Show.
All right, there's been a whole bunch of Catholic stuff happening. And
not that I'm the official Catholic commentator for Power Talk or anything like that.
It would not be great if I tried to give myself that label. That
would be a pretty presumptuous thing. That's the problem with the virtue of humility
is that as soon as you think you have it, you've pretty much lost
it. You know what I mean, I think I've done it. I'm
so humble now, Well there it goes kind of feel that way about.
Yeah, well, I'm the best Catholic commentator there is. By virtue of
me saying it, I would immediately become the worst Nonetheless, I kind of,
I guess, follow these things close. So I've got a couple of
Catholic things on the menu here that I sort of wanted to talk about,
and I'm talking about them last, I think, because I guess I wanted
all the hot takes about them to be sort of exhausted first. So the
one is Harrison Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, who gave
the commencement address at Benedictine College, which is a Catholic private school in Atchison,
Atchison, Kansas, so near Kansas City, which is a pretty conservative,
small Catholic college, Catholic liberal arts school, and it's attached to or
near a Benedictine a couple of Benedictine monasteries, so that there's a I think
there's a community of Benedictine monks and a community of Benedictine nuns. So these,
by the way, Benedictin's in case you're wondering what is this Benedictine stuff.
This means monks who follow the rule of life established by Saint Benedict of
Nursia, who is one of the most important figure years in the history of
Europe. Frankly and established the Benedictine style, the Benedictine monastic tradition, so
he established a sort of rule of life for monks to follow. Saint Benedict
himself his years are he was born in the year four eighty and died in
the year five forty seven, and his monks, their pattern of life and
living became foundational for European civilization and the monks. His monks preserved a ton
of what was important and beautiful from the Roman Empire by writing it all down,
by copying it by hand, and everything we have, all of the
written records we have of the ancient world, is due to the fact that
a bunch of busy little beaver Benedictine monks were sitting at desks writing it all
down and preserving record of the Roman Empire and preserving literacy and music and culture
in their monasteries, which dotted the entire landscape of Europe. Anyway, So
Benedictine College founded by Benedictin monks. It's pretty conservative Catholic school, and they
got a pretty conservative Catholic Harrison. Butker is a fairly prominent fellow. He's
a kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs. He's maybe if he's not the best
kicker in the NFL, he's top three. Certainly, it's probably him.
The guy who plays for the Baltimore Ravens. What's his name, Justin Long?
I think this is now that's I can't remember his name. I'll figure
it out anyway. So Harrison Butker, if he's not the best kicker in
the NFL, he's like one of the best. Certainly, I'd say definitely
top two or top three. Justin Tucker is the kicker for the Baltimore Ravens.
There we go. So Butcker gives this commencement address, and during the
commencement address he talks he is basically and this is the thing to I guess
context. He's a twenty eight year old pretty conservative Roman Catholic, and everything
he said was pretty consistent with what twenty eight year old conservative Roman Catholics think.
He was very pro marriage. He said, you really encourage people to
get married, and thought that motherhood is the great you know, the signature,
one of the most important things for a woman's vocation. And the way
he expressed it though he wasn't like saying no woman should ever work outside the
house. But I think it's a sort of thing of you know, there's
I guess in some aspects of Catholic parlance, you've got your vocation and then
your job your vocation and maybe a good way of thinking of it is sort
of who you are. Your job is the thing you do within that context.
So my vocation that I've chosen for myself is married life. I'm a
husband, I'm a father. That is the first thing that I identify as
and that takes priority over everything else, over work. My wife's vocation is
as a mother and within as a mother and a wife, and within that
vocation, there's a lot of ways she can express it, and different families
have different setups, and a lot of those setups are legitimate. If my
wife wanted to work and wanted to do more outside the house, I wouldn't
like stomp on hers, Absolutely not, You're no way. But we would
need to figure out some way to ensure that our children were educated well and
brought up in a good, loving home, et cetera, et cetera.
And the decisions we've made for our lives reflect our beliefs in our obligation,
our prioritizing of our fundamental vocations as father, husband, wife, mother,
over and against other things. All right, So, Butcker gives this speech
in which he's praising marriage, he's praising women, embracing motherhood, and this
is interpreted as Harrison Butcker hates women. Harrison Bucker thinks all women should be
pregnant, barefoot in the kitchen. Harrison Bucker doesn't think any woman should ever
work, which is overblowing what the guy said. Was it the most nuanced
speech in the world. Probably not. He's a kicker. He's a jock.
He's not a you know, he doesn't have a master's degree in philosophy
or something. He's a kicker, and he's a very nice, good decent
young guy. But of course it's a very conservative speech. He's blasting abortion,
blast all this stuff that the Catholic Church is concerned with as far as
social issues. So the NFL issues this statement kind of condemning him. But
to their credit, the two most important guys, maybe two of the most
important guys in the NFL, and certainly the two most important guys on Harrison
Bucker's team, the coach in the quarterback Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes, both
the other day came out with statements saying, no, we love Harrison.
He's a great guy. Yeah, people disagree about stuff, but he's an
awesome guy. He's an awesome character. He's one of the best people we
know. And you know, yeah, they totally back to their guy,
which good for them, and screw the NFL for throwing this guy under the
bus now. So I don't have much all that interesting to say about it,
honestly, Yeah, I thought it was a good speech. I thought
it was I thought it was fine. Was it the most perfectly worded,
most perfectly nuanced way of expressing it? Maybe not, But on the whole,
I thought it was very good. I think the thing that is sending
people into orbit though, and I do think this is true. So he
gives this speech. Just a couple of weeks after, there was this big
AP story about the shifting dynamics of the Catholic Church in the United States that
basically there's been this real winnowing process that's taken place in the United States as
more and more I think what's really happening is is more and more cultural Catholics
so called, are just stopping going to church. There have been a number
of things that have happened that have resulted in a bunch of people that in
mass attendance number attendance numbers at Catholic mass, at Catholic services have been going
down. And that's a real I know for certainly my pastor, and I
know for Bishop Brennan. That's a real source of sorrow to see. COVID
was we had a number of sort of signature events. So the horrible abuse
scandals when they were revealed in the early two thousands and then COVID were these
sort of signature events that were sort of dropping out points, if you will,
for large numbers of American Catholics. And what's basically happening is the church
is becoming smaller, but it's becoming more and more conservative, and maybe conservative
is too freighted with political ideology. I would say the church is becoming smaller
and much more faithful. There are a lot fewer active Catholics who would identify
as like liberal Catholics, a lot fewer. If you go to your average
Mass on Sunday nowadays, the majority of every the vast majority of everyone there
agrees that abortion is wrong, agrees largely not perfectly, with a lot of
the teachings of the with a lot of the more controversial social issues where the
Catholic Church has staked out its position over recent decades. And I think this
sort of shows what's going on. Here's Harrison Butker giving this speech. This
twenty eight year old young Catholic husband and father, successful individual. I think
he is much more representative of the emerging face of American Catholicism than many of
his critics. One of the notable critiques of Harrison Butker came from the group
of Benedictine nuns who live in Atchinson, Kansas, near the monaster near Benedictine
College where Butcker gave this commencement addressed. So a lot of communities of nuns
were infected with a lot of sort of feminist and extremely liberal ideology in the
sixties and seventies and eighties, and those communities of nuns are quite literally dying
off. They they're these communities of nuns who they refuse to continue wearing habits.
They refuse, They more and more and more rejected the common life of
prayer in many cases. I don't know this particular community of nuns and almost
started seeing their work more as social workers rather than what nuns historically were.
They were sort of the female counterpart of nuns. Their work was praying in
common and for more active communities, serving the poor, and living a common
life of prayer together. More and more, almost certain communities of more liberal
nuns just sort of thought of themselves as social workers, free floating social workers.
And you look at this community. We have nuns in Atchinson. They're
all extremely elderly, extremely liberal. They're all criticizing Butcker. But they haven't
had a new entry. Their community is dying out. Everyone in their communities
in their seventies. They haven't had a new entrant, a new postulance,
or novices or anything into their community seemingly for years. They are literally dying
out. Meanwhile, all of the really conservative communities, most of anyway,
the growing communities of nuns in the United States, the communities of nuns that
actually wear the habit and continue the traditional Catholic practices of common prayer together and
common service to the poor, rooted in a common prayer life, those communities
are booming. Those communities are busting at the seams. That's where all the
growth is. That's where all the communities of nuns where the average age is
like twenty eight. Those are all the really conservative communities. That's I think
what's significant about Butcker's speech. It is much more represent of the emerging face
of American Catholicism than all of its critics, and I think it's what has
led to all of the critics of what Bucker said being more and more strident
and angry because they realize their time is over. To close off the show
when we return, the Pope gave an interview to sixty Minutes and said a
couple of a whole bunch of different things. We'll talk about it real quick
on the next segment. This is the John Gerardy Show, so slogging through
all the Catholic news. The Pope gave a big interview to sixty Minutes in
which he said a number of different things and let me see if I can
kind of go through them here. He said a couple of things about immigration
that I thought were actually kind of interesting. Basically said yeah, you need
to be accommodating to immigrants. But at the end of it he sort of
came around again and basically saying that you know, yeah, you the countries
can enforce their borders, they should be welcoming to immigrants. So it's sort
of like he has to kind of he not that he has to, he
does sort of a firm basic reality of the kind of basic reality that I
think American liberals refused to accept. He also very bluntly said that women will
never be ordained cannot be ordained deacons or priests in the Catholic Church, which
I thought was solid of him to basically just like say, no, this
is the divine constitution of the Church that like, basically Christ chose twelve male
apostles. The apostolate and the vocation of women is of incredible dignity and importance
and beauty. But it's something different from the calling to the priests and the
diaconate. So he sort of slammed the door on that, which I thought
was good. He also one point said something about human beings are fundamentally good
or in their fundamental nature good, which is like, yes, newsflash,
Catholics don't believe the same thing as Calvinists. You know, for all my
reform listeners out there, yes, we Catholics disagree with you on total depravity
doctrine. Like, yes, we think human nature is wounded by sin.
We think human beings, yes, need a savior, Yes, cannot do
any good without the assistance of grace. But we don't believe in total depravity,
So it was a lot of It was actually a kind of mixed bag,
which is very often par for the course with Pope Francis. He talks
very freely in interviews and then sort of lets everyone kind of pick up the
pieces afterwards, and I often sort of wish that was not his interview style.
But on the whole, I didn't think this interview was that bad.
He took some potshots at conservatives, which again I'm not exactly sure whom he
means by quote conservatives, but on the whole I thought it was pretty good.
That'll do it for John Jarlady Show. See you next time on Power Talk.