The Ben Shapiro Show - August 05, 2026


The Science on Weed Is Worse Than You Think


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

206.81

Word count

1,813

Sentence count

134

Harmful content

Toxicity

7

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Transcript

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00:00:00.000 Listen, I will admit, when I was in college, I was in ARC.
00:00:04.000 I was in ARC because you know what?
00:00:05.000 I don't like when people smoke pots.
00:00:07.000 So if you're out in public smoking pot, like in large groups, maybe when I was like 16 at UCLA, I might have called the campus, but they didn't do anything.
00:00:15.000 No harm, no fell.
00:00:16.000 But here's the thing I was right about pot.
00:00:18.000 According to a new federal report on drug use, America's consumption of weed is at an all time high, its side effects are at an all time high as well.
00:00:25.000 I've said it my entire life. 0.97
00:00:26.000 I'll say it over and over again weed is terrible for you and also for your life, not just because it makes you a lazy loser, but also because it's actually bad for your brain. 0.99
00:00:33.000 Let's take a look at the stats. 0.99
00:00:34.000 Some of us have thought that pot is gross for literally ever.
00:00:39.000 For literally ever.
00:00:40.000 I will admit, back in my college days, I was a little of an arc.
00:00:44.000 Back in my college days, I remember that there was 420 day on the lawn at Kirchhoff at UCLA.
00:00:51.000 And it was celebrated in the school newspaper.
00:00:53.000 And so somebody may or may not have called campus police to break up a giant bout of pot smoking on the lawn at Kirchhoff because gross.
00:01:05.000 And also, laws were on the books.
00:01:06.000 Of course, the campus police did nothing, but put that all aside.
00:01:10.000 No harm, no foul.
00:01:11.000 No one got arrested.
00:01:11.000 It was all fine.
00:01:12.000 In any case, was pot a great idea here in the United States of America?
00:01:17.000 The answer is nope.
00:01:18.000 It was a completely crappy idea.
00:01:20.000 Truly terrible idea, everyone.
00:01:22.000 Well done.
00:01:22.000 And thanks for all the propaganda about how marijuana was going to solve your back problem.
00:01:25.000 That's awesome.
00:01:26.000 Okay, let's be real about marijuana.
00:01:28.000 Marijuana is poisoning brains at an extraordinary rate.
00:01:32.000 A brand new study demonstrates that millions of people age 12 plus.
00:01:37.000 Have been using marijuana for 20 plus of the past 30 days.
00:01:40.000 We are up to 21.5 million Americans aged 12 plus, we're talking about kids very often, who are using pot on an almost daily basis.
00:01:48.000 That is now more than cigarettes and more than alcohol.
00:01:52.000 That's not good.
00:01:53.000 That is quite bad.
00:01:55.000 So, Charles Fane Lehman over at the Free Press has a piece on this, and he points out the National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimated that marijuana eclipsed alcohol a few years back.
00:02:05.000 In 2025, Daily users accounted for 80% of marijuana consumption compared to 90% of cigarette smoking, but less than half of all alcohol consumptions.
00:02:14.000 When we say marijuana is less bad than alcohol, well, I mean, most people were not, you know, downing, guzzling the beer every single day.
00:02:21.000 The vast majority of people who are using marijuana were using it regularly.
00:02:26.000 74% of Americans now live in a state with recreational access to pot.
00:02:29.000 79% of Americans live in a county with at least one dispensary.
00:02:34.000 18 million people, that's one third of all users aged 18 and up, have reported symptoms of cannabis use disorder.
00:02:40.000 Cannabis use disorder, by the way.
00:02:41.000 It robs you of your ability to think.
00:02:43.000 It robs you of your initiative.
00:02:46.000 Loss of control.
00:02:47.000 Time spent consuming, obtaining, or recovering from cannabis use is real.
00:02:51.000 You neglect your primary obligations at work, school, at home.
00:02:54.000 You scale back your social or recreational activities.
00:02:58.000 And again, you have to work harder to get to the same place.
00:03:01.000 Americans, by the way, aren't just using pot, they are using more of it and it is significantly more potent than it ever was.
00:03:06.000 The active concentration of THC, which is the main psychoactive component in pot, has quadrupled in traditional plant matter and skyrocketed in processed products as well since like the 90s.
00:03:16.000 And hypotency THC is what is driving a lot of this.
00:03:20.000 It creates significantly more problems of perception and sense of time and short term memory.
00:03:26.000 It can induce severe anxiety, panic attacks, paranoia, or acute psychosis. 0.99
00:03:30.000 And again, because so many young Americans have been using it, it just makes you dumb. 1.00
00:03:34.000 So remember all of those PSAs back in the 80s and 90s saying the drugs make you stupid? 1.00
00:03:37.000 And everyone's like, no, no, no. 1.00
00:03:40.000 Yes, yes, yes.
00:03:42.000 Long term use starting in adolescence can permanently lower your IQ by up to eight points.
00:03:46.000 That is like half a standard deviation.
00:03:48.000 Because it disrupts your brain development.
00:03:50.000 And of course, in adults, it can also create midlife brain fog, lower motivation, and learning difficulties.
00:03:55.000 So, all of this rots your brain and skews your brain development.
00:04:02.000 Past year in daily cannabis use, there are high correlations with reporting involuntary job loss, getting fired,
00:04:10.000 higher likelihood of missed work days.
00:04:13.000 It'll bleed over into all these elements of your life.
00:04:15.000 So, our government decided to stop policing things it should have policed and to start intervening in things where it shouldn't intervene.
00:04:21.000 Great job, government.
00:04:22.000 You've done amazing.
00:04:24.000 We've incentivized bad behavior on a wide variety of fronts and then promised people literally the world.
00:04:28.000 And it has not worked out.
00:04:30.000 Extraordinarily well.
00:04:32.000 Got some more on this in a moment.
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00:05:35.000 The best policy prescriptions to get Americans to stop using weed is to make it illegal again.
00:05:39.000 That would be the actual best prescription with regard to pod.
00:05:42.000 Again, the idea that medical dispensaries are predominantly selling to people because they have medical problems, that was always a ruse to just increase the dissemination of pod.
00:05:52.000 And it turns out that when there's a market, then people are going to try and develop more potent drugs for the market.
00:05:56.000 This is where, again, I'm a conservative, I'm not a libertarian.
00:05:59.000 When it comes to drugs, this is a perfect example of how the market will make things more efficient and cheaper.
00:06:04.000 And that is what has happened with marijuana.
00:06:07.000 There's more THC and it is less expensive.
00:06:10.000 Also, it turns out it's really bad for you.
00:06:12.000 But again, I am a conservative, so I believe that your local community should be able to ban pot dispensaries.
00:06:17.000 And frankly, I think that your local community probably should.
00:06:21.000 The notion that pot dispensaries and the takeover of our cities by marijuana has somehow been a gigantic boon.
00:06:28.000 All the things that were promised do not materialize.
00:06:30.000 If you've been in Denver recently, I gotta say, Denver is a terrible place to be.
00:06:33.000 You walk around and the waft of pot is just everywhere.
00:06:37.000 And listen, I don't think that I should have to walk around with my children, and my children are just walking by people smoking pot out in the open.
00:06:44.000 I'm not a fan of this.
00:06:46.000 It has those externalities, but put aside the externalities.
00:06:49.000 Again, you do not have a core right to consume hallucinogenic drugs in the United States, nor did you ever.
00:06:56.000 This was never a core right.
00:06:57.000 You know, this does go to what rights are for.
00:07:00.000 Now, again, I'm a fan of rights, but the kind of right that I'm a fan of is an immunity from the government because the government should not have enough power to do X.
00:07:06.000 But I think that the government should have the power to restrict substances in the chain of commerce.
00:07:11.000 That are bad for the body politic.
00:07:14.000 I do not think that that is a perfectly libertarian conception.
00:07:18.000 I don't think that heroin should be legalized, for example, because you don't have a right to heroin.
00:07:22.000 You also do not have a right to pot.
00:07:24.000 So, again, is there a great way to cut down on pot usage?
00:07:29.000 I mean, the answer is the best way would be to make it illegal again to go after dealers, to cut down on the supply of pot across the country.
00:07:38.000 The argument, by the way, that's been used for as long as I've been alive is that prohibition never works, that people just use it more and more and more.
00:07:45.000 That wasn't true during prohibition, and it's not true now.
00:07:48.000 It turns out that when government makes something illegal, yes, a black market is created, but the amount that is distributed via the black market is far lower than otherwise would be when you've got, for example, a liquor shop on every corner.
00:07:58.000 It turns out that during prohibition, overall, it did work in the sense that Americans drank less overall.
00:08:05.000 They can make the argument that alcohol shouldn't have been banned by the federal government.
00:08:09.000 In retrospect, people tend to think that that's true.
00:08:11.000 But I think in retrospect, we can also see that the addictive nature of pop, particularly for teenagers who are getting a hold of pop when they're 13, 14 years old and then poisoning themselves, that that's been quite terrible.
00:08:21.000 And by the way, That's leaving aside any of the additives that sometimes drug pushers will add to the pot.
00:08:29.000 An inordinate number of fentanyl overdoses have been from the lacing of marijuana with things like fentanyl, and it kills the kid.
00:08:36.000 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:08:38.000 Wasn't that amazing?
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