Kyle Sherman

Here’s what changes when cannabis moves from Schedule I to Schedule III later today at 1:30pm ET. Thanks to @GadiNBC and @NBCNewsNow for the conversation.

Hemp-derived THC is largely the same thing as cannabis, but it’s unregulated, and there’s a plethora of bad actors who aren’t even selling real cannabinoids. Unregulated stores are selling 5,000mg edibles laced with synthetic cannabinoids to underage consumers. Those kids end up in the hospital, and then Laura Ingraham uses it on Fox as proof that cannabis should be entirely illegal. It’s a negative flywheel. I’ve spent more than a decade working to give consumers the opposite type of industry with safe access. The entire framework is a complete mess.

@KyleSherman Still waitin on clarification as to why you vilified hemp derived thc.. i mean, if alcohol os far more dangerous.

Alcohol gets Super Bowl commercials, stadium sponsorships, and a century of positive propaganda telling you it’s how you celebrate, socialize, and unwind. The alcohol industry spends $6 billion+ a year telling you drinking is normal. Cannabis gets Reefer Madness, scare campaigns, scromiting, a Google ad ban, and shadow bans on social media. In fact, X is one of the few places you can openly talk about cannabis without getting banned. One substance makes people more compliant. The other makes people question everything. Guess which one the government spent 90 years trying to destroy? Cannabis was criminalized because people who think for themselves are a lot harder to control than people who go numb and essentially dissociate. Meanwhile, according to the CDC alcohol is responsible for killing 178,000 Americans per year. According to the DEA, no one in recorded history has ever died from a cannabis overdose. One is incredibly dangerous, yet so widely accepted that people don’t even see the positive propaganda anymore. The other is incredibly safe, yet vilified. People will argue it’s a gateway drug, that teen use will skyrocket, that it should be highly illegal…and they’ll say all of that while holding a beer. If you think this sounds like a conspiracy theory, go read the history.

Meta platforms and Google are the biggest offenders. YouTube will let you talk about cannabis but highly restricted. We’ve had our social accounts shut down many times. Thankfully we know people at these companies who are able to reverse our disabled accounts. Others aren’t as lucky.

@RossADillon @KyleSherman On what social media?

@RossADillon Totally!

@KyleSherman I’ve done social media work in cannabis and now in psychedelics. Cannabis is much more restricted and difficult to talk about on most platforms compared to psychedelics.

@Chapicusromanus Is it a state licensed and regulated dispensary? Which state?

@KyleSherman Dog I’m not gonna lie I walk into a store and buy somthing once a week I do not get id’d.

This is wildly misleading. The regulated cannabis market won’t even let a minor through the front door. IDs are checked multiple times, every sale is tracked, and dispensaries are more heavily regulated than bars and liquor stores. If teens are accessing “weed” more easily, look at the synthetic hemp products being sold at gas stations with zero age verification thanks to the 2018 Farm Bill. That’s not the regulated cannabis industry. That’s the unregulated market the government created by refusing to regulate hemp properly. Don’t blame the regulated legal cannabis for a problem caused by the lack of regulation everywhere else.

@BurtReddington The founding fathers grew hemp.

@KyleSherman It doesn't make alcohol look bad, it makes you look bad. Yes, alcohol is so bad, which is why the founding fathers who are known from their drinking are famously known for their "compliance". You must not have much faith in cannabis. Otherwise you'd have it stand alone.

@BurtReddington Where, very specifically, did I “put down” people who use alcohol? If the facts make alcohol look bad, that’s not my problem. That’s alcohol’s problem.

@KyleSherman To imagine the correct route is to vilify a substance that has an extensive history of safe use while simultaneously putting down people who consume alcohol is pretty wild. You will never get the public fully behind if you keep positioning yourself as an antithesis to alcohol

@GatesMTL Exactly

@KyleSherman This whole marijuana debate is silly IMO Leave adults do what they want We have laws that protect kids, If we need stricter ones I'm all for protecting kids from being exposed. We have laws that deal with those who abuse any substance while in public or driving ect

Alcohol kills 178,000 Americans a year directly. Tobacco kills 480,000. Opioids kill 80,000+. Cannabis kills zero directly, so they have to stretch to “through heart attacks, auto accidents, and violence” to make it sound scary. Funny, because alcohol is one of the leading causes of heart attacks, auto accidents, and violence in America.

@Winjerone You know who definitely doesn’t check IDs? Street dealers. Regulation means age verification, compliance checks, and real consequences for selling to minors. The illicit market has none of that.

@KyleSherman It's really not that misleading though. It's like saying that teens have easier access to alcohol because it's legal without a prescription and they can just have someone go into a store and buy it. It's the same with weed. It just makes it easier to obtain.

Regulated growers are required to test every product. If it fails for pesticides or mold, they can’t sell it. They have to destroy it. The illicit market? No testing. No accountability. Growers regularly use things like Eagle 20, a fungicide that contains myclobutanil, a known carcinogen when heated and inhaled. It’s banned in regulated cannabis but used all the time in illicit grows. And consumers have no idea what they’re putting in their bodies.

I hate regulation all it does is make something illegal and chemically laden. When pot was illegal in all of the US I could get it easily and it was a lot better then than it is now.If hemp was legal I could get some seed with out any permission at all it is regulated not legal, I wish people knew the difference.

@nikitabier DM’d you the person to reach out to

iOS developers: How long is App Review taking for everyone these days? It is now taking longer to get our app approved than it is to build the actual features.

@BrendanSchlaub This would be illegal groups selling 2018 Farm Bill “hemp”. State legal dispensaries literally can’t be away with this. Each item is literally tracked from seed to sale.

My nephew was getting weed from dispensaries when he was in high school. The legit ones will ID but there's plenty of "speak easy" type dispensaries that operate more like neighborhood dealers than legit businesses. Not saying it's easier now but they're 100% getting access to dispensaries.

@IngrahamAngle x.com/kylesherman/st…

Young people who use weed even infrequently aren’t just getting dumb and numb, they’re now increasingly violent, depressed and wracked by mental illness.

@CBNNews x.com/kylesherman/st…

Surgeon and author Dr. Raymond Wiggins is pushing back on some of the more popular claims about marijuana — mainly that it is harmless and doesn’t lead to death. Multiple new scientific studies expose the disturbing truth of what’s truly happening in the culture surrounding weed legalization and its impact on people. “There’s a lot of great studies about mental health, including depression and anxiety, paranoia, personality disorders, psychosis..." “We had tons of studies already that show that marijuana does kill,” he said. “It doesn’t kill in the same way that opioids do. It generally doesn’t kill directly like opioids, but what it does is it kills through heart attacks and cardiovascular disease, it kills through suicide, through auto accidents, through violence, and much more.” GET THE FACTS: cbn.com/news/world/doc…

A budding entrepreneur!

@lindagreene @anacostia @AnacostiaBID @MayorBowser @DMPEDDC @kenyanmcduffie @charlesallen @CMRobertWhiteDC @councilofdc Had so much fun seeing you in DC 💚

I’m very grateful to my close friend of many years, the incredible @KyleSherman, for interviewing me for this fantastic episode! @anacostia @AnacostiaBID @MayorBowser @DMPEDDC @kenyanmcduffie @charlesallen @CMRobertWhiteDC @councilofdc #AnacostiaOrganicsDispensary

The President lives 10 minutes from a dispensary. Welcome to Washington DC. 🇺🇸 New episode of The Great American Dispensary Tour is LIVE👇 youtu.be/HFjbxCZWF_8?si…

Early US presidents grew cannabis, yet today it’s still federally illegal. Make it make sense.