(wind blowing) (birds chirping) (birds chirping continues) (water trickling) (water trickling continues) (wind blowing) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - It feels better to be here.

This is where my friend Johnny died in 2019.

Johnny's death hurt a lot of people.

It hurt me.

It hurt all of the people around him.

I used to park and, like, watch for people coming up.

If I saw someone coming up, like, I could do something outrageous to try and, like, get in their way, you know?

I think a lot of people wish they could have been here to, like, stop him from jumping.

So in my mind, there's like an urgency to be here so it doesn't happen again.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided by the Hughes Charitable Foundation, energized by love and faith, and inspired by the vibrant community around us.

Hughes Charitable Foundation supports organizations in helping those across Wyoming who need it most.

A private donation from Jack and Carole Nunn, providing statewide support for Wyoming citizens in body, mind, and spirit.

The John P. Ellbogen Foundation, empowering the people of Wyoming to lead healthy lives in thriving communities.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming, proudly providing funding for education to raise awareness of the mental health crisis in Wyoming and connect people to available care that promotes positive mental health and hopefully saves lives.

(wind blowing) (traffic rumbling) - Clearly we're in a mental health crisis in this country.

We're learning more and more about mental health diagnoses, about potential treatments for mental health.

We're working very hard to destigmatize mental health disorders.

- We've made a lot of progress.

We've worked really hard to address this mental health crisis.

We're still in a crisis, but I think the crisis is different.

There has been, I think, a huge increase in substance use struggles over the last couple of years, and a lot of that has to do with a lot of synthetic THC products that are more readily available and more widely used.

- This new marijuana is definitely new.

It's not what we thought we knew from the Woodstock days, and we're just beginning to understand what that looks like.

- People think it's safe to use, and they can just go to the store and get whatever they think they want.

Without any warning labels or risks, like, it's gonna be like Russian roulette for a lot of these people.

- For individuals who are already really prone to things like depression, things like anxiety disorders, high rates of suicide, they can really impact that picture in a really negative way.

- And yeah, there's a lot of people who are like, that is their whole personality.

Like, they're high all the time, they can't really function without it, and you could argue they can't really function all that well with it either.

- [Amanda] There's quite a lot of concern with adolescents.

- The first time I smoked weed, I was probably 14 years old.

I just really wanted to fit in, and that was how you did it.

- When you talk to high school students, you're in the minority if you haven't seen it, been around it, or tried it, - The younger you use, the more you use, the likelihood of having ongoing problems increases.

- There is a direct connection between using high potency THC and problems like psychosis, hallucinations, suicide, and violence.

- We were the first state that approved recreational marijuana, and we were also the first state that said, whoa, there were some unintended consequences here.

- We have to figure out what to do with this picture, because I don't know that marijuana products are going anywhere.

- [Laura] Wyoming is close to Colorado.

I think any 21-year-old can go buy it, and unfortunately, bring it back up here, so there's already a pretty ready-made market.

- I have always thought weed should be legal, and now that I live in a place where it's legal, I've seen the ramifications of the legalization of weed.

- This is a drug that people who are gonna use it love, and people don't wanna hear bad things about their drug.

(traffic rumbling) - My name's Grace Davis.

I'm 24.

I was 15 or 16 around the time legalization was coming on the radar.

A lot of my friends had started smoking weed when they were in middle school, like, even as young as like 12 or 13.

Everyone knew who to ask if you wanted weed.

And then when recreational weed was legalized, became a lot easier to get better weed.

Social media played a big role.

So, Snapchat was just becoming really popular, and it was really easy to talk with your friends and then just delete the message.

"Hey, can we meet?"

It was just easier to buy it.

I didn't smoke weed until I was 18.

I was very afraid of getting in trouble as a kid.

I was always kind of in clubs, doing volunteer events, not necessarily an A plus student in everything, but very, very involved.

(gentle music) The first time I was exposed to it was an edible.

By the time I was in college, that's when I started smoking a lot, like, nearly every day.

I started smoking because I wanted to be around my friends more.

That was just kind of what you did.

And it was awkward being the person left out.

I applied to one college (chuckles), and it was the University of Northern Colorado.

I met Johnny.

We were all kind of hanging out.

We created kind of this friend group on our dorm floor.

I think I was putting his number in my phone or getting his Snapchat, and I realized, oh, wait, I think I already have your info on my phone, and I don't know why.

And it was because when we were really young, actually, we met at a camp, a Christian camp.

If you smoke, you can usually identify someone else if they're, like, chill or not.

You can usually tell who's not.

Johnny and I smoked a lot.

He had just good energy around him.

He was really kind.

He was always smiling.

He was a really good friend.

♪ It's the eye of the tiger ♪ ♪ It's the thrill of the fight ♪ ♪ Rising up to the challenge of our rivals ♪ - Johnny was a wonderful young man.

He loved to perform on guitar, on piano.

We were very close.

He grew up with our older daughter and younger son, and we had a normal family life.

Did normal family things.

He was very involved in school.

He was an athlete.

He ran cross country, he ran track.

Wicked smart.

He got a perfect SAT score in math.

When Johnny was 14 years old, he went to his first high school party.

That is when we know he used marijuana for the first time, because he told us.

He said all the boys wanted to try to get high and that he used it, and we told him that he should never use that again.

After that, then he needed to start sneaking.

We would find here and there pipes or strange looking cartridges that we thought were USB chargers and drives.

When he turned 16, it got really hard, because now they're driving.

You keep hoping, you know, maybe this is just a phase, maybe they're just going to grow out of it.

I mean, we were so ignorant about all of this, because once legalization came, it was immediately accessible to our youth.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - So, here in Colorado, you know, in the early 2000s, people started really pushing for marijuana use to be recognized.

And so we legalized medical marijuana.

Fast forward to 2012, we voted again for the legalization of recreational marijuana.

- [Reporter] As supporters of Amendment 64 learned Colorado voters approved the historic ballot initiative to make marijuana legal in the state, cheers erupted in the pro 64 headquarters late Tuesday night.

- It came out into the dispensaries in 2014, and the lines were literally around the block.

- For the first time, you can buy marijuana legally in parts of Colorado, purely for recreational use.

- We drove 17 hours to get here.

- [Reporter] They lined up in Denver today for the state's first legal retail sales of recreational marijuana.

- We got some legal weed!

- Our community area of Pueblo, we were promised all kinds of tax revenue and benefits to the city and the county if we allowed pot to come in.

Our county commissioner at the time, Sal Pace, he labeled us in 2013 the Napa Valley of Cannabis.

People came in droves to Pueblo.

- The state legal marijuana industry is a little over $40 billion in market cap right now, so it is a gigantic business.

You have R. J. Reynolds now involved, Altria, which is the new name for Philip Morris.

They have put more than $14 billion into the marijuana industry.

Being a parent in Colorado is what really brought me to the marijuana issue, because we just see that this is gonna be big tobacco all over again.

- Well, think about cigarettes.

I think there were commercials about cigarettes, saying, "Oh, this is so healthy, doctors are recommending it."

- [Narrator] According to this repeated nationwide survey, more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.

- It took them a long time to add risk and warning labels that cigarettes can cause lung cancer.

- Once the cigarette was invented and you had this industry and it went global, tobacco became the number one cause of preventable death in the world.

And it was because of the cigarette, it was because of the additives, it was because of what they did to these products.

And now we're seeing that with marijuana.

- Up until the 1980s, the THC was less than 2 to 3%.

And then when we legalized medical in Colorado in 2000, it was around 5%.

That was the highest in the plant, and there were no concentrates.

(gentle music) The concentrates didn't really hit the market until 2010, and then it just started expanding and blowing up with these really high potency products.

- The products that we see now, all the way up to almost 100% when you get into these high potency dabs and shatters and waxes and stuff like that.

- And now you can't get the stuff that's the old time marijuana.

- I'm 57 years old, so the marijuana that I was around and exposed to as a young person was roughly 2 to 6% THC.

- When I was 17, you know, share one joint with eight people and pass it around, and it would help you chill out.

Well, those days are gone.

- In order to create the high THC, they have to, you know, genetically modify them and graft them and do all these things to keep that high potency.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - We have bred these plants so that they have a high potency THC, and the amount of CBD has really gone down, and CBD is not psychoactive, so it's not gonna make you hallucinate.

Now they're at home vaping alone, and I have patients who tell me they smoke between 2,000 and 5,000 milligrams a day, which is just extraordinary.

- And they're looking like candies, like gummies, like ice creams, like sodas.

And we have only a couple years of research on what these do to the brain, what these do to the body, and yet we have millions of people now who are using them every single day.

And our youth are getting into them more than ever before.

(gentle music continues) - None of this is mine.

My friend let me borrow it.

I still, even though I've quit, a lot of people smoke here, like, in Colorado.

Many of my friends still smoke.

You know, like, it's just part of the culture here.

And this is a pipe.

This is like a very small, basic pipe.

So you'd, like, light this, just like you would a candle, and then you smoke out of the top here.

And then this top part is called a cartridge, and the bottom part is a battery, so when you screw them together, this is what makes the product in the cartridge get super hot, and then that's how you can vape.

It vaporizes, and that's how you can smoke it.

So it's just like a vape, but it has, like, super high THC concentrate.

So, I mean, I would consider this dabbing, that dabbing.

This is called a rig.

Well, it's a bong.

So you put water in here, and then you can switch out the tops.

When you dab, at least with this rig, you'd put, like, the wax in here, and you would heat it up a lot.

Anyway, player's choice.

So then this is what wax typically comes in.

It's gonna be a jar like this.

This one's 72.07% THC.

And then this is called a pre-roll.

This one's 90% THC, so you're buying this product already with 90%.

Can just pop it, and then this is the item you get.

And a lot of this stuff is like, you can grab at a gas station.

Like, all of these rolls and stuff, you can get them behind the counter.

Johnny and I mostly were dabbing.

Johnny had a much higher tolerance than me.

So as you smoke, you, you know, build a tolerance for it, you can smoke more.

'Cause in comparison, I was like a baby stoner compared to Johnny.

- It's super simple for young people to get marijuana.

If you have a medical card, you can get weed when you're 18.

Recreationally, you can't get it until you're 21.

(gentle music) - Back in like 2019, I was able to walk into a medical center and pay $150 to get a med card with no prescription, no evidence that I had seen a primary care professional.

People told me which one to go to.

They send the info to the state, and then they, like, confirm your card.

And when you walk into a medical dispensary, it doesn't look very different than a recreational one.

You're just getting access to higher amounts of THC.

- Johnny, it was about six months into his senior year.

He turned 18.

Unbeknownst to us, he went and got his medical marijuana card, which is a complete farce, because he was totally healthy.

There were no chronic conditions, he had no disorders.

And that's really where we started to see the decline.

And we started to notice that he isolated himself a little bit more and got new friends, unfortunately, the ones who were in the drug scene and dealing and had med cards and were using.

And we just started to notice that his personality began to change.

But he suddenly became verbally abusive.

He would call me names.

He'd be like, "F you, you," you know?

it was like an alien came and took my child and put another one there.

And Johnny was always loving and warm and funny, and this one was mean and toxic and rude.

Johnny would occasionally be violent.

(sighs) He would trash his room.

We had to put locks on our bedroom doors because we were afraid of him.

At the time, there was nobody to help us.

- The introduction of a lot of synthetic marijuana products, we're seeing a lot more of this phenomenon, of individuals developing mood disorders, developing psychotic features or psychotic disorders, or sometimes both, you have a mood disorder and psychosis that are induced by cannabis use, and particularly high dose synthetics that are stronger than our traditional marijuana products, because you've now changed the brain chemistry in a way that we don't quite understand.

(gentle music) (players chattering) - This is such a high risk for anybody whose brain is developing, and it's because of how the endocannabinoid system works.

It's our mood regulation system, and it's all over the body, but highly in the brain.

It really helps us manage life.

We make our own chemicals in our brain for those receptors.

- We're very big on the development of the prefrontal cortex in adolescents, and we know that along with nicotine, THC has the most negative impact on development of the prefrontal cortex.

- If you flood the brain with THC, that fits into that receptor, and it really doesn't let your own natural endocannabinoid system work.

- The cannabis molecule itself, it's really what we call lipophilic.

It loves fat.

So, when you smoke or vape, it goes straight to fatty tissue, so it's deposited in your brain.

Unlike alcohol, where I can say I'm gonna have this drink and I can predict how long it will take your body to excrete it, it's not true with cannabis, and it may take weeks or months to wash out.

- Once you use regularly, you have this very high risk of developing what's called cannabis use disorder, which is addiction to cannabis, and you start having withdrawal.

And withdrawal is extremely uncomfortable.

And so that's why they're using it so frequently, and then that really sets them up for all the other consequences, and the worst one being psychosis.

- It's interesting to look back at it now and have the language to identify when I was really sick and when things were getting really bad.

I think when you're smoking, you don't realize how bad your mental health is getting.

You don't fully understand when you're in psychosis and you enter it.

(gentle music) I remember one time passing by a hotel, I was convinced that the way the cars were parked in the hotel was some sort of indicator about who was in the hotel, and they all parked in a certain way because they were trying to communicate something.

I would pray a lot, and I think that when you are in or entering psychosis, very manic in my case, it becomes super elevated, where like, you know, seeing small signs that God is looking out for you here and there, that's normal.

I would get the idea and feel so confidently that someone was about to move in with me, and so I reorganized everything so they were halved, so that, you know, the other person who was moving in with me would have half of the drawers.

Things were getting worse because I was using marijuana, and then I was treating myself with marijuana, so it was kind of like Russian roulette every time I smoked, and because I was smoking such high levels of THC, that's how it panned out for me.

With Johnny, I didn't know how long he'd been struggling.

I did not know any of that.

- Johnny never thought Johnny was gonna ever have any problems, and it always didn't look like it was causing him a problem until it did.

- One night, Johnny and I were watching "Fast & Furious", and some of our other friends left and he had stuck around, and he asked me, really politely, he was like, "Hey, I think I need to stay here tonight.

Like, I do not feel well, and I need to be around someone."

He basically said he thought the Russian mob was coming to get him.

(tense music) He thought the FBI was tracking his phone.

He was completely serious.

But I also think he was somewhat cognizant that it was not actually happening, but he didn't know what to do, and that was just like the tip of the iceberg.

He asked me like, "What do you think I should do?"

I was like, "I think you need to stop smoking, like, immediately," because my thought was, "Maybe you're on, like, an elongated high."

And so he was, like, completely on board.

He was like, "Yeah, you're right, I need to stop smoking."

- We don't have any mental illness in our family, and we did the Genomind, which is a mental genetic test to test, did he have a propensity for any of these clusters of schizophrenia genes, and he did not.

- Within a couple weeks after he had told me about all the delusions he was having, he had called me on Snapchat.

He was like, "I need help right away."

I'm like, "Okay, what's going on?"

And he had said, "I'm sleeping in Denver.

I slept on a street last night."

And I was like, "What?

Like, you need to come back up to school."

And then it's like, the phone cuts off, and I'm like, what's going on?

But things were getting worse.

And by then, most of our mutual friends, like, were not friends with Johnny.

They were afraid of him.

They didn't wanna be associated with him.

We were all like 19, 18, 20.

Like, what did we know, really?

- Johnny had to go to a mental hospital.

He became suicidal.

He finally got a diagnosis.

On the chart, the doctor wrote, "THC abuse, severe."

So it took several weeks before he was sober and clean, and he came back.

It was like, it was Johnny again.

Like aliens brought him back, and it was weird.

But then it was just so addictive and so compelling, that's part of the disease, he would just think, "Oh, I'm fine, my brain is healed, I'll be safe to smoke again," and he'd get right back into it, and boom.

People don't think that you can overdose from weed.

- I'm an emergency medicine physician and I work in an emergency department in Colorado.

A good portion of the patients I see every day are directly related to substance abuse problems, and the primary abuse in our area is cannabis.

- There's a really interesting phenomenon lately of the idea of greening out, which is not something that we saw as much with more traditional organic marijuana products, which involve high anxiety, sometimes losing consciousness, sometimes things like nausea, vomiting, sometimes psychotic features and symptoms, things that we would almost attribute to a mini overdose.

- [Reporter] Mary Moss's son started using high potency marijuana in college and developed cannabis-induced psychosis.

- That was the first that I had ever heard of it, the first that I had ever even thought that cannabis could have been a catalyst into, you know, bringing this whole chaos into our family's life.

(gentle music) - You never heard of cannabis-induced psychosis?

What is that?

- I looked at a kid who had everything going for him, and I had to stare at him sitting on a hospital bed with a sheet and a pillow in this room, stark white.

- The idea in the Woodstock days, that people would think that, you know, smoking marijuana would lead to an outcome like that, it was crazy.

(upbeat music) In fact, it was so crazy, it was called reefer madness.

You know, people would say, "No, that's just reefer madness that you can say something like that."

But now we've got a very potent and dangerous drug, and this is something that actually can very severely cause outcomes like this.

- My son started using marijuana around 12 or 13 years old.

He started having hallucinations, auditory, visual, hearing people talking to him through the walls.

I ended up calling the police and sending him to jail because he became a danger to himself and a danger to other people.

(gentle music) - We also see the cannabis hyperemesis.

I'm gonna guess we see at least one a day.

Cannabis hyperemesis is a syndrome where, and we don't know why it happens to certain people, but it does, it's for regular users, and they get terrible abdominal pain and really loud vomiting.

The medical personnel call it scromiting.

Those people come repeatedly to the emergency department.

It's different for everybody how they end up.

So when these patients come in and they have, like, repeated vomiting or acute psychosis, they tell us it's super hard to stop, which says to me it's addictive.

The thought that marijuana psychosis is rare is a huge misconception.

It's not a small number.

It's huge.

And we're gonna see even more as more kids use.

- All of these things add up, and we as a society pay for those costs.

(gentle music continues) - Almost 50% of people who develop cannabis-induced psychosis can go on to develop schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

And the number one drug is cannabis.

People that have a history of mental health issues are more susceptible, but we are finding that it's not limited to that.

This could happen to anybody.

- [Director] Like, how would you describe yourself as a person before this happened?

- I can't, I can't answer that question.

I don't remember who I was back then.

- [Bryn's Mom] Yes, you do.

Yes, you do.

- Oh, (beep) - Bryn.

It's okay.

- It's okay.

- [Bryn's Mom] It's all right.

It's all right.

- Okay.

- I know.

- I'm so sorry, I thought I was gonna be able to do this.

Ask the question again.

- [Director] Yeah, so how would you describe yourself and like your upbringing, your childhood, like, before this whole event happened?

- I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and I had a nice, wonderful family.

And I grew up with three brothers.

And I participated in sports, music, got good grades, and I also was dealing with the obstacle of having hearing loss.

And I wasn't diagnosed until three, and so I started wearing hearing aids since then, and led to my career to be an audiologist.

So then after grad school, I got a job with UCLA in Los Angeles, and I primarily worked at a clinic in Thousand Oaks, and I was the only audiologist there, and it was kind of a new position.

I was focused on my career and going places with my dog and hiking and camping, and just soaking up what California had to offer.

Then I started going to a local dog park in Thousand Oaks, and I met a lot of really nice people, and one person stood out was Chad, and we got along really well.

We were the same age.

He was really funny.

And so we just really got to know each other pretty much almost every day when we were at the dog park.

It was Memorial Day weekend.

We were just in the living room, catching up, and probably took about an hour, an hour and a half of us talking about our weekend.

Like, it was a normal evening.

He said he needed to go smoke.

And I know he kind of does this for a while.

And all of his items were outside on his porch.

I joined him to sit outside with him.

So as we're talking, I decided to ask to take a hit out of his bong.

I was never really into marijuana.

The times that I tried marijuana was always with my friends.

It was a stereotypical experience with trying cannabis, giggling and had an increase in appetite and went right to bed.

So he prepared the bong for me, and I took a hit.

I was coughing right away.

He then proceeded to say, "Oh my gosh, I'm feeling really high."

And I was like, "Oh, I'm not feeling anything."

And then he followed up with, "Oh, well, we're gonna make this next one really intense."

(gentle music) And I didn't know what that meant.

I saw the chamber of the bong more milky or white or more opaque, and unfortunately, I inhaled outta that bong, and I could tell this reaction was way worse.

I mean, I was coughing so hard.

It felt like something was stuck in my throat.

I was vomiting nothing.

I remember trying to have a conversation with him, but nothing was logical.

I started to see visuals of, like, my dead body on the porch, visuals like you're watching, like, a TV screen right in front of you.

I just saw these hands just do some really, really awful things in this TV.

I saw... Do I just, I don't know if I talk about, like, the knife stuff.

Like, I don't want to, but it's like the whole point of this thing.

- [Director] You're doing fine.

- [Bryn's Mom] Do it.

(tense music) - I just saw, like, really bad things happening, and like, you know, I saw a brown dog at one point, and something bad happened to the dog.

Somebody said, "Why did you hurt my dog?"

I heard the roommate say, "Bryn, what are you doing?"

Like, more bad things kept happening.

- [Reporter] Bryn suffered what experts call marijuana-induced psychosis.

- It's an extreme panic attack, and it's happening more and more now because today's high potency marijuana is stronger than ever.

They don't really understand what's going on around them, and they're often becoming violent.

- And then I heard voices say, "You're almost there, you can do it, keep going."

So the more I screamed, the more I hurt myself, that I was gonna come back to life.

- [Reporter] She stabbed Chad, the serrated edges of the knives leaving him with 108 wounds.

Bryn even stabbed her dog, Arya, and herself.

- [Reporter] At the scene, police tased her and broke her arm in five places with a baton until she dropped the knife.

- [Reporter] Bryn, covered in blood, was rushed to the hospital, where she underwent surgery and survived her 43 stab wounds.

- I woke up in the ICU room.

I was definitely so confused, because I couldn't talk.

I was intubated.

My arms were in casts.

I kept asking, "Where's Chad?"

And nobody was telling me.

I didn't find out until like two days later that he died from the... And I think I just wasn't really understanding what was happening, and that there's no way that I would've hurt someone.

I'm not a violent person, and I just couldn't believe it.

It was just, I still didn't want this to be real then.

I just was so confused.

There was just no way I would've hurt someone.

Never knew that this could happen or that marijuana could do this.

I'm more regretting a lot of things, about not knowing enough about marijuana, not educating myself about marijuana, wishing I asked questions, wishing I said no.

So many things.

My experience and my story is different from a lot of those other stories that you might see out there, because a lot of them are regular users, or they're addicted users, and I was not.

Cannabis-induced psychosis can still happen, whether you're a regular user or a naive user.

(gentle music) - There is clearly more and more literature coming out supporting that if you were using and you had an episode of psychosis, that if you stopped, the likelihood that this would happen again was markedly decreased.

If you start at 16 and you're using a lot, and you're using a high potency, and you have a psychotic episode and you don't stop, then that psychotic episode can be repeated.

- This is what we've discovered is very normal in cannabis-induced psychosis.

Johnny would've been okay.

He had several instances of coming back, and his brain healed, went back to baseline.

But if you keep doing that on repetitive basis, then at some point, the psychosis does not go away.

Johnny did stop using in the end because he knew that it was causing him problems.

- Late spring was the last time I saw him.

And I was eating with some of our mutual friends, and we had sat down, and I said, "Oh, like, look, it's Johnny."

Like, I haven't seen him in forever.

And he had just gotten his plate of food and going to sit down, and he went and sat down at a table alone.

And I said, "We should invite him over," and they were like, "No."

I kind of, I think, snapped at them, and I was like, "Well, I'm going over there."

And so I left their table and went and sat with Johnny, and I'm so glad I did.

And we had a great conversation.

I asked him how he was doing, like, if he was getting better.

It seemed like he was.

He was in a really good mood.

We were glad to see each other.

It was really nice out that day.

And so I was just trying to, like, encourage him.

And then we had breakfast.

- Johnny lost his scholarship at UNC.

Of course, being in the mental hospital, you are forced sober.

They put him on an anti-psychotic, and it helped tremendously.

It was like, bam, you know?

Tamped down that psychosis.

- Good name, guys.

- Mm-hm.

This one's all him.

- [Laura] He got a job at PetSmart.

We got him a puppy.

- [Cameraperson] Benji, look here!

- He seemed like he was going to be okay, or so I thought.

He came over to the house for a good home cooked meal, as he often did.

He was 19, you know?

Didn't cook much for himself.

And he said, "Mom, I just want you to know that you were right.

You told me many years ago that marijuana would hurt my brain, and it has ruined my mind and my life, and I'm sorry, Mama, I love you."

And that probably was suicidal, and I missed it, you know?

I thought he was reconciling because our relationship had been so damaged, you know, in the past five years since he started using, and it was probably his way of saying goodbye.

I didn't know that he stopped taking the antipsychotic suddenly.

(gentle music) But there was an incident, which we know now in looking at his phone, that probably triggered a psychotic event.

He went to a six story parking garage.

His odometer in his car read 133661, and he took a picture of it and he posted on Snapchat, and he posted, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

For one extreme to exist, there must be the opposing."

Newton's third law.

He probably added those two threes together.

1, 6, 6, 6, 1, which read front to back the same way.

Maybe he thought that was a magic number.

He wrote three days before that in his journal that the mob was after him.

He actually was in the parking garage for about 20 minutes.

There was a video they took of him, and he had jumped off the parking garage as if he thought he could fly.

And so maybe he thought that he wouldn't die.

We'll never know.

They ruled it a suicide, because of course, he killed himself.

- I was working on campus, and I had found out that Johnny died through a text message and immediately started crying at work.

I told my supervisor, I was like, "My friend just died, and I have to leave."

I couldn't be in my own body.

I wanted to get super high.

Like, grieving was really difficult.

I started smoking a lot.

I wasn't there at all.

(gentle music continues) - When Johnny died, I was basically in a fetal position for six months.

The only thing I knew to do was write, and I started to write Johnny's story because I thought I would forget.

I spent so much time just researching and calling and asking questions, and that's when I started to get mad.

(chuckles) And I thought, how can this stuff be legal?

Don't get me wrong, Johnny made some really poor choices, but he should not have had access to these incredibly high potency products.

And I said, you know, I can either sit here in my bed in my fetal position for the rest of my life and cry, or I can do something about it.

- [Reporter] Young adults like Johnny Stack, his parents, John and Laura, say he took his own life because of a condition called cannabis psychosis.

- And we're so angry that this poison was available to him.

- [Reporter] The Stacks are now trying to raise awareness one family at a time through Johnny's Ambassadors, a group they've set up to educate parents on the dangers of underage marijuana use.

- Johnny's Ambassadors, it's a way for us to get the word out with a mission to educate teens and parents about the harms of these products.

I mostly do school assemblies now to share Johnny's story.

- Marijuana, so with that, please, a warm welcome for Laura Stack.

(audience applauding) - It's so good to meet all of you, and thank you for taking time- - Laura Stack, her message is really powerful.

Substance abuse is on the rise with our students.

For our parents to hear that and our students to hear that is very important to us as a school district.

- [Laura] This is a difficult topic.

- [Jade] How do we navigate this right now?

- In Colorado, the number one cause of death in our youth, 15 through 18, is suicide, and the number one substance they find in their toxicology report, what would you think?

THC.

And I hate to see what's going to start happening in other states who are legalizing it, and in 13 years, where they're going to be as well.

- The laws can't keep up with a lot of the synthetic cannaboid products that are on the market.

The things like Delta-8, Delta-9 products that are coming out and are openly sold in Wyoming, 'cause the law doesn't prohibit them.

- It essentially doesn't really matter whether marijuana is legal or not.

Some very clever chemists have figured out in every state how to take hemp, take out the CBD, turn it into Delta-8, Delta-10, and it's legal everywhere.

- So it's a big issue in Wyoming because the laws can't keep up.

When you put it in the mix in an area where we already have significant mental health crisis to deal with, it just creates a chaotic mess for us to deal with as providers.

And law enforcement are really struggling with what to do because stores are just openly selling these products.

They're widely used by adolescents and young adults in the state.

The market just keeps changing the chemical makeup of the product enough to skirt the laws, and they're interfering with a lot of the work that we're trying to do in the way of counteracting high suicide rates.

- That's what Wyoming has to look forward to if they follow our path.

If you legalize it, it will be everywhere, and you'll start modeling what is happening to us in Colorado.

- I'm just amazed at how many states now have been holding the line.

And I hope they continue to hold the line.

This is a really scary thing.

To me, it's outta control in Colorado.

- Today is a very important day.

Today is when House Bill 1317, the culmination of hours and hours of work, comes before its first committee here in the House.

Our bill is thoughtful, it is bipartisan, it is forward thinking, and it's a blueprint for the rest of the states across the country who are grappling with the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana.

I appreciate- - So we're now starting to see a lot of, I think, momentum towards these public health based restrictions on marijuana.

- We became very vocal and got some sponsors and put forth Colorado House Bill 1317, regulating marijuana concentrates.

- We regulate a lot of stuff under the stone, and we should be very, very concerned about the concentrate as it relates to cannabis.

And I see far too many young people thinking that marijuana and cannabis and whatever they're using is harmless, but it does have consequences to your intellectual development.

This bill is about protecting the future of young people.

- It was a wide coalition.

You know, you had children's hospitals, you had health associations, you had law enforcement, you had parents, you had people from all across the state of Colorado finally coming together on what until then had really been a very toxic issue.

You know, nobody wanted to talk about marijuana, nobody wanted to get in the way of the marijuana industry.

- I speak for the kids that I see who are gonna be permanently damaged.

We have to spread this.

It's not harmless.

- We know that any state that is trying to change the law, the industry is in there with tons of money.

And I'm not saying that there's nothing beneficial about cannabis.

I think that there is some research showing it can be beneficial.

My advocate would be to say, yes, there should be a cap at 10%.

I don't know why anybody needs more.

- 1317, regulating marijuana concentrates, initially had a cap, and the marijuana industry had a baby, and that portion of the cap was removed from the bill, and instead, we gave the School of Public Health millions of dollars to do research, which they are currently doing.

- The positives that came outta that effort were any time someone's getting a high potency marijuana concentrate, they're getting a pamphlet that says, "These are the potential harms to your mental health.

These are the addiction harms."

It's much more thorough than it's ever been.

The industry has fought warning labels tooth and nail.

The other thing that came out of it was a dramatic limiting of the medical marijuana program.

- You have to have two doctors who independently certify that you have a chronic and debilitating condition.

At the time, there were 6,000 medical marijuana cards for 18 to 20 year olds in Colorado.

There are now fewer than 1,000 medical marijuana cards for 18 to 20 year olds.

This type of legislation does work.

In Colorado, there is no public sentiment that wants THC to be illegal again, so it's incumbent upon us now, we must educate the public.

It is super potent, and it's causing mental health challenges in our young people.

And I think the word is finally getting out.

(gentle music) (wind blowing) - When Laura first started doing her work, I didn't agree with it, but in order to accept that what she was saying was true, it would've meant accepting that I had a real problem, and that Johnny and I had taken a part of that problem together.

I've been sober two years.

The last time I smoked was Thanksgiving 2022.

I didn't experience really bad paranoia until I started smoking.

But that paranoia's never gone away even after I've quit.

I really didn't have the self-awareness that I was super sick and I was getting sicker.

I became so desperate and in so much pain that it was the first thing I wanted to do, was start meds.

Getting on medication changed my life.

I think a lot clearer now.

The only treatment plan for me for the rest of my life is I have to be in therapy and I have to see a psychiatrist for the rest of my life.

But it's really hard to say whether or not I would've had these mental health issues or not.

I know it wouldn't have been this bad.

- I never had psychosis before this or after this.

I never had any mental illness before this and after this.

I've been evaluated by four psychiatrists now, and I have no mental illness issues.

To prevent this tragedy or any tragedy to happen again, just educate yourself about marijuana.

If you're gonna consider using it, learn more about it.

Learn what potency means.

Learn what the product is.

Be careful.

(machine whistling) - Really, I see things fall in place, and even though it's difficult for me to, like, walk outside, or even to, like, walk from my apartment to the laundry room, like, I still wanna be able to do those things even though it's really difficult.

(gentle music) I wanna live a fulfilling life.

I haven't traveled in a long time, so I'd like to do that.

I love to write.

I, you know, started a book about, you know, Johnny.

It was fictional.

I go to a writer's group every Tuesday.

- It was only when I looked at Carpenter's- - We kind of like a little communal time.

Who's gotten accepted, who's gotten rejected, what people are writing about, and then we'll break off into groups, where we share.

So, this is called, "Where Does One Address A Letter For The Dead?"

I wrote it a while back, like 2022, about my friend, Johnny.

So, that's what this is.

I'm just gonna read it real quick.

"Johnny, will you send me angels?

The butterflies that you sent have become less potent with the chill of November approaching.

Are you in space?

Can you send stars and meteorite?

Then I'll know for sure it's from you.

I need you to send me angels.

Not for who I was, for who I've become.

I'll bring flowers to the rendezvous.

I'll bring anything you want.

But know that with all the work I've done, it still may be unfair.

Your love could swell my mind whole.

Your heart released all dishonesty for me.

And with that release, I retreated.

Then you died, and so did I.

Newly, Grace."

(birds chirping) (wind blowing) (traffic rumbling) (traffic rumbling continues) (birds chirping) (birds chirping continues)