As history shows, nearly every civilization has progressed and evolved using some form of alcohol. But no civilization in history has ever experimented with the types of industrialized THC products Western countries are now recklessly legalizing, commercializing, and normalizing. We might pause to ask ourselves why zero Asian countries have done so and why China is so anxious to promote this cultural suicide weapon here. A 2023 global study on life expectancy showed we are back to pre-pandemic levels with one notable exception: Teens and young adults in Western countries are dying at higher rates, driven largely by suicides and substance use. Traffic fatalities continue to be a major cause of death in young adults, which is one reason The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh has been vocal about his opposition to the legalization of marijuana. In fact, a recent study of dead drivers in a major Ohio county morgue found that 42% of them tested positive for THC.  Pot apologists quickly jumped to their defense, noting that THC can be detected for up to a month after use. But the national past 30-day marijuana use rate is only 16%, yet these drivers had average THC levels 5 to 10 times the state legal limits. Some will argue, “Well, it’s no worse than alcohol.” Marijuana use, however, is associated with more alcohol consumption, and marijuana users are five times more likely to become alcoholics. It has also been reported that up to 40% of marijuana users use daily, and up to 30% meet criteria for addiction — both far higher percentages than for drinkers. Using alcohol to excuse marijuana use or legalization is simply an exercise in lazy whataboutism. Speaking of which, THC strongly induces suicidality even in patients who were not depressed to begin with, and state legalization has led to sharp increases in youth suicides. Up to 30% of schizophrenia cases in young men are attributable to THC use now. Marijuana smoke is also causing the same type of cancers as tobacco smoke, while also dramatically increasing the risk of heart attacks and strokes in younger users. Further, as the American College of Cardiology reports, THC has been shown to cause damage to major blood vessels regardless of the mechanism of ingestion. Add to this the well-known adverse effects on motivation and educational achievement, and the costs of the cannabis culture to government budgets are simply staggering. One study on the costs of legalization in Colorado, for example, conservatively estimated, “For every dollar gained in tax revenue, Coloradans spent approximately $4.50 to mitigate the effects of legalization.” And that’s even at a 15% sales tax rate. While there is simply no conservative case for the legalization of marijuana, the libertarian case suffers from serious flaws. First of all, the utopian assumption that legalization would lead to a “safe and regulated” product that would eliminate the black market has now gone 0-for-24 in our marijuana legal states. Many legal THC products are more potent than ever before, even more than the now highly potent plant itself. The industry has defied regulation, and the black markets are thriving. Legalizing marijuana to eliminate the black market is like giving your dog ticks to rid it of fleas. You just double the infestation. More importantly, substances like THC are the exception that proves the libertarian rule. Libertarianism works when people are free to act in their own best interest and, by extension, their family, community, and country. Chemicals like THC are designed to promote the opposite type of citizen. Libertarians should be the most opposed to the drug culture because it undermines the very foundation of their ideology. The politically driven potential rescheduling of marijuana will only fuel this destructive industry with tax breaks and marketing privileges. Republicans should note that young male voters moved to the Right last November while radical Democrats were still enticing them with more weed. Much attention has been paid to the influence of transgender ideology on the radicalization of Charlie Kirk’s assassin. But as we saw with the transgender school shooter in Minneapolis, THC may have also played a role. As discussed in a recent episode of the Liz Wheeler show, a close friend of the suspected Utah assassin reported rampant drug use in his apartment and that “We’d have a mostly weekly magic night at the apartment where everyone would come drink, get high and play magic.” Charlie Kirk gave his generation more credit than some in the GOP. Despite the criticism, he stood up to the lies of the THC industry. Republicans will never outbid Democrats in the race to the drug culture bottom. Nor should they, as polls show we may have already reached the bottom, with public sentiment now turning against marijuana. Charlie knew that minds can be changed, but facts cannot. Truth and the future of this great country are worth standing for, regardless of the cost. Principled conservatives should do more than eulogize Charlie. They should emulate him. * * * Matt Poling is a physician, Medical Director of Citizens for a Safe and Healthy Texas, and Faculty Advisor for Texas A&M Young Americans for Freedom. mpoling@sw.org The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire. Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to DailyWire.com/Subscribe to join now.

In today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc talk about former President Barack Obama, including his unlikability and growing irrelevance.  This interview has been slightly edited for clarity.  Sami Winc: Barack Obama this week has been in all sorts of news, not only in the news, but also commercials, since you’re speaking of it. And the “Yes on Proposition 50” in California commercial, which would allow redistricting in California so that they could get more Democrats in. Everybody knows that. But I thought, in addition to that, what was interesting is there’s a new book out by Jonathan Karl called “Retribution,” and he writes in it that Obama was angry at [Rep. Nancy] Pelosi for immediately jumping on [then-Vice President] Kamala Harris as the candidate because he, in fact, wanted to see more of a choice process gone through with the Democrats after [President] Joe Biden stepped out. I was wondering what your thoughts were on that.  Victor Davis Hanson: He didn’t get the message in 2016. He had come out of the tea party imbroglio, the big midterm defeat of 2010. He had that reelection in 2012, but people didn’t like his border policies, they didn’t like Obamacare, and he was polling where [President Donald] Trump is, or even a little bit lower.  And then a big, bright light bulb went off in his head once Hillary [Clinton] started to square off against Trump, and it said, “You know, people don’t like me. I am a phony. They’re sick of me. But Donald Trump and Hillary are polarizing people. So, my last year in office, I’m just going to phone it in. Like I once said that I wanted a third term if I could just phone it in from the basement. So, I’m just gonna do that. I’m gonna go play golf. You’re not gonna see me, you’re not gonna hear me.”   And the more people do not see or hear Barack Obama, the more they’d like him. They like the idea of a suave, charismatic, first African American president. But they don’t like to be lectured, hectored, sermonized by him, and they’re sick of his stupid voice, his modulating it. When he talks to an African American class, “Oh, what you be doing?”  He’s like Hillary, modulating the accent. [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], by the way, does the same thing. He should have known that. So, as long as he was either in his Martha Vineyard estate or visited every once in a while his Chicago digs, or went to Martha’s Vineyard, which should, according to him, been washed away because of global warming on the coast, or his new multi, multimillion-dollar Hawaii palace, people liked him.   If he just popped up on David Geffen’s yacht or something, and Michelle [Obama] did her podcast and kind of trashed him and said he was messy, but he can’t do that. He can’t be like George W. Bush. People like George W. Bush now. He paints, he doesn’t weigh in. He doesn’t trash Trump. They liked [Jimmy] Carter to the extent … but when Carter started weighing in, they didn’t like him. So, he should have known that because every time he weighs in, it has the opposite effect. Because he’s condescending. He goes and tells young black activists that were working, “Don’t make the mistake. You don’t know what’s good for you. Don’t suffer from Marxist false consciousness and vote for Donald Trump.” And then he tells the Hispanic community, “Well, a lot of you guys, you know, worried about price of gas and your business, maybe a crisis of energy or a new car. That’s not what you should be doing voting for Trump.”  Well, yeah, they worry about gas and the price of a truck, but you don’t because you cashed in with your Netflix [deal] and you’re worth $150 billion. Don’t tell people what they should be doing as if they’re stupid just because they’re minorities.  So now he’s doing it again. He’s telling people in California, every night I turn on television, he says, “Well, stop Donald Trump. Vote ‘yes’ on 50 and don’t let him take over democracy.” In other words, we are redistricting the California congressional districts because right now 17%, nine seats go to Republicans, even though they had 40% of the national vote. And we wanna eliminate that to four seats, or 9%, and that’s democracy and opposing that is not.”   And then he’s weighed in on the Virginia race and said, “You know, we were told that if you were black, you had to vote for Kamala Harris and not to be fooled and voted for Trump.” That’s what Obama said. Now he’s in Virginia saying, “Don’t be fooled and vote for a black woman over a white woman.” So, what is it, Barack?  Some ways I’m happy because he’s relegating race, and he is voting apparently on the person who’s the most left-wing, regardless of race. That’s admirable, but I’m not sure that it’s consistent. His view of black conservatives is, they haven’t sufficiently appreciated all the wonderful things that white liberals and black professional DEI people have done for them, and therefore they owe them.   Winc: Can I ask something, though? He is being asked to come on these advertisements by people who must think he has some ability to influence people. So they must be on the Left, at least out there. He is very influential on the Left.   Hanson: And what he does, he always does one thing. He endorses someone and comes out late. Everybody says he comes out when they’re in trouble. No, he comes out when they’re still ahead. He came out when Kamala Harris was still polling. The night of the election, the NPR poll had her up four points, beyond the [margin of error]. So, he thought she was going win, then he was going to come out and push a little bit and take credit for it.  He didn’t come out for Prop 50 a month ago. He’s coming out now because it’s ahead and he is afraid that the margin’s going down. But he would not come out if it was behind. He’s coming out against [Virginia Lt. Gov.] Winsome [Earle-]Sears because she’s coming up a little bit, but she’s still behind. He always picks what he thinks is a sure winner.  Sometimes he’s wrong because the polls are biased. We will see, but it’s not some brave guy, and I don’t think he has much clout anymore. Everybody’s sick of him.   Winc: Yes, I agree.   Hanson: I mean, he gave everybody these lectures about being civic-minded and, at some point, “Why do you need money? What are you gonna buy, two houses?”  No, you’re gonna buy four, Barack. So, he was just a contradiction, walking contradiction. And they’re just tired. They’re just so tired of Al Gore and “The View” and Barack Obama lecturing people, “You’ve gotta think this, you’ve gotta do this.” Donald Trump took their little balloon, and he blew it all up.  Bill Gates says, “The world is not gonna overheat. We’re spending all this money. We don’t need to do it. We don’t end up like Europe. We gotta do AI! AI! AI! I gotta make another hundred billion. How can I do that when I’m advocating wind and solar? We need nuclear. I want more money.” That’s what Bill Gates is saying.  And you know, the same thing with DEI. It’s a dirty word now. D-E-I, D-E-I. It’s just a synonym of non-meritocratic. And nobody’s saying, “We need to let in 10,000 people illegally.” So, he just gloms on what he thinks are popular issues. I don’t see him going out there and saying, “We need to open the border.” I don’t see him thinking, “I said right after George Floyd, we might have to think about defunding the police. Gotta think about that.” No, you don’t say that now, do you?   Winc: I agree with you, but I’m still concerned that there are people on the Left that see that he has great influence and they’re willing to pay him to do these advertisements because they think that that influence is going to help their position.  Hanson: They think that, but empirically, I don’t think there’s any evidence that when he comes in to endorse—I can’t think of any losing candidate that called him in who was way behind in the polls or behind that he saved. Every single cause he came in, his person or cause or issue was either ahead of the polls or dead even, and gaining, and his job was to ensure that a sure winner didn’t blow it. And he didn’t work with Harris. It did not work.   Winc: No, it sure didn’t.   Hanson: And I don’t think it worked with Hillary Clinton in 2016. And I don’t think it’s gonna work necessarily with, we’ll see.   Winc: Well, the governor’s office must feel like they are winning the battle on Prop 50 because there was a California secretary of state ad run on the World Series, and I thought that was interesting that, “Everybody needs to get out to vote.” And for all of you who are not in California, the only thing on the voting ballot is Proposition 50. So, they want to make sure everybody gets out and votes “Yes,” although they didn’t say that on Proposition 50 and spent millions of dollars in ads.   Hanson: The argument is so weird. This was the party that said democracy dies in darkness. Trump is going to destroy democracy, and we are going to rig congressional districts to look like jigsaw puzzle pieces.  And we have already done that. We have ensured that only nine of 52 seats will be Republican. But that’s not enough for us. If they had voted 40% of the seats, you would have 17, 18 seats that were Republican. So, they all gerrymandered him down to nine, and now they’re saying, “That’s not enough. We gotta destroy our opposition and get it down to four or five, and that’s called democracy.” And that’s a hard sell even for people. But they’re going to vote for it. Maybe, maybe not, but we’ll see. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: Trump ‘Blew Up’ the Democrats’ and Obama’s ‘Little Balloon’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Last month, Kamala Harris made the rounds of supportive liberal networks to promote her campaign book 107 Days. The title implied it was impossible for her to beat that allegedly despised dictator Donald Trump with so little time. No one expected much of the interviewers, starting with ABC’s The View, which could have titled the interview “You Had Me at Hello.” They put a six-pack of suckups on the set. The “conservative” Alyssa Farah Griffin could only ask if Harris missed any warning signs.  The biggest event in that interview was co-host Sunny Hostin confessing to the Mom-ala that she felt she’d hurt her chances by asking an obvious question: Where do you differ from Joe Biden? Harris said she couldn’t think of anything. That shouldn’t be a destructive question. It’s an obvious question, even if the answer was exploitable. ABC’s Good Morning America was no better. Co-host Michael Strahan tiptoed in with Democrat concerns: “There's some Democrats who said that you don't take enough responsibility for the loss. How do you respond to that?” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow gushed over Kamala as the “patron saint of I Told You So,” and let her subject compare Trump to a communist dictator. We won’t even get into her interviews with Don Lemon and Joy Reid.  All these Americans looked dreadful when the Kamala Harris book tour went international. British Broadcasting Corporation interviewer Laura Kuennsberg noticed Harris said “I’m not done,” suggesting another presidential run. She warned: “But when you look at the bookies' odds, they put you, as an outsider, even behind Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.” Harris claimed she's never "listened to polls."  That seems obvious, since she dropped out of her first presidential campaign before the primaries even began. Kuennsberg also went after Biden’s cognitive decline: “You write that President Biden didn’t raise his frailty with you, and you write that you didn’t really raise it with him. That’s extraordinary to read in your account.” Harris claimed she didn’t doubt his capacity to serve as president, but he lacked the capacity to run for re-election. The BBC anchor was gobsmacked: “Isn't it a strange message to the public to say, you know, what you need to be tougher and more able to run a political campaign than actually to be the person behind the desk in the Oval Office?” Harris stuck to her line. Then came Australia’s ABC. Interviewer Sarah Ferguson also pressed on the decline question: "Didn’t you also have a responsibility? You were one of the people in the room…. Didn't you have a responsibility as an American to step up and say something at that point?" Harris insisted: "I did not question Joe Biden's capacity to be president at all." Ferguson blamed Biden: "Wasn't his refusal to recognize his own frailties the reason that you faced a nearly impossible task?" When Harris shifted to saying Trump was the real challenge, Ferguson called her out: "I want to interrupt you because that is a world-class pivot, but it is not the question that I asked you, which is about Joe Biden's failure to recognize his own frailties and what that did to you," Ferguson said. "The question is about Joe Biden. Are you still reluctant to criticize the former president?" Harris answered: “In what regard, please?” Ferguson restated her thesis that Biden damaged her chances. Harris repeated: “He was not frail as President of the United States.” This was about as accurate as comparing Trump to a communist dictator. It’s a colossal shame that American journalists can’t ask the questions that foreigners can.

Residents of an apartment complex in Southern California were horrified to after the remains of a 7-year-old boy were found stuffed inside a freezer of their neighbors' unit.Deputies were called on a welfare check to the apartment at the complex on Euclid Avenue in Lynwood on Tuesday evening, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.'This is an unimaginable and horrific tragedy. ... My heart breaks for what the other children in this home must have experienced.'After finding the remains, police arrested 25-year-old Destiny Harrison, the boy's mother, on suspicion of committing murder.They also arrested his father, 25-year-old Daniel Monzon, and his grandmother, 46-year-old Ana Zarceno-Carcamo, on conspiracy to commit murder.The couple had three other children living in their home, and they were taken into protective custody. The children were 16 years, 13 years, and 9 months old.Police said they were still investigating the incident and offered few details."This is an unimaginable and horrific tragedy," L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn said. "I stand ready to support the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department as they investigate this child's death. My heart breaks for what the other children in this home must have experienced, and it's critical that our Department of Children and Family Services do everything possible to support them and keep them safe in protective custody."Neighbors told KTLA-TV they were shocked by the report and said they had seen no signs of trouble from the family."To me she seemed like a normal person," said a neighbor who did not want to be identified. "The whole time she was here, she was walking her dog right here, and that's about it.""Once I found out it was a kid, I was literally driving home with my gut going crazy," said Christian Torres, who lives near the location of the incident. "It hurts when you hear about these cases, but when you live them and they're so close to you, it's a whole different thing." RELATED: Remains of 4 dead infants found abandoned in recently vacated house, police sources say Another resident, who only wanted to be identified as Mia, said no one heard anything. "That's traumatizing to know that kid had to suffer like that," she told KTLA. "A lot of people are trying to figure out what family did this. ... How did we not know? How did other people not know? There are thousands of people living around here, and none of us heard a thing or even saw anything on any of the kids." The three suspects are being held on $2 million bail each.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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