Suicide victim’s father applauds book
Book condemns cannabis impact
Bart Bright read the forwarded email from a stock advice company and had to shrug:
After a disappointing 2019, cannabis stocks came roaring back to life in 2020. And one red-hot stock shot up 210.7 percent in 5 days on news of stronger-than-expected sales due to Covid-19. Another was up 127 percent in 60 days, and another jumped 128 percent.
“Big Marijuana like Big Tobacco. Follow the money and don’t worry about public health,” Bright said.
In an era when more and more states legalize cannabis — New Mexico made it the 18th state this week — the fight becomes more difficult for the Benicia man and his wife, Hazel, whose 29-year-old son, Kevin died by suicide in 2018 after suffering from depression and diagnosed cannabis-induced psychosis.
Bright, a 64-year-old former teacher, crusades in his son’s name against today’s high THC marijuana and its impact on teenage and young adult users.
“I’m trying to educate people,” he said by phone Thursday.
Bright’s latest effort is promoting “Smokescreen: What the Marijuana Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know.”
Written by Dr. Kevin A. Sabet of Washington D.C., the 254-page book details medical studies, corruption, lobbying of policy makers, and first-hand accounts of the multi-billion dollar industry.
Not so coincidentally, the book has its official release on Tuesday, April 20 — “420” is an annual “marijuana holiday.”
In a news release by SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana), Sabet said that “many of us in the public health space have held many events in recent years on this day in an attempt to ‘reclaim’ the day from those who wish to normalize the use of marijuana and downplay the harms its proliferation has and continues to cause.”
Sabet added that he wrote the book “to expose this industry for its deception and attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of lawmakers, the media, and the public.”
An excerpt from the book that spotlight’s Kevin Bright’s death:
He was fifteen and suffering from depression when he started smoking pot in his small town just outside of San Francisco. He was spending about $400 a week on marijuana, ingesting capsules filled with a tarlike oil containing high doses of THC. People told his parents that marijuana wasn’t addictive. But Kevin’s use proved otherwise. He simply couldn’t shake the habit. Although he admitted at one point that marijuana had “ruined his life,” he kept demanding that his parents buy him what he called “his medicine.” Out of love and worry, they refused. Subsequently, he overdosed on pills, but survived. Then he tried to hang himself, but a 911 call saved him. Later he drove his Honda Accord off a boat ramp, but didn’t drown as he hoped he would. Finally, on August 14, 2018, at just 29 years of age, Kevin placed a plastic bag over his head in a hotel room and inhaled nitrous oxide through a tube until he asphyxiated. He finally succeeded in ending his life. As Hazel Bright, Kevin’s mother, said, “If we can convince one parent— to educate them so they can hopefully save their son or daughter—it will all be worth it, because it doesn’t make sense to lose our children to marijuana.”
Bart Bright said “it was hard” deciding to allow the passage about his son.
“Part of me wants to keep it private. I was apprehensive. I had anxiety. Having to read it again made it feel like it happened yesterday,” Bright said, adding that he and
his wife read the personal parts of the book separately.
Yes, Bright said, both cried. It is personal, he emphasized.
“A lot of people think that if you’re talking about today’s marijuana not being all good and natural, you must be a right-wing whacko,” Bright said.
Bright said the problem isn’t as much that marijuana is legal, but that the THC content is far more potent than weed in the 1970s.
“It’s not the ‘Hey man, peace and love’ marijuana any more. It’s the opposite. Heavy users get angry and have psychotic episodes,” Bright said, lamenting that “it’s really amazing that Big Marijuana says the same thing Big Tobacco used to say: ‘It’s good for you. It’s natural.’ It’s the same playbook.”
Also, “the pro-marijuana people keep saying there’s no research. There’s tons of research,” Bright said, emphasizing one study of suicides in those 25 years old and younger “and the No. 1 substance in the blood was THC.”
In 2016, California passed Prop. 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, with 57 percent approval.
“Marijuana is the only ‘medicine’ the public’s ever voted on,” Bright said. “They didn’t vote on what vaccine we have for COVID. That went through the FDA. They never voted on the millions of drugs the FDA approved. Not one of those drugs has been voted on by the pubic.”
Bright said he hoped “Smokescreen” helps educate the public.
“It’s like cigarettes years ago when most people thought cigarette smoking was healthy for you because that’s what Big Tobacco said,” Bright noted. “And years ago, cigarettes had low nicotine until Big Tobacco realized that by putting more nicotine in cigarettes, it’s more addictive. That’s what they’ve done with marijuana.”
Though much of Bright’s activism is against marijuana use for those with still-developing brains 25 and younger, changing the legal age to use and purchase to 26 “is not realistic.”
“It would be a victory if they said it has to be FDA approved. That would be a victory,” Bright said.
Again, he reiterated, with Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol investing billions in the marijuana industry, “follow the money,” Bright said.
“It’s a lot different than growing it in your backyard,” he said.
.For more, visit learnaboutsam.org.