There were already plenty of reasons for Donald Trump’s base to oppose what appears to be a likely forthcoming move to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I drug to the far less restrictive Schedule III status. But yet another one arose from the tragedy in Minnesota last week.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Robin Westman, the transgender lunatic who murdered two children and injured more than 20 other victims at Annunciation Catholic Church and School, was employed at a marijuana dispensary until a just two weeks before his meticulously-planned attack.

The Tribune further reported that Westman was fired for showing up late to work, or not at all—a behavior common among heavy users of the product the dispensary sells. The New York Post translated Westman’s long manifesto, which was written partly in a code using Cyrillic characters, revealing that Westman attributed his sick state of mind to a combination of trans ideology and the long-term effects of marijuana usage: “Gender and weed f–ked up my head,” he claimed. “I wish I never tried experimenting with either. Don’t let your kids smoke weed or change gender until they are like seventeen.”

Now, plenty of people waste their formative years stoned on the couch without ever feeling the urge to shoot up a church or school. Many grow out of it while others, ensnared, simply grow into burnt-out losers or devolve into some relatively benign state of anxiety and depression.

Still, the stakes are higher than ever as the Trump administration considers reclassification—a move that would bookend the decades-long march towards normalizing stoner culture, as I wrote last month. This latest shooting and the shooter’s clear ties to cannabis use—noted in his manifesto—make it worth exploring the very real links between marijuana usage and much more serious mental illness.

Trump, like far too many of our policy experts and legislators, is a Boomer. Their conception of marijuana likely stems from the “ditch weed” that generation wasted decades imbibing to relatively little effect. In 1990, the most potent cannabis one could find had about 5 percent THC, the primary psychoactive ingredient that produces a marijuana “high.” But put your faith in the market, and it delivers: among today’s designer weed, it’s hard to find a strain that has less than 20 percent THC, according to the UCLA Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids.

Currently, there’s no regulation of THC levels. Yet research shows that mental health outcomes get worse both the more you use pot and the stronger it is.

Pot smoking not only increases the risk of mental health issues like depression but is also associated with psychosis and schizophrenia. It can exacerbate existing issues, or stimulate new ones, especially for people with a history of mental illness in their families. And the younger you start, the more likely you are to experience a negative impact (16 is the most likely age of initiation, although younger is not uncommon).

One Lancet study shows that those who use highly potent marijuana (over 10 percent THC) are five times more likely to experience a first-time psychotic episode. Another NIH study recommends “policies to curb” potent marijuana access pending further research.

The existing evidence all points in the same direction but remains sparse, largely due to pot’s Schedule I classification which places more stringent restrictions on research.

The one upside of reclassification might be that conducting further studies would become easier—but how much research do we really need for a drug that is already culturally normalized? We’ve long known the debilitating effects of alcohol, but that knowledge does little to cut into the West’s cherished tradition of drinking.

Minnesota is one of the 24 states that have legalized recreational marijuana in recent years, a move which the drug’s advocates claim reduces crime. But contrary to popular belief, our prisons are not filled with minorities charged with minor pot crimes, and a 2024 study actually suggests that the “legalization of recreational marijuana is associated with substantial and sustained increases in both property crime rates and violent crimes over time.”

Rescheduling marijuana is a funny way to tackle America’s urban crime problem, as Trump seems determined to do. But he’s far from the only one persisting in outdated blasé attitudes about pot.

For the right, it’s far easier to focus on more pressing issues brought to the forefront in the wake of the Annunciation shooting. 

As a “trans kid,” Westman was likely subjected to myriad pharmaceutical experiments designed to override his natural development—an issue the right is correct to emphasize, and perhaps it’s the most obvious and politically winning issue. Given Westman’s deranged writings, it is clear that he was radicalized in an online political culture that teaches loners and misfits like him that all opposition to his desires is “fascism” and “Zionism” and that these pose an existential threat to the world, and particularly to people like him. We need to get serious about  how we can de-radicalize a generation that has been imbibing genocidal propaganda against ordinary Western culture everywhere from YouTube to the lessons taught in their grammar schools?

Marijuana may not be as acutely harmful as these other influences that made Westman into a monster. But that doesn’t mean pot is good, or even a neutral piece of the puzzle. And it certainly doesn’t mean we should stop caring, just because everyone else seems to have moved on to other questions.

Pot usage, even at its most benign, just doesn’t fit with the America First program. A fully normalized stoner culture is perhaps worse than the acute mental health crises with which it is increasingly and obviously now correlated. A stoned America is one that’s perfectly fine with managed decline as long as it can cling to the few little comforts their overlords permit to remain. The bright, dynamic, and prosperous future vision Trump has for America cannot come about if her people are content to stay home and rot.