Dan Crenshaw Disagrees with Joe Rogan About Recreational Marijuana

Here's something we're probably gonna disagree about. Recreational marijuana. You're apparently not in favor. I really thought we were gonna do a whole show with Joe Rogan and you weren't gonna bring up marijuana. Like what are the chances? You're not in favor of recreational marijuana. No, I can be convinced, but I'm not there yet. I can convince you right now. Spark one up. I don't like it. I just don't like it. I like Scotch. Okay, I like that too. We've had Scotch this whole time. You gave me this amazing coffee. That's Blair Hamilton's super food coffee. It's pretty damn good, right? It's made me so coherent. I love it, the clarity. Super good. Well, it's got turmeric. It reduces inflammation. That's why it gives you yellow lips though. So I'm definitely more open to just the federal legalization of medical marijuana and all the benefits that come with that. I think the science backs that up pretty well. On the recreational side, I'm happy to leave that to the states. Okay, and then there's the argument of, well, the states are having trouble with some things, the banking laws, et cetera, because the federal government still makes it illegal. My issue with recreational marijuana still is, and again, this is not a strong opinion I have. This is not a hill I'm dying on by any means. But if we're going to change it, I want to understand what the point is and what the benefits are of it recreationally. I understand the benefits medically very well. But I want to understand the recreational benefits. And I want to see how this data plays out in places like California and Colorado. I want to see if there's an increased use among young people, because there's very good science that says if you use marijuana a lot under the age of 26, you're going to have cognitive issues for the rest of your life. Along with alcohol. Yes, yeah, but it is. Which is legal. And people compare those things, but my counter isn't that ... My counter is simply this. The alcohol issue is out of the bag. Like it just is. We're never going to put that back in. Do you think they're going to put pot back in the bag? My point is this. There's a normalization that occurs when you legalize something. Okay, so let's say you make the age 21. What is it in California? I think it's 21, is it? Marijuana, I think it's the same as alcohol. So let's say you make it 21. What you've done though is you've normalized it for teenagers. Because you said, well, yeah, it's 21. But it's legal, so there's no issues with it. I think that's what you're telling people. And there's a lot of people who can just live their lives extremely productively and smoke pot a lot. And there's a lot of people who can't. Okay, and there's a lot of people who don't. Those people are lazy bitches. Well, yeah. Let me help you out. You can maybe live your life ... Listen, pot's not for everybody. And I have a lot of friends who don't smoke pot. But pot is a tool, just like a hammer. You could build a house with a hammer, or you could hit yourself in the dick if you're fucking crazy. Like scotch. You could drink scotch recreationally. You can have a couple of glasses with some friends and have a great conversation. It's a social lubricant, and people enjoy it, and I enjoy it, and that's why we got a bunch of bottles of it over there. Look. But don't you have to drink way more scotch to get even close to the basically cognitive incoherence that you'd be able to just one bite of a brownie? You would, but not me. I smoke pot all the time. I could smoke pot ... I could have smoked pot before this podcast and then the exact same podcast. I could have had several hits. If I gave you several hits, you'd be obliterated. And you'd be so paranoid. You'd be freaking out. You'd think the government's coming to get you, and you're going to close down Congress and oh my God, the Chinese are listening to my phone. It's ... a lot of it is based on our own ideas and perceptions, and I had a lot of these misconceptions in my own head. I didn't really ... I smoked pot maybe six times or so, seven times, before I was 30 years old. And then when I was 30, I started hanging around with a guy I smoked, my friend Eddie Bravo. And I'd come in and pot together and I realized, oh, this is an incredible tool for creativity. If you use it correctly. And yeah, it makes you paranoid. But I think a lot of what that paranoia is, is you being acutely aware of your vulnerability and your actual real place in the cosmos, and your real place in society, and the real dangers of driving cars, and the real dangers of being in crowds of people. It's a weird, uncomfortable feeling, but ultimately you get through that and you're going to be okay. And culturally, I just don't really have a problem with what you're saying. I'm not cultural ... I guess on a personal level, I'm just not opposed to what you're saying at all. From a policy level though, I just look at things differently. When I extracted myself from the personal situations I've had with pot, and I look at it from a policy perspective- What personal situations do you have? I've tried it. You get paranoid? I don't like it. I really don't. Freak out? No, no, I'm not a freak out kind of person. What happened? What didn't you like? It's just the sensation. They just, in general, I just really didn't like it. I don't know- How much did you smoke? Too much? What? Sorry? I think there's something going on with my headphones. I'm going to gloss over this. But here's the problem with keeping it illegal. Criminal sell it. I mean, this is the same problem we had during prohibition. This is what propped up the mom, right? We all know this. This is the number one problem we have with the Mexican drug cartels. Number one problem is that there's a goddamn customer base in the United States, and they're making billions and billions of dollars selling illegal drugs. What's the solution to that? I don't know. I mean, look, I have kids. I don't want fucking heroin to be something you could buy at 7-Eleven. I don't want you to be able to go to a store and buy meth. I guess it's a whole other conversation about all drugs, right? Drugs, all drugs. Yeah, but those are the real dangerous ones. Pot's not that. Maybe a lot of kids can tell them that pot's the real danger and you shouldn't do it. Then they start going, well, maybe you're lying about heroin. Maybe you're lying about meth. Maybe you're just square. Maybe you're just some loser who just wants to be stuck in a cubicle all day and you want me to be living like you. But it does reduce productivity, I think more than alcohol does when kids do it. Entirely dependent upon the person. I get paranoid and I want to do more things because I don't want to be a loser. That's what happens to me when I smoke pot. I think it accentuates many aspects of people that are already lazy. If you are already lazy and you have a problem with discipline, which I don't, if you have a problem with discipline and you smoke pot, yeah, you're going to just want to veg out, lie in the grass and stare at the clouds. I want to get going. I smoke pot and go to the gym. I do it all the time. And again, as a policymaker though, I have to look at the whole situation. So I see people like you and you're like, yeah, you'd be fine. Why not? But I do have to take into account the entirety of the situation and ask myself, well, what is the benefit to society doing this? What is the- It enhances the sense of community and makes people more aware of their surroundings, be kinder to people. I actually, I mean, I don't know. I think alcohol is much more of a social lubricant. It definitely makes it meaner too. But I mean, as far as getting along with people and going out and interacting with human beings- It's different. It's different, but yes, it inhibits your inhibitions. It lowers your inhibition. So it allows you to talk more freely with people, definitely encourages more sex and more terrible decision making and driving too. The thing about marijuana- The driving is another policy problem because like, how do you test for it? We have a very kind of clear standards on alcohol. It's just this- It's a good point. Again, I'm not just, I'm not dying on this hill. I have questions and those questions are unanswered. I understand, but these questions oftentimes are coming from a place of propaganda. People have this idea of what it is versus what it really is. I don't know. I have personal experience with this. I'm 35. So, like, I've grown up around this my entire life. But how many experiences? I'm not some- What? Again, did you do it right? Can't hear you. But here's the thing. It's the same thing with alcohol though. You could have driven drunk and crashed your car and go, alcohol's bad. Look, I drove my car into a fucking tree. And I go, well, hey man, I just had a couple beers with my friends. We had a great old time. We laughed it up and nobody got hurt. The difference is, again, the way to measure how much too much alcohol is well defined. We also have just hundreds of years of experience as a culture with how to figure out alcohol and how to deal with it. We have thousands of years of experience of how to use cannabis. But it was suppressed in the 1930s by William Randolph Hearst and Harry Anslinger. And it was more of an economic decision than it was a public health decision. And I think- I've heard your podcast on that. It's interesting. Yeah, there's many, many documentaries and books written on it. But I think that the real problem is when you make drugs illegal, only outlaws sell drugs, you prop up illegal enterprises. I have a guy coming in next month, or next week rather, John Norris, who is a guy who works for the state. He's one of those guys that has to go around and find these illegal grow ops on public land. And it's fucking extremely dangerous. Yeah. I mean, bottom line is, my position is that's a state decision. It's a state decision. But why not federally? Why wouldn't it be federally legal if alcohol is federally legal? If we know that no one's dying from it. No one can overdose on it. For a person, I just want to see what the data comes out as from Colorado. It's mixed right now, frankly. I think we need a strong education program to let people know, first of all, if you have a problem with reality, if you have schizophrenia in your family, if your reality is already slippery, marijuana is not for you. And I've personally seen people that have struggled that do have an adverse reaction to marijuana and then go off the fucking rails. It does happen. Yeah. Particularly with edibles. Edibles in particular, knocks people for a loop. But then there's other people that doesn't do that too. And I think the way to study that is to have actual funding and make it legal where you could look at things across the board and figure out why. Yeah. I think as far as the battles we should fight at the federal level, we got to start with the medical side. I think the science is clear there. So let's start. I mean, I just- The CBD is the gateway, right? CBD is non-psychoactive and helps so many old people with arthritis and so many people with anxiety. It's fantastic. Just again, another reason I'm a Republican is because I believe in somewhat slower policymaking too. These conversations have to play out in society and we don't always need to solve the problem right away. There's a reason for that. Things must happen so- So I think the medical conversation is the one we should be fighting for. I think the recreational side is a few steps beyond that. And then we get to that and we'll know more. And I think that's why generally when people ask me that, I'm like, the medical thing is the thing to be talking about right now. I appreciate that conservative perspective and the slow approach to things. And I understand what you're saying. What bothers me more than anything is that American citizens are not doing any harm to anyone could be criminals for something that's been used by human beings for thousands of years and doesn't show any real problems. I don't think young people should drink, but I drank when I was young. I mean, I didn't drink a lot, but I did occasionally. I don't think young people should smoke pot. I definitely don't encourage it. A matter of fact, I deeply discourage it. And I tell people, look, there's a reason, one of the reasons why I enjoy it is I didn't start smoking really until I was 30. And I take time off all the time. It's not an addictive substance to me. It's psychologically addictive to some people and there might be some evidence that a very small percentage of people, it's physically addictive, but not like alcohol is or not, like a lot of the things that we can just buy anywhere are. Yeah. Those are all fair arguments. It's a good discussion to have. We sort of disagree on it, but only because I just think more due diligence seems to be done. This is not something I'm vehemently opposed to. Well, I think anything for young kids could be a real problem, especially for young kids where their brain is still developing and they're trying to find their way through life and you give them something that severely distorts reality, whatever it is. I wish we had that same due diligence the way they prescribe psychotropic drugs to kids because we don't. We should. It's up to parents' discretion. So many parents are putting their kids on Ritalin and Prozac and Adderall and you're making kids speed freaks. As opposed to relying on cognitive behavioral therapy, which is proven to work much better. Because you're getting at the problem. You're questioning the untruth that you're telling yourself. That's effectively what CBT is. And it's good practice. Kids have exorbitant amounts of energy. And you can call that hyperactive. You could just say, oh, that kid's got a fucking great engine. Got a lot of gas. Just figure out a way to get this kid engaged in what they like. I guarantee you'd take that kid, put him in front of a video game. He doesn't have any problem focusing. What he has a problem with is shitty classes with boring subjects and teachers that are uninterested. And so many people are being labeled as being problems because of this. You want to blame something else besides reality. And that's problematic. And you're talking about looking into certain drugs. The opioid epidemic is an issue too. Huge, huge. And that's a bipartisan issue. It's just, again, it's not exactly clear. How do you solve this? Right. How do you solve this? I have a ton of experience with opioids because I've been injured so many times. Did you ever have a problem getting off of them once you... Oh, yeah. It's devastating. What was it like? It's absolutely devastating. And I never knew, this was in 2012, so I didn't know how devastating it would be. Because I just stopped taking them. I don't think I'm in pain anymore. I should probably just not take these. And then I was in worse pain. I was sick. I didn't know what was wrong with me. What was the experience like? You can't move. You're sick. I don't know how to describe it. You're just really sick. And is your body craving the pills? Yeah, but I didn't know that, I think. So you're just feeling the sickness? I'm just feeling the sickness. I didn't quite know where it was coming from. And then you tell your doctor, and they're like, oh, yeah, you got to wean off of that. We didn't tell you that? No, you didn't tell me that. I was 28 when this happened, so my body can get over it. You're also 28 with a strong mind who's a seal. Right, but the age matters, just like it matters with pot. And just like it matters with addiction. When teenagers are hooked on opioids, when that one dealer gets into the system, you change that person's brain forever. And they're always addicted to it in really bad ways. And it's different the way, I always remember it. It's ingrained in my brain too, but it's different because I was older. Like if you got an injury today, would you be reluctant to take them? No, no, I have faith in my ability to just act responsibly. So that requires a lot of things. But when you, and this gets, this a little bit gets to the war on drugs philosophy, like do you just not do it because we're losing all the time? And I actually disagree with that pretty strongly. Yeah, you might feel like you're losing all the time, but you are mitigating it. And supply does create demand, especially with something like opioids. If that one dealer gets into that one high school and gets those kids addicted at one party, and those kids die 10, 12 years later, and I've watched this happen, I've been to the funerals, and it's devastating. And that demand was created by supply. So again, there's never a black and white to anything. And so when we say, oh, war on drugs is stupid or it's not stupid, like, no, it's complicated, it's complicated in the opioid epidemic. So I think a good indication of that. What could be done to mitigate that other than sawing Florida off and selling it to the Russians? What did Florida do here? Florida was a problem. You know the whole deal with the pill mills? Did you ever, there's a great documentary called the OxyContin Express. It detailed how they had pain management centers in Florida set up right next to, the doctor was next door to the pharmacy that only sold opioids. And they- I didn't realize that was a Florida specific. And they didn't have a database. They didn't have a database. So there's no computer database. So you could, if you were a doctor, I could go to you. I could get my opioids, and I'd go over to Jamie. He's a doctor. He could hook me up, and then I'd go down the street and get more, and then people started selling them. And there was an express from Florida that went up into Kentucky and Ohio and all these different states that were having giant problems, and they found out the pills were all coming from this one area. It was a Vanguard documentary. Yeah. And that stuff's been slammed down pretty hard. Yes. Ever since. And so, and the pendulum maybe has swung a little too far because now pain patients are having trouble getting the opioids they want. They're like, ah, here's two pills for your surgery. And you're like, really? Right. So some people legitimately need this stuff. And so we've got to find that correct balance. And again, you've always got to know why there's a problem. And there's a general policy approach. We should always really question why the problem exists in the first place and what the characteristics of that problem are. So a lot of people are dying, not necessarily, they're not overdosing on OxyContin. They're overdosing from illegal forms of it or heroin that is laced with fentanyl. So how do you tackle that? Well, fentanyl is coming through the southern border. That's where it's coming from. We could talk about immigration too, but what happens a lot is those massive waves of immigrants who are turning themselves in to border patrol, they're allowed to cross because the drug cartels say they can cross. That's why they come across in organized groups. And then they turn themselves into border patrol and they claim asylum. They always bring a kid with them so that they know they can stay. But what's also happening is just down the road, the drug cartels are moving the fentanyl or other drugs across, especially the bulky drugs, mostly like marijuana, things like that. Fentanyl is so small they can just bring it through trucks, through ports of entry. And so we need sensors to actually detect that and we're getting those, getting those put in place more. And we need to secure the border because this is where it's coming from. And we need to deal with where it's coming from south of the border, which is China. So the administration actually did that and we got the Chinese to say at least that they'll do it and you never know how much they're enforcing that. So we'll see.