Today's marijuana isn't the kind your grandmother smoked

Abstract

Johnny Stack, as Isabella Backman tells us, was introduced to marijuana at a school party when he was 14 years old, when its medical use had just been legalized in Colorado. That marijuana had been obtained by the older brother of one of her friends, who had a medical marijuana card. At 19, after five years of struggling with addiction and psychosis, Johnny died by suicide. Three days earlier, Backman tells us, he told his mother that marijuana had ruined his mind and his life. It was never proven, despite multiple lab tests, that he used any other drug.