Heather and Randy Bacchus have been grieving since their 21-year-old son, Randy Michael Bacchus III, took his own life one year ago in Colorado while suffering from cannabis-induced psychosis.
But the parishioners of St. Mary of the Lake in White Bear Lake, parents also of three daughters, are determined to share their story to help others understand the dangerous impact of high-potency marijuana that is replacing the less potent “weed” of the 1970s and beyond.
All this even as a bill before the Minnesota Legislature, passed by the House last year and moribund in the Senate this year, would make recreational marijuana legal and set up a framework to grow, package and sell the drug.
“We didn’t realize at the time what the weed really was,” said Randy Bacchus, 53, of their son’s marijuana use, which began at age 15. “Back in the day, the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, THC (the psychoactive agent in cannabis) was about 2% to 5%. Today, the concentrates, a dab, or vape, is at 30%, 40%, up to 90%.”
“I thought it was quasi-harmless,” Randy said. But as their son’s struggles with marijuana grew — and the family tried to help him with counseling, a wilderness therapy session in Utah, changes in high schools, asking him to leave the house, also inviting him back into the house — they learned more about the drug he was using.
“It’s so strong, the potency,” Randy said. “Once he started smoking weed, we saw a real change.”
Their son, who struggled from a very young age with learning, anxiety and impulse control, felt marijuana helped him get through difficult times, his father said. But Randy and Heather noted an uptick in anxiety when they knew their son was not using marijuana. He grew both more aggressive and withdrawn. Marijuana appeared to make their son’s mental health challenges worse.
At age 18, graduated from high school, their son moved to Colorado in 2018. He had been accepted into the University of Colorado in Boulder. His parents hoped he would find work and establish residency to lower tuition costs. The change began well, with their son landing a job in real estate leasing and attending a community college. But their son’s anxiety ramped up and he suffered from headaches. He applied for and received a medical marijuana card. Recreational marijuana in Colorado was also legal.
By June 2020, their son was suffering from paranoia. He thought his roommate was “trying to do things to him that really didn’t make sense,” his father said. “We didn’t understand, but in hindsight …”
It reached the point where they believe their son had cannabis-induced psychosis, breaks from reality that can include hearing voices, which sometimes dictate behavior that people in their right minds would not contemplate. Their son was contrite, loving but at the same time paranoid and delusional in the days before he committed suicide in Denver in July 2021, his parents said.
“The irony is, my son thought marijuana was saving his life,” Randy said. “And it took his life.”
Reaching out in their pain, the Bacchuses found other families whose children have suffered similar fates from cannabis use, including Laura Stack, founder of Johnny’s Ambassadors in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, near Denver. Stack’s son, Johnny, killed himself at age 19 in 2019, and she started her nonprofit organization to raise awareness and educate teenagers, parents and communities about the dangers of high-THC marijuana to adolescent brain development, mental illness and suicide.
High-potency marijuana impacts neural pathways in the brain, particularly in adolescent brains that are still developing, Stack explains on the group’s website, johnnysambassadors.org. The harmful combination of a still-forming mind and high frequency use of high-potency THC products equals cannabis-induced psychosis, Stack says. Repeated CIP incidents can trigger schizophrenia or other mental illness. Even when the cannabis is withdrawn, the psychosis remains.
“This is what happened to my beautiful boy,” she said.
Heather Bacchus has trained as an ambassador with Stack’s organization and hopes to speak at schools, and perhaps even testify before the Minnesota Legislature, about the dangers of highly potent marijuana. Stack said she knows Bacchus and understands what she — and many other parents — are going through. “She told me,” Stack said in an email interview about Bacchus’ efforts. “So glad to hear the stories are getting out.”
Her own son, Stack said, had no medical or mental health issues until he began using marijuana at age 14 at a party, when he was a freshman in high school. As their son’s involvement in the drug deepened, they turned to group programs, therapists, three mental health stays, inpatient and outpatient programs, she said.
“Three days before he passed, he came over for dinner,” Stack explains on her organization’s website. “He lived in our condo a couple miles down the street and would often pop in for a home-cooked meal. “I need to tell you that you were right,’ he said to me. ‘Right about what?’ I ask. ‘Right about the marijuana. You told me weed would hurt my brain, and it’s ruined my mind and my life. You were right all along. I’m sorry, and I love you.’ He died by suicide three days later.”
Johnny’s Ambassadors has 7,500 people on its mailing list, from all over the United States. It has 10 doctors, therapists and researchers on its scientific advisory board — specialists in child psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, emergency and pain medicine, cannabis use and psychosis.
The board includes practicing clinical psychologist Aaron Weiner, who in his practice in Lake Forest, Illinois, specializes in treating people suffering from drug or alcohol use or behavioral addictions. Recreational marijuana for people 21 and older has been legal in Illinois since 2020.
“I would say that as the advertisements have scaled up, as the industry has scaled up, we’ve seen marijuana use go up,” Weiner said in an email interview. “And certainly, the industry has a huge hand in this because they make more money the more (of it) they sell, and the more they normalize the product.”
The biggest danger of marijuana to adolescents is “a direct link between marijuana and brain health, in a negative direction,” Weiner said. “We know that when you put THC into the developing brain, it changes both the structure of the brain over time, as well as the function of the brain over time, in very negative ways.”
“Most people now will say, yes, marijuana use can cause psychosis, in a subset of cases,” he said.
The danger is not as high in adults because the brain isn’t growing after age 25, but addiction to marijuana and psychosis can happen to adults, too, Weiner said.
A recent study published in the journal Psychiatric Research found that there were 129,000 hospital discharges for marijuana-induced psychosis across the country in 2017, with a higher prevalence of such discharges in areas with more liberal cannabis legalization laws, Weiner said.
“That’s a really big deal,” he said.
While states legalizing recreational marijuana ban its use for all but adults, adolescents model what they see around them, he said. “That’s why we consistently see that recreational policies lead to particularly young adult use, ages 18 to 25. But then, we’re also seeing more and more evidence that youth use also goes up.”
Randy Bacchus said it is hard for him to step up and talk about the loss of his son. But he wants to help get the truth out about marijuana, a story not being told by companies that sell addiction, he said.
“I can really clam up,” he said. But relying on his faith has strengthened his faith.
“We can either become bitter or better,” he said. “I think we can get better.”
Heather said she and her husband “have a lot of energy. And we have a lot of pain. I’m taking that energy and making something good.”
LEGISLATIVE ACTION
A failed attempt in May to move a bill that would legalize recreational marijuana in Minnesota from its stalled position in a Senate committee to full debate on the Senate floor does not mean efforts to put more pot on the streets are over, said Ryan Hamilton, government relations specialist with the Minnesota Catholic Conference, which represents the public policy interests of the local Church.
Support for legalizing recreational cannabis can be seen by the Democratic-controlled House passing the Senate proposal’s companion bill last year, Hamilton said. And while the procedural move this year in the Republican-controlled Senate did not come close to its needed super-majority vote, it still garnered 31 votes in failing 31-33, Hamilton pointed out. Someone is likely to introduce similar cannabis measures in the next legislative session, he said.
“There is support in the Legislature, obviously,” Hamilton said. “But we still have time to provide the empirical information from other states that the harms of legalizing recreational cannabis outweigh any benefits.”
Harms include negative mental health impacts, particularly in youths and young adults, and diminished traffic safety as more people drive under the influence of marijuana, Hamilton said.
Efforts to keep recreational marijuana off the streets while supporting equal justice include introducing bills that address racial inequities in enforcing and sentencing for possession of small amounts of cannabis, Hamilton said. Trucking companies, school bus drivers, public safety advocates, insurance, food and beverage associations and others this year also joined forces in a group MCC helped found called Minnesotans Against Marijuana Legalization. Details are at minnesotansagainstmarijuanalegalization.org.
Seeing businesses oppose recreational marijuana helped stiffen the backs of Republican senators, Hamilton said. In addition to the coalition, other interest groups said they were not going to entertain the idea of legalizing cannabis, he said. Medical marijuana has been legal in Minnesota since 2014.
“On the upside, the issue is such that we have all those other states that have done this,” Hamilton said. “The proof comes out from that. Numbers don’t lie. This is not just a philosophical argument. Our position is backed by data and measurable harm.”
Nineteen states, Washington, D.C., and Guam have legalized recreational marijuana. Thirty-nine states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana.
This is the fourth in a four-part series on efforts to legalize recreational marijuana in Minnesota. The series explored Minnesota Catholic Conference’s opposition to the effort and moral grounds for opposition rooted in Catholic Church teaching. It also looked at failed promises of cannabis proponents and the push by large corporations in Minnesota and across the country to sell more marijuana.
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