Laura Stack is Johnny Stack’s mom. In the business world, she is better known by her professional moniker, The Productivity Pro®. She is a Hall-of-Fame Speaker and corporate spokesperson for many major brands. Laura is a bestselling author of eight books on productivity and performance topics with a large social media following, and she has given keynote speeches and training seminars to major corporate, association, and government audiences for nearly 30 years.

On November 20, 2019, Laura suddenly acquired the undesired wisdom of knowing what it’s like to lose one’s child, when her 19-year-old son, Johnny, died by suicide. He suffered from delusion from marijuana-induced psychosis and thought the mob was after him.

Laura’s world took a 180. She filed for and received 501c3 nonprofit status for Johnny’s Ambassadors, Inc., with a mission to educate parents and teens about the dangers of today’s high-THC marijuana on adolescent brain development, mental illness, and suicide. Described as a woman with unstoppable drive and unwavering purpose, Laura hopes to help other parents, grandparents, teachers (and frankly all adults with teens in their lives) by honestly and boldly sharing Johnny’s story of his high-potency marijuana use, psychosis, and suicide.

Laura’s platform now brings education, awareness, and prevention curriculum to parents, organizations, healthcare conferences, community groups, and schools to raise awareness of THC use, mental illness, and suicide. By sharing Johnny’s own warning about marijuana, Laura helps parents understand and talk to their children about the potential harms of today’s marijuana. She is determined to start a movement to bring teen marijuana use, mental illness, and suicide into the spotlight and get adolescents to #StopDabbing.



Laura lives with her husband near Denver, Colorado and has two surviving adult children, ages 25 and 19.

Who Are We? Johnny’s Ambassadors is a non-partisan, non-profit, grass-roots alliance of individuals and organizations around the globe concerned about the harms of youth marijuana use. We are an army of educated advocates, who are going out into the world and starting tough conversations. We are parents, coalitions, impacted family members, healthcare professionals, teachers, and nonprofits who seek to reduce youth marijuana use through education, prevention, and awareness. We use evidence-based, scientific research and experts to teach the impacts of today’s high-THC marijuana on youth mental illness and suicide ideation. Our allied organizations come together to save the lives of our youth, and Johnny’s Ambassadors actively promotes their activities.

Our Mission: Johnny’s Ambassadors educates parents and teens about the risks of today’s high-THC marijuana on adolescent brain development, mental illness, and suicide. Research shows today’s high-potency marijuana causes mental health issues and higher incidence of suicide when used recreationally and illegally under 21 years of age.

Our Vision: To dramatically decrease the incidence of adolescent marijuana and substance abuse, mental illness, and suicide, to allow our youth to live productive, happy lives.



Steve Martorano 
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.

The Behavioral Corner 
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano and this is the Behavioral Corner; you're invited to hang with us, as we've discussed the ways we live today, the choices we make, the things we do, and how they affect our health and wellbeing. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner, please hang around a while.

Steve Martorano 
Hi, everybody, welcome to the Behavioral Corner to me again, your favorite, I hope, corner hanger outer, Steve Martorano. What we do on behavioral health as we talk about everything because everything is what affects our behavioral health. It's a big topic, we try to cover it as comprehensively as we can. Our underwriter partners who make it all possible are Retreat Behavioral Health; you'll hear more about them later. We've got a topic today that I'm reluctant to say is near and dear to my heart. But it was one point. I mean, marijuana is probably the best-known and most commonly thought of drug that has been used illegally for many, many years of this...in this country. It has undergone various stages of perception by the public. Demonized for most of the 20th century. Placed in the same category as heroin during the ill-fated and continuing war on drugs. Those laws destroyed many lives over what most people perceive to be a harmless herb. And it's true, all of that is true. So what we've had, in terms of a further change in marijuana perception, is a tremendous impetus towards legalization. We see it now spreading all over the country first, but medicinally. And in fact, there are medicinal uses for marijuana. But now, the spread includes the directly recreational use of marijuana. And like anything else, there's the law of unintended consequences involved in all of this, and we're here to talk about some of the more devastating and potentially harmful consequences of this race towards marijuana. Today's marijuana is very much different than the marijuana you and I may have smoked on the hillside at Woodstock. It's a whole different ballgame here. So, to that end, we have Laura Stack with us. Laura is the founder and CEO of an organization called Johnny's Ambassadors, which is an outgrowth of her son's suicide. Laura has written a book called The Dangerous Truth about today's marijuana. She's here to join us to talk about the organization she founded and what she can tell us about the dangers of the concentrates in marijuana and the role they played in Johnny's death. Laura, thanks so much for sitting through that long-winded thing. Did I get most of that right?

Laura Stack 

That's just perfect. Thank you, Steve. Yes, I formed Johnny's Ambassadors when our 19-year-old son Johnny died by suicide after dabbing concentrated marijuana shatter and vapes here in Colorado, where it was the first state to legalize recreational marijuana. And now we are very busy educating people. And then so I'm pleased to be on this show about the potential harms of youth marijuana use, particularly as it relates to their brain development to the creation of mental illnesses and youth. And sadly, a suicide which we are seeing more and more of in Colorado. Suicide is the number one cause of death in our youth. And nearly 40% of youth have THC in their toxicology reports. Very few have alcohol. It's extremely easy to get marijuana here. So thank you for the invitation to join you. 

Steve Martorano 

Well, I thought for a long time that the train was going to quickly down the track. And again, as I said, I'm from a generation that thought you know, it was a sacrament in some cases. So I'm in an ironic position here, but you're...you're on the right side of this issue, unfortunately. The price paid here is devastating. Tell us about Johnny.

Laura Stack 

Well, Johnny first used marijuana when he was 14. And I know because he told us. He came home from a party. It had just been commercialized. He was a freshman in high school. He went to the party, and his friend's brother at the time was 18, which here is the magical age it's not 21. It's 18. We have 27 hundred 18-year-olds in Colorado with their medical marijuana cards. Our "pot shop Docs" are very well known. You just make up some malady like a migraine or a backache. You pay your few 100 bucks. And our 18-year-olds legally go into the dispensaries and buy these very concentrated products -- shatter wax whatever they want, and then they go and sell it to their peers we call it the gray market here. This isn't, you know, stuff you get on the street it's not laced with fentanyl. It's legally purchased dispensary weed that you can get in five minutes from any 18-year-old. Before Johnny, you know, went to this party. I mean, he was just, you know, your average American kid. He was very involved in school activities and sports. He played piano and guitar. He was involved in our church. We're a Christian family. You know, we taught Sunday school, and he was incredibly smart. He had a 4.0 GPA until his senior year of high school and got a perfect SATs score in the math portion. 800 out of 800, just a great person, you know, a life ahead of him, a scholarship to Colorado State University. And sadly, in five years from the 14-year-old great kid until his death at 19, he struggled with addiction and sadly, psychosis and started to think that the mob was after him. I got incredibly paranoid from using this stuff. His delusional thinking was just we...we couldn't figure it out. Because I'm like you, I just thought, you know...

Steve Martorano 

It's marijuana. What's the problem?

Laura Stack 

Like, you know, I used it when I was in high school. I used it twice. I didn't really like it. But I mean, I remember putting the, you know, the grass in the paper and smoking a joint we all pass it around, we kind of giggled, and we went to Denny's,. Like that was my whole experience of it and so being -- and it's not an excuse -- it's just that I was completely ignorant, right? When he...when he told me, and I thought to myself, well, you know, I use this just weed. What's the big deal? It didn't hurt me. And so we just, you know, and of course, it didn't tell him that, you know, we had a no smoking, no drinking, no drugs, no marijuana. And I told him at the time, you will not do that, again, it's not allowed in our house. And I said it would eat your brain cells. That was literally what I told him, which doesn't, I mean, it affects your brain. We can talk about that. But it was so compelling to him that he became very quickly addicted to it. And it was five years of hell trying to...to help him before he ultimately took his life.

Steve Martorano 

I think your reaction to the news that he was using marijuana is perfectly in line with the overwhelming sentiment of most people in this country. About marijuana in the context you're talking about it. I mean, we have been correctly made aware of the serious drug issues that exist around heroin and methamphetamine. So when your kid comes in and says he's smoking marijuana, and that seems to be the extent of it. It sounds like a gift. It sounds like okay...

Laura Stack 

It's not heroin. Right. 

Steve Martorano 

Exactly. Exactly. Well, you mentioned a couple of things here that I want to make sure we know about. THC is the active ingredient that causes the high in marijuana, and you mentioned the delivery method he was using because that's key. Tell us what dabbing is.

Laura Stack 

Well, yeah, it's funny because I think anybody over, you know, 25 years old doesn't know what dabbing is. If you haven't been into the dispensary lately, I was completely uneducated, just not having used it for 40 years, you know. So, the dabbing is where they take a solvent and run it through the plant like butane or propane or ethanol, and it breaks the trachoma off containing the THC and the THC and leaves the plant, so you toss the plant, there's no organic matter in any of these newfangled THC products. And they...they try to filter out a lot of the solvent they don't get it all out which is poisonous, you know, that's going to your brain, but they filter, and they distill these solutions. Just like you can do like vodka five times distilled right, they distill the solution and turn it into various products. So wax, you know, butane hash oil can be upwards of a 60% THC content, right where my...my weed -- 80's generation -- 2%, you know, 3%, 5% max, like if you could get you to know, "the good stuff." And so, they then can process these into shatter, which looks like amber glass. Into crystal which looks actually like crack. Into butter. Into live sugar-like resin. I mean, these products are off the chart potent. They're just chemicals, so forget about like, the joints and I mean you can still buy flower of course, but even the flower potent, Steve, the average flower in Colorado is 20%. So anything over, you know, scientists say 10, 15% Now provokes paranoia, delusion, psychosis, schizophrenia has a very high conversion rate to schizophrenia higher than other drugs like meth and heroin.

Steve Martorano 

 Yeah, this is not your, your parent's or grandparent's drug.

Laura Stack 

Oh my gosh. Then they put it in the vapes. Right?

Steve Martorano 

Well, that was my next question. I mean, the delivery methods now they've got...they got the ability to vape, and it's, you know, odorless so you can smoke it anywhere.

Laura Stack 

Yeah. And drops and inhalers and eyedrops and tampons and suppositories and every food imaginable. You can turn any liquid into a THC drink, you use elixirs, you can put it on your salad, you can inhale it, and you snort it. The products are so extreme that most people would just fall over if they walked into a dispensary and just say what is this and they'll say, this is marijuana; you need to wake up to the times this isn't...

Steve Martorano 

Yeah, obviously, you don't need an underlying condition to say you wanted to smoke it. But the medical use of it is remarkable to another irony that when marijuana in the bad old days was, we were told, it could cause all manner of harm. I mean, they blamed marijuana on everything from the hair on the palms of your hands to raping and pillaging villages. And it was all an exaggeration and nonsense. And now, the pendulum has swung so completely in the other direction that you can see the pattern again. Now marijuana not only is not bad for you, but after all if you've got an ache or a pain, or you've got a headache, or an upset stomach, you can't concentrate suddenly, it's a miracle drug. So anyone who ever has a brain wants to step back and go, well, they were lying and exaggerating its harm. Mainly, they're doing the same thing now for its benefit, so they can sell this thing and make a lot of money. The problem is the revenue that these states saw was so exact. It was also exaggerated, but also these look like free money. We can use the revenue; they never thought about what was going out, what was going to cost the states and localities in mental health services, and all of the damage that marijuana is going to cause if you just open the floodgates and let young people use this stuff. Was Johnny ever diagnosed prior to his heavy marijuana use with any underlying mental health issues?

Laura Stack 

No, no, none. Johnny had no, you know, medical issues, no depression, no mental health issues. We do not have psychosis in our family. In fact, he was he took the gene amine test when we were trying to because we still didn't really realize it was marijuana, and we're like, what is going on? And he had no COMT....no, of the ATK genes. I mean, no schizophrenia, predisposition, you know, so he didn't have any of that. And it really wasn't until about two and a half years after he started using marijuana that we started to see some problems. I mean, and this is where kids like they think they're invincible, right? They don't think it's ever going to happen to them, and neither did Johnny, and indeed, you look at a kid with straight A's until you know his senior year of high school where he really unraveled, and he got four Ds his last semester this genius child, and they think they're just fine. Right? The problem is the medical thing I mean, that was a really smart move in the marijuana industry, but that is just a farce. I mean, you can get your quote, you know, medical card and 60 seconds, you know, and make up some kind of malady. Now we do have...we did put legislation in place 1317 in Colorado regulating marijuana concentrates, which has made that harder, right? Now you have to have two doctors who agree and certify that you have a chronic and debilitating condition. They have to pull your mental health records and your doctor records. So, Johnny wouldn't have been able to he got his own med card when he was 18 after he died. We saw the login. But you know, it's just the camel's nose under the tent, you know, trying to get into legalizing recreationally, and in fact, all drugs is their goal. They've said that the medical thing is just a red herring. Yeah, to eventually get all drugs legal. 

Steve Martorano 

Let me ask you about any other legislation that may be enacted or pending. You mentioned a more rigorous standard to get a medical marijuana card. But what about what agency in Colorado for instance, is overseeing the manufacture of the stuff and the level of THC in it? Is there any governing agencies?

Laura Stack 

No, there's no regulation on that there are no caps on potency. There is no, you know, the 99% crystal is legal. You buy it in a dispensary you walk in there; there are only two states, Vermont and Connecticut, I believe that regulate that, who put a cap of 30% on flower and 60% on concentrates is still incredibly high. Yeah. Now today, we are expecting a report from the million dollars that was funded by 1317 to the School of Public Health to come out with a report and a recommendation on a THC cap. There are organizations and, you know, Smart Approaches to Marijuana. One Chance to Grow Up, Blue Rising, Johnny's Ambassadors, our organization now there's a lot of groups who are still working on this, it's still very much in play. 1317 was just our first regulation. But we will be coming back with caps and regulations and trying to pull this high-potency stuff off the market. And I think it's because finally, legislators are having their children harmed by this high potency THC. And oh, once it hits home now, it's personal. And so you know, we see some movement on that.

Steve Martorano 

So this situation is not unlike going into a liquor store and seeing shelves and shelves of legally sold alcohol...alcoholic beverages and not knowing or having anybody in charge of what's in the bottle. How potent it is. Whether it's a safe to look, there's a long history of bathtub gin during prohibition that was made with the wrong kind of alcohol that blinded people...

Laura Stack 

But worse than that, Steve, it's called quote, medical, but you get there's no prescription. Right? So you just get this blank card from the quote, pot shop doc, right, the marijuana doctor, and you basically are telling an 18-year-old, "Hey, it doesn't matter what you buy, I'm not controlling the potency, the dosage, you know how often you're supposed to take this stuff, how often you're...

Steve Martorano 

Right.

Laura Stack 

...it's just like walk into the liquor store and, and buy a fifth of Everclear and just have one a day or however much you want." Right? It's a blank check, is the farthest thing from medicine that you can imagine. Now there are, of course, medicinal uses, you know, Epidiolex is pure pharmaceutical grade, CBD, that's not even THC. You know, we do have 130, I think, children who are 17 years and younger in Colorado who have a medical marijuana card, and I've seen instances of seizures and autism and right, so that's one end of the spectrum, but then all of a sudden it's 17 years, 364 days, right 2700 additional youth suddenly develop some chronic condition that didn't have it when they were under 17. Right. I mean, it's just a joke. And now the industry doesn't realize -- or the legislator -- every dollar they take in revenue in Colorado, they spend four and a half dollars on all of the ER visits, poisonings, crashes, crime, yes, then that's been quantified, and so there is no benefit for revenue.

Steve Martorano 

Well, you know, one of the things as if that were not a difficult enough problem to overcome, you've got the conflict between state law and federal law. I don't know whether people are really fully aware this marijuana is still illegal as far as the federal government is concerned. Right, let's face it, with a situation as large as this and growing, the only governing body that can control the quality, potency, and distribution of substances like marijuana or drugs in genera that's why we have the Food and Drug Administration right there's gotta be a change in federal law, or we're not going to get much headway on all the things Johnny's Ambassador are talking about. Correct? 

Laura Stack 

Right. You can, you know, you can make Juul illegal nationwide, you know, you can't Juul in US vapes anymore that are nicotine, you know, that are flavored, but oh, you can have any manner of THC vape and flavors. And you know, it's really pushed down to the state's rights, but there has to be some sort of federal oversight. I mean, we can't even get research because it is a class one substance on what it would be medicinal and what should be a cap, and we're doing original research on that here in Colorado, and with Johnny's ambassadors having some Research Commission, but there, there's got to be some oversight. The FDA, I think this thing's going to just kind of bust wide open. We're finally getting traction. Johnny's story has now been told in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and People magazine, I was on The Laura Ingraham show, the Martha McCallum show, huge spread of the epic times. I mean, we're, we're making noise, and 1000s and 1000s have joined us. And that's really what it's going to take is this critical mass, you know, of parents of grassroots folks being harmed, their children and families buy this stuff. And I think it's starting the pendulum is starting to swing, I think, you know, the tip of the spear is finally bursting this bubble that the marijuana industry is just hoping they could just keep everything real quiet and just keep under this radar. But I think you're right, I think we're going to have to get some...some national regulation going on because we are going to lose generations of young people to this delusional, bizarre, paranoid thinking they all think people are watching them, people are after them. You know, the FBI is searching for them. I mean, it just causes the most irrational thinking, and if they don't stop, this is called cannabis-induced psychosis. If they don't stop using marijuana, it can convert 50% of the time to permanent schizophrenia. Denmark just found this out. They just released data that between 1995 and 2010, due to the introduction of marijuana in Denmark, they have attributed a 2% to an 8% schizophrenia rate in Denmark, that scientists there have said it has affected their 7 million people and it's going to happen here too.

Steve Martorano 

It's terrifying Lars Stack is with us. She is the founder and CEO of Johnny's ambassador's dot org, I would urge you to check out that website if you want to find out more information about this in your book, or is available everywhere the dangerous truth about today's marijuana?

Laura Stack 

Well, it's on Amazon, but they sold out because of the New York Times article, but it's an audible format and Kindle format. And yes, you can. Hopefully, it'll be back in stock soon.

Steve Martorano 

All right. I want to leave, leave this topic for the moment with you with this question. This is a serious question. Growing up, as I said, the war on drugs was taking place. From a parental standpoint, the best thinking about the situation of talking to your children about drugs is "Just saying no." Okay, kids, dismiss that out of hand. It didn't work. The DARE program where the police officers and older regalia went into these elementary schools and I guess, tried to scare kids. And that didn't work. And I think and I think the research shows that young people, very young people recognize that there were lies about marijuana, they were being told all along. And so why listen to the adults now. They must be lying to us again. Now it's legal. And ironically, it poses a devastatingly dangerous threat to these people. How do parents get through to kids after the history of marijuana that I've just described? What do you say to them now?

Laura Stack 

Well, what you don't say to them is don't do drugs; drugs are bad, right? We have a trademarked phrase, we're going out with a big PSA. Instead of just say no, we say Just Say Know. K-N-O-W. So ours is all about education. It's about parents themselves, understanding how potency has changed, or understanding how THC interacts with the adolescent brain; why don't we want them to use it? And most parents need to understand themselves before they attempt to have a conversation with their child, right? I don't know what it's like to be a teen these days. Right? And to but to be able to say, you know, have you heard of this dabbing and do you, you know, gosh, I know all this information and to be willing to admit that you were wrong and that you've learned and here's why you're concerned. When I go into schools, it's there's no, there's no judgment, you know, the approaches. Here's some information, some really important information that I have for you that I asked you to please listen to, with an open mind, and as you're out there making your decisions as a team, to really keep this in mind. And we provide the science. Kids are actually very fascinated by neuroscience when you show them MRIs, And you say, here's, here's an MRI of a 14-year-old. And here's an MRI of a 19-year-old of 800 of them. And depending on how many times you use marijuana in that five years, see how thin your prefrontal cortex is. To actually show them data and science and reports, and to show them how the marijuana industry is targeting them. They actually get very indignant when they feel like they're being taken advantage of. To show them how they're being targeted, they get pretty upset about that. So it just involves a very different approach, and how you come to them, but they're intelligent, and you know, they recognize wow, you know, I need to delay if I really want to use maybe I should be 28. And wait until my brain is formed before I use this stuff.

Steve Martorano 

Well, I love the idea of Just Say KNOW.

Laura Stack 

That's our trademark phrase, we're going to be putting it on billboards, all over doing PSAs. And it's all about education. It's not about coming down on people and trying to get them not to us because that's not realistic. It's about how do I have self-confidence? How do I have self-efficacy? How do I understand how to set boundaries? How do I deal with peer pressure when someone at a high school party like Johnny, you know, they say, "Here, hit this," and you don't want to write you, you have to know what to say, you have to be prepared, you have to have made those decisions intelligently on your own. And so we have to provide them with that information. And that knowledge.

Steve Martorano 

We got to make it cool. Yeah, be able to go No thanks. Yeah, you know what

Laura Stack 

That stuff does to your brain or whatever you're gonna say, right? My parent's drug test me, you know, now I'm driving, I mean, whatever you want to say. But we have to give them the ammunition.

Steve Martorano 

Yes, we have to give them the room to be able to say that. Laura Stack. Thank you so much. Obviously, our condolences for your loss. But it resulted in this great organization, Johnnysambassadors.org. Laura's book is called the dangerous truth about today's marijuana. Thank you so much for your time and for your work. And we, you know, we'd love to have you back as events warrant.

Laura Stack 

Anytime. Thank you, Steve. Thanks for the invitation. 

Steve Martorano 

Our pleasure.

Laura Stack 

There is no safe level of THC in the developing adolescent brain.

Steve Martorano 

Well, you know what, I'll just leave you with this. I've always said, Well, you know what, I thought marijuana was pretty harmless. But I guarantee you, no eighth grader is going to learn algebra if he's high when he gets there. It's not going to. He doesn't need it in the eighth grade won't help. Anyway, Laura, thank you so much. Thank you all for your following the podcast. Don't forget to give us a like where you can tell your friends about the behavior corner, and we will see you next time take care.

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