Why You Can't Parent Today's Weed Like It's 1999

The weed you smoked in college is dead.
Today's marijuana is a chemically engineered concentrate. We are talking about 90% THC packed into devices that look exactly like USB drives and highlighters. It is sitting in middle school backpacks right now, and most parents are completely blind to it.
In this episode, Jason strips away the "it's just weed" myth. He breaks down the brutal reality of how his honor-roll daughter lost 50 pounds, got arrested, and nearly died. Not from fentanyl. Not from meth. From modern, high-potency THC.
This is not a scare-tactic episode; this is an operational wake-up call. We are giving you the exact system to spot the threat before it takes out your kid.
We break down:

• The Potency Problem: Why 90% THC concentrates are altering teen brain chemistry in ways old marijuana never did.
• The Concealment Playbook: The exact physical warning signs parents miss and what hidden vapes actually look like.
• The Supply Chain: Where kids are actually getting it—and how terrifyingly easy the access is.
• The Intervention System: How to confront your kid and have the hard conversation without instantly pushing them away.
• The "Just Weed" Lie: Why dismissing this as a harmless phase is costing families everything.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - Introduction 00:12 - The Dangerous Lie About Modern Weed 03:20 - Jason's Daughter's Story 04:47 - Warning Signs to Watch For 06:46 - Where Kids Are Getting It 08:47 - How to Talk to Your Kids 10:11 - Day One of Recovery
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Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My guest is Jason Trempko, a teacher, a veteran, and the creator of the documentary The Green Glitch. Jason, what is the most dangerous lie parents believe about the weed their kids are

The Dangerous Lie About Modern Weed

SPEAKER_00 0:12

exposed to today?

SPEAKER_01 0:14

I think the big thing is that most parents really don't even know that their kids are using. Um some of the recent stats right now are showing that about 45 to 60 percent of parents really have no clue that their kids are even using marijuana. So alone the fact that they're using high potency marijuana, that's to me that's a big concern. And then stacking it on top of of medications, antidepressants and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

In my experience, it was kind of like perceived, especially like in high school, college, very non-threatening. Like alcohol is a dangerous, obviously, drinking and driving DUIs. Marijuana was always like, oh, it's like another safe alternative. You just have fun. Is that kind of like what you're seeing now, too, with that generation?

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah, yeah. Normalization, that's the big thing. It's so normalized. And a lot of people still talk about marijuana like it's the same drug from the 60s, 70s, 80s. Um, but the reality is it's a completely different drug because in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, most forms of marijuana were two to three percent, or even as low as one percent THE strength. Whereas now the stuff that the kids have access to, we're talking 70, 80, 90 percent THC strength, and it's way more addictive. And plus, that's the kind that the kids have easy access to because it's really designed that way. Back in the day, marijuana was more of a, I guess you could say, a rebellious type of act, whereas now it's normalized and it's actually marketed for young people. And that to me is very concerning because the reality is 44, 45 percent of young people, and really anybody who uses marijuana to include the older marijuana advances on to using harder drugs. And I'm raising awareness because me, I'm not willing to take that risk.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah, and I had no idea that the THC content uh changed over time. Like I didn't know, I was obviously oblivious to this. So this is a brand new topic to me, opening up my eyes and our listeners that uh our parents as well, and definitely educating everyone on the dangers that exist out there. It's almost like society wants to normalize vapes, edibles, marijuana. Yeah, it's it's important to know the truth about it all. So we need an operational like system to handle this threat as parents. What can parents do tonight to start building that framework out?

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yeah, I think the big thing, honestly, I wrote my book, The Green Glitch. And it's on it finally hit Amazon actually this week. So my publishing company finally got it out. And I really think every parent needs to read that book. That's why I wrote it, because it will open their eyes. There's so much detail in that. And I got, I mean, hundreds of references. If you have the back page here, everything I wrote in this book is all researched and validated. And I think they should start by getting informed, getting educated about the subject. And then I would just tell parents, honestly, if something feels off, then it probably is. With my daughter, she got addicted to

Jason's Daughter's Story

SPEAKER_01 3:20

marijuana. She started vaping in middle school, and it took us about four or five years before we even knew the truth about it. And by the time we found out about the marijuana, she was already extremely addicted to it to the point where she developed cannabinoid hypermesis syndrome. She lost 50 pounds in four months because her body needed THC in her system to be able to eat. I mean, it's actually starting to become a very common problem. And I think to my daughter, I recognized the issue and was able to start seeing it in other students that I deal with on a regular basis. Actually, one of the kids in my class is actually in my documentary and I helped him get cleaned up. He'd been smoking since he was 11 years old. So it's to me, it's just honest conversation. Don't assume that your kid is not using, because again, the reality is 60% of parents have no idea. So I think it just starts with building trust, not going for punishment. I started that way. It was like, I'm gonna punish my kid because they're smoking, and that turned out to be the wrong thing to do because it was an addiction that I had no clue existed and had such a huge stronghold on her life. So that's my advice.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Yeah, that's great. And this leans into the kind of what you just talked about. But if a parent suspects something's off, what is the first physical or behavioral sign they need to audit or look for? You you mentioned your daughter maybe went a couple years without you really detecting. So what do you think we need to be on the lookout for in

Warning Signs to Watch For

SPEAKER_00 4:47

their behavior?

SPEAKER_01 4:48

So yeah, definitely. I'm just for us, the signs were she started withdrawing from family, or we were always a very close family. Still are my oldest daughter now. She wrote her story in my book because she wants people to know, and she's actually joining me on some other podcasts and things to tell her story. But for her, it was withdrawing from family. She wanted to stay home and smoke, but it developed into an addiction to where she would literally have to smoke it in the middle of the night to be able to feel okay when she woke up. She would get sick every morning. That's when I knew something was wrong. So I was like, what is going on? Every morning she couldn't eat and she was throwing up at school, she'd get these horrible migraines. And then I started seeing the same trends with a lot of the other students at school. So then I just started talking to them, and it turns out that this cannabinoid hypermesis syndrome is happening to a lot of young people. If you got a child that is not able to eat in the morning, they feel sick all the time, nauseous all the time. It very well could be that maybe they've been using high potency products. And the other thing is if you, let's say a parent take your kids to get on an antidepressant anxiety medication or something along those lines, stacking that with high potency marijuana is actually causing the symptoms to get worse. And that's what happened with my daughter. We had no clue that she was dealing with high potency marijuana on top of antidepressant medication. Her symptoms got worse instead of better. So we were like, what is going on here? So once we found out what was really going on, I started doing the research, and that's what inspired me to write the book in the first place. You know, and parents just have no clue.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yeah, and you mentioned that like what where do you see it occurring? Is it at school? Is it at kids' houses? Was it at your house unsuspectingly? Where do these activities even take place? Where should we be concerned about this behavior happening?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

My my personal belief is I spent

Where Kids Are Getting It

SPEAKER_01 6:46

I was in the military for 20 years, and then I was uh a recruiter for nine years out of that. So I was in four different parts of the country recruiting people, dealing with young people, and these kiddos are starting so young that by the time their parents find out about it, they're already addicted in a lot of cases. So I personally believe that addiction starts in school. Um, because like I tell people, I would rather people smoke the real plants than to smoke the modern high potency stuff because that's the stuff that they have access to. A 14-year-old kid can't walk into a dispensary and buy real true marijuana. They're going after the carts, which are the synthetics and the oils and the extracts and the waxes and all that stuff, which is like 80, 90% strength because it's easy to hide at school. So I think it starts at school, and I think a lot of kids just they get it so easily. My daughter, I would find some from her and I would take it away, and literally the next day she would have two or three more, and I would be like, Where are you getting this stuff from? And literally, kids would just pass it around at school or they know who to talk to because there's mules that go into the the vaping shops and things like that, and these guys will sell it to them, and then they'll come out and just distribute it right to the kids. That's and this is happening all the way down to middle school.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah, that's scary. I was a very sheltered child. I went to a Christian school, and so like such a foreign world, like that was something I never even conceptualized happening. It was I sold candy back in the day, literally, like went to the dollar store, and that was my hustle. And now it's just like such a different world, it seems like, where this is a real threat, a real problem, something we really have to be aware of. And kids, like, how do you approach it? Because I have two kids myself, they're not quite that age, they're four and one, but my four-year-old, if I lecture her, she tunes me out, right? So it's like, what do you how do you approach this topic with your kids without them completely just shutting you out?

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Yeah, so but that's it's the same approach I took with my students

How to Talk to Your Kids

SPEAKER_01 8:47

because when I first became a teacher, I've been teaching for almost six years now, and I would catch a vape or something, and then I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna write them up, I'm gonna send them to the administration, let them deal with it. But then it was like, I've seen what this actually is. This is an addiction. I didn't believe it was an addiction until I saw the withdrawals and my daughter losing 50 pounds, and I mean, she her whole body would just be shaking, she couldn't eat, she would be thrown up. I'd see this stuff going on with the other kids. So I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna change my viewpoint on this and I'm gonna start just having conversations. So I would pull the students aside or my own daughter, and I'd just be like, look, you're not in trouble. I just want you to talk to me. But what I would ask them is I would say, Do you enjoy smoking marijuana or do you want to quit smoking marijuana? And most of the time, the kids would tell me they want to stop. And that's how I knew my daughter was getting sick, because every time she would try to stop, that's when she would get sicker. And then she'd turn right back to smoking again because that was the only thing that made her feel better is that cannabod hyphenesa syndrome. It's a big deal. So, really just talking to these kids and getting them to open up, be honest about it, paying attention. These kids are really good at hiding stuff. It's unbelievable. Like I said, my daughter, I would find one next day. I'd find a couple more. And it's this is just unbelievable. So easily accessible.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Yeah, no, totally. And if a parent confirms their kid is actually actually using high potency THC,

Day One Boundaries

SPEAKER_00 10:11

so what do you what would you recommend? What's the immediate day one boundary they must establish to stop the academic and motivational slide that comes with that?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Well, I think from my experience, you can't get help until you're until the the truth comes out. My daughter, she wanted the help once the hiding stopped. And that's what I've noticed with a lot of the kids that'll open up to me and tell me that they're smoking, and I'll ask them, Do you do your parents know? Have you told anybody? Most of the time, no. And I'll say, why not? And they'll tell me they don't want to get in trouble. My my parents would kill me if I got caught with this. So these kids a lot of times are dealing with addiction and they have nobody to turn to. Because if the administration finds out at the school, they're in trouble. If their parents find out, they're in trouble. So they don't want to get in trouble. So therefore, it's just easier just to keep smoking. And they have a billion friends that are using and offering it to them. So it it just boils down to being honest, having those on honest conversations.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah, no, totally. I get that. Kind of the one-on-one talks I have with my four-year-old, where that that those seem like the most important things I can do is like really just sitting down with her, getting on her level, and like kind of having that father-daughter talk. And it seems like maybe that's something that it doesn't matter how what their age is, right? It it's kind of applicable to that situation. Okay, so and this is one thing I'm gonna run into with different parent styles and different perceptions and different lifestyles people have, right? So, what do you do if your friends, if your neighbors or your kids' friends, their parents handle this in a in a different situation, right? They think it's just weed, or it's kind of what kids do, kind of thing, like mentality. How do you handle that as a as a parent, as a dad, as someone who does what you do in your daily life? How do you handle that approach?

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Yeah. So I've had some pretty good conversations with people, good debates. I really haven't had that many people fighting against me, which is surprising. I thought when I was gonna when I wrote this book and made my film that I would have a lot of opposition. It really hasn't been the case. I think a lot of people know it's an issue, but they don't want to talk about it. But what's interesting is

The Legalization Myth

SPEAKER_01 12:21

70% of people in the United States want to legalize marijuana, but almost none of them know the stats. None of them know the details, and they think about it being the same as it used to be. And uh it's the little things I don't want, I want kids to know the truth because even in states right now where marijuana is legal recreationally, it's still illegal to drive and use marijuana. But little things like that, you see, do we want our kids to grow up thinking it's okay to break the law? Because the reality is 50 53% users, and I talk about this in my book, that's the statistics right now. 53% of users use their high potency products to include edibles, which have a delayed reaction one hour before they get behind the wheel of the car. So I'm like, what's going on? Getting them educated so that way they can actually give the kids true information. Um, because you can't go anywhere without smelling marijuana in a car. And so they're breaking the law. That is illegal to do. Um, but it doesn't hold up in court right now because they don't have a way to detect when the person used it in their system unless they saw them using it on the spot. Um, but it's still illegal. Just having these honest conversations, just because you may have smoked high potency products, smoked marijuana in general as a parent, it's really not about you as the parents. I always tell people maybe marijuana helps you, because I've had people tell me that marijuana helps me. Okay, that's good. That's one side of the story. You know, I'm here to talk about the other side of the story, which is the large amount of people that are highly addicted. And in most ways, that's the young kids that people don't talk about. They don't know. Um, so I tell people it's not about them, it's not about you. Maybe you didn't get addicted to marijuana, maybe you turned out fine. But I know I've had actually dispensary owners. One guy reached out to me, he was a dispensary owner in Canada where it's legal, and he grew high potency products and made carts and oils and all these kinds of things. And his kid was on medication, and his kid got highly addicted to it, ended up dying from it. You know, so even he told me, like, what you're doing is so important, and I wish I would have known. So it's just parents need to be honest about the situation, they need to understand it's different, it's not the same drug. You can't talk about it like it's the same drug. And that's until we break that misinformation, we're gonna continue to see this get worse.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah, no, this is eye-opening stuff for me too. Honestly, just very naive to it all, honestly, because uh, maybe my kids aren't that age. This is definitely eye-opening. So you've been on the front lines.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Yeah, it was for me, and I'm like, wow, it's crazy. I had no clue until I started researching. I was like, how easy it is. I thought this was gonna be a hard book to write. Turned out to be super easy, you know, because everything is just right there in front of our face. All we gotta do is look at it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Yeah, for sure. And so you've been on the front lines of this in the classroom. What does motivation loss look like to a student? Let's say it's a normal Tuesday. What does it look like for a student?

SPEAKER_01 15:16

So I have a young man who's in my class, and he actually approached me because I made a film as well. It's called The Green Glitch. And it's it'll actually be live. It's going through a distribution company and stuff right now, so that'll be available very soon. But I have a kid who's one of my students for the last two years. He actually came to me and said, Can I please be in your documentary? He approached me because about four months ago he asked me to help him overcome his marijuana addiction. And he started high potency products when he was 11 years old. Nobody knew that he was smoking, and here he is 16 years old. And he was a lot like my daughter. He was very sick, he was failing all of his classes, just straight bombing all his classes. So once he came to me, we got him straight. We had these conversations, just got him to be open. I educated him on it, and then now he's been clean and he's making straight A's in school now, and he's actually talking about trying to get into the Citadel. And he's, I want to tell people, I want to tell these other kids this is what it does, and it really does affect their motivation. I've seen people fail in schools, I've seen kids that would rather smoke marijuana than to go make something of themselves to join the military. Or, like my oldest daughter, she wanted to be a nurse, and she was like, There's no way I can do it because I'm gonna fail the drug test. But that was what she said, that's what was in her mind, and she ended up not going into the career path that she wanted to go into because she was addicted. But she's over that now, but now she's already done with an associate's degree in another field, and so now she's like, Man, I wasted, I wasted my time and energy. So it's it's just so much to think about, and it really does affect kids and their motivations.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Yeah, no, thanks for giving that giving us that picture. And teens, a lot of teens like this is the excuse I use of the anxiety thing. And I you kind of touched on this, but how do you separate the mental health struggles from the THC induced paranoia?

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Yeah. Well, so I just got curious because once I started looking into this stuff, I'm like, I need to get into the details. So I just Googled one day. I I Googled and I said, what are what is the most commonly used antidepressant? And it's gonna be Selexa, it's gonna be Zoloft. And basically, I said, What are the effects of using high potency marijuana with these drugs? And the very first thing that pops up, it can make symptoms worse, it can cause seizures, it can cause death in some cases, and there's cases out there where it's happened, but it most commonly it just makes symptoms get worse. So it's like, what's going on? My daughter should be getting better with her anxiety, but in it's getting worse, it doesn't make sense. So once we figured out, and it was crazy because we ended up taking my daughter to the hospital two times, and the doctors couldn't tell us what was wrong. And my daughter, she knew all along, she finally came out and told me she knew all along that's what it was, right? But she just didn't want to admit that she was still smoking marijuana and that she was addicted to it. But here we are wasting all this hospital money and getting nowhere. And the reality was that it was mixing the two things together. And to me, it's really concerning because you look at like

Veterans & Mental Health Risk

SPEAKER_01 18:23

the veterans community. I'm a veteran. Um, we have the highest suicide rates out of the out of any other population of people. Some like you have veterans that are getting medicine for PTSD, antidepressants, and then they're smoking marijuana on top of it. Some of these antidepressants say they'll cause suicidal thoughts already. That's the side effect. So now we're stacking cannabis on top of it. What are we doing? 70% of people want it, and it's we're not just we're just not doing that.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

No, no, that's a great, that's a great point because like I was just coming that coming at this from the student lens, teenager lens, but like didn't even think about the veteran lens. And you have that knowledge and knowing like uh the compounding issues that we're maybe uh putting on people uh yeah, no, this is definitely enlightening to to hear about. And so if a parent if a parent's going through this right now, like they let's let's say they're they're in a similar situation to what you were and they're hearing this on YouTube or Spotify or wherever they're hearing this podcast or getting their podcast and they implement your framework, how does it look, how does it physically and mentally change their child's trajectory in the next five, ten years?

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Oh man, I I really believe if if they stop, if they're making bad grades, I really believe if they're smoking marijuana and they stop and they truly stop, I think you're gonna see improvements in in grades. I think you're gonna see improvements in mental health. My daughter will tell you she didn't care, she literally almost failed her senior year because she was sneaking out of school to go smoke weed with her friends. Um, the only reason she passed her senior year is because I was a teacher in the same school, so I was able to hunt her down and be the mediator, but a lot of these kids don't have that. Um, so I I I truly believe it's a major underlying problem. And parents have no clue. But the other side of that is a lot of parents do have a clue. And a lot of times parents are the ones that are causing the problem. I've seen that happen too. You gotta think about it this way. I had an army buddy who called me up when he knew I was writing this book and I actually shared his story in my book. And he told me, he said, I gotta tell you something. He said, My wife is addicted to marijuana. He said, But she does it under the disguise of medical marijuana. He said, But what makes me mad is that she goes out and she meets her drug dealer with my kids in the car, and I started thinking about that. I was like, How many times has a kid been in the backseat when their parents linked up to go get some weed? Or they're seeing their parents smoking in the car when it's illegal to smoke marijuana in all 50 states.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

That's a scary picture. Yeah, that's a scary picture, man.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Yeah, a lot of parents just aren't setting the example. So it's one thing to say, don't do it, but then they see you do it all the time. So it's part of that normalization. There's already enough normalization going on in the country. The last thing they need to see is a parent doing it. I would encourage parents just to do the right thing. And again, it's a tough subject because I'm not trying to demonize people that do smoke. I do believe there's people out there that it probably really truly does help, right? But I also want people to be honest. Am I truly using marijuana for medical purposes, right? Or am I using it under the illusion of medical purposes? Right. And like I said, there's two sides to every story. So your side is it's helping me, but on the other side is hurting somebody just as bad or worse. And we just got to be honest about it because nobody's really talking about this stuff. And I see it every single day. Teachers across the country see it every single day.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

So yeah, no, that's a clear distinction that you would asking those honest questions and being the leaders, too. As parents for our children and not putting them in situations where we're meeting drug dealers and they're in the backseat. Like, that's just like I'm just getting a bad image in my head right now. What kind of danger are we putting our kids when you're meeting drug dealers for the same thing?

SPEAKER_01 22:13

It's so normal for a lot of these kids. I just I had a kid tell me, he's like, my mom, she had a bottle of weed oil sitting on the counter, knocking in the floor, and the dog licked it up, and like they were talking about the dog was hot out of its mind basically that night. And like they were just talking about it's normal. So they see so much of this as if it is normal, and in my opinion, it should not be.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Yeah, no, given what you just said, it's a wake-up call, I think, for me and for probably a lot of parents and maybe even not parents, but people that like you said, veterans or people in that circle of

Where to Find Jason & The Green Glitch

SPEAKER_00 22:46

of their lives. Maybe that maybe that's a wake-up call for them too. And and so, given all this, Jason, where can my audience watch the Green Glitch and buy your book and and find you on the internet?

SPEAKER_01 22:58

So what I recommend, okay, the Green Glitch is on Amazon right now. I think that's the very first one it came out of Christian Faith Publishing. You can just search up the Green Glitch, Jason Tremko. And the book is on there. It's $16.95. And uh it's really cool. What I'm actually doing right now is if they buy the book and they follow me on Facebook, just search up Jason or JT Books. I'm sorry, JT Books. And you'll see me on Facebook. I got all the Green Glitch stuff on there or on YouTube, JT Books. And if they show me proof that they bought the book, they're actually gonna be in the runnings for a brand new Series 1 X or Series X Xbox that I'm giving away for free. I'm doing two of those drawings within the next two months. So that's one way. And then the film itself, I have the trailer on YouTube, so they can go there and see the trailer. But I'm working with the Max out in California and they're gonna distribute my film. Right now it's on some film festivals. So if they go to the direct monthly online film festival, right now it's streaming on there, but it'll be available to the public here very soon. So if the biggest thing I would tell people to do is just get on my social media and they can keep up with everything that's going on there in regards to the Green Glitch and order the book. I'm telling you, it's if you're a parent, it will blow your mind. We barely scratch the surface on this stuff today, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Yeah, I know totally. It's hard to do it all in 30 minutes, but I appreciate your time. And yeah, I'm gonna follow along and hey, maybe I'll win that six bucks. I mean, that's a heck of a giveaway, and that's a cool thing to see all the irons in the fire. I'm sure there's probably more stuff in the future too with your work. So thanks for what you do for the kids and the veterans. Thank you for your service as well. And I appreciate your time on this pod.