Empower, don't scare

Michelle Thompkins brought her 15-year-old son to a cannabis forum because she wanted him armed with facts. Fear tactics, she said, backfired on her own generation.

“They didn't really do a good job with steering millennials away from those things.”

The son already decided

Micah Thompkins, a first-year student at Kenwood, said cannabis is simply not something he wants to try. He framed it as a boundary, not a rule handed to him.

“That's just the personal boundary of mine.”

Sixty people, mostly parents

The "It's Not Just Weed" forum at Kenwood Academy High School drew about 60 attendees Wednesday night, most of them parents worried about THC products reaching kids.

The prediction came true

When Illinois legalized marijuana in 2020, doctors warned that emergency room visits would rise as THC concentrations climbed. They did.

Psychosis is the risk

Dr. Maria Rahmandar of Lurie Children's Hospital said highly concentrated products carry a risk of cannabis-induced psychosis, and young people are the most exposed.

“There is a risk of cannabis-induced psychosis following cannabis use, particularly in young people.”

Five teens, one school day

In 2023, five teens were hospitalized after eating gummies at an Uptown high school. The gummies looked like candy and did not act like it.

Who starts, and when

Illinois residents most often start using cannabis between 18 and 25, per the Illinois Cannabis Project at UIC. Kids aged 12 to 17 are close behind.

A principal wants a movement

Karen Calloway leads about 2,300 students at Kenwood and hopes this forum is the first of many, until better decisions about THC spread on their own.

“Eventually it becomes a movement around making different and better decisions.”

Schedule III changes the message

The Justice Department proposed reclassifying marijuana in 2024, and Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order making it official this year.

Easier research, softer signal

Supporters say the reclassification legitimizes medical programs and clears research barriers. Critics say it tells young users the drug is safer than it is.

A mother's nonprofit

Laura Stack founded Johnny's Ambassadors after her son died by suicide following cannabis-induced psychosis. She now teaches parents and teens what she learned too late.

“There's a lot of confusion out there and a lot of misinformation.”

The athlete's reason

Jarriah McGee, 14, skips cannabis to protect her body for sports. She says she can spot it in classmates who seem sleepy, jittery, or just a little off.

“I'm an athlete, I don't want to partake in those things and ruin my body.”

What a cop sees

Kimberly McGee, a Chicago police officer and Jarriah's grandmother, has watched young people overdose on weed laced with meth or rat poison.

“It's 'wake up, get dressed, go get high.' Over and over. They have nothing to look forward to.”

Marketed straight at kids

Rahmandar pointed to colorful packaging, weak age verification, and Instagram models as the machinery normalizing cannabis for teens before they ever try it.

“All of that is very concerning.”

An auditorium mostly empty

Kenwood's auditorium seats 780. Roughly 60 showed up, a gap that says as much about the subject as any statistic in the presentation.

Schools that said no

Clinical psychologist Patricia Jones Blessman said many Chicago high schools refused to host the forum, because admitting a substance problem exists still carries stigma.

“There were folks who just really didn't even want to touch this subject.”

They turned weed into crack

After hearing Stack explain dabbing, inhaling vapor from concentrated THC wax, CPS board member Che "Rhymefest" Smith said buyers have no idea what they are actually taking.

“What I learned today about the dab, they done turned weed into crack.”

Smoking as a flex

Songwriter Adam "Bruza" Wright smoked four to five joints a day before getting sober two years ago. The products, he said, were a status symbol first.

“It all just surrounds flex culture, which all comes back to just making you more fanatic and more addictive.”

Make refusal the flex

Smith's challenge to the room: teen smoking and teen pregnancy both fell once rejecting them became appealing. Cannabis needs the same kind of story.

“You gotta make it enticing for young people to say, 'I ain't doing that.'”