Here’s Madicyn Marinaro’s latest post on the ongoing, well-financed effort to demonize cannabis. Once you understand the problem it’s easier to deal with and you won’t be freaking out like the lady in the picture.

With both NORML and HIGH TIMES (Josh Kesselman) calling out the media’s renewed investment in cannabis fear-messaging, I want to move past the health debate and clearly show how information warfare is currently being waged against this industry. As a cannabis disinformation expert, I am less interested in debating a specific “syndrome” and more interested in the “Supply Chain of the Narrative.” The most recent CHS study is a textbook example of information laundering. Here is how the mechanism works in real-time:

1. The “Dirty” Data (The Stimulus): We start with a low-rigor survey recruited from a CHS Facebook group owned by one of the researchers. In any other field, this is “hypothesis-generating” at best. Here, it is treated as a final verdict.

2. The Tabloid Filter (The Amplifier): The NY Post—a publication known for sensationalism, not scientific rigor—takes this survey and “socializes” it via the coined term “scromiting.” This is a deliberate disinformation tactic designed to bypass logical inquiry and trigger moral outrage.

3. The Historical Blueprint (The Gore Files 2.0): This isn’t new. This is the Anslinger-Hearst Playbook updated for the digital age. In 1937, Harry Anslinger used William Randolph Hearst’s sensationalist tabloid clippings as “evidence” (The Gore Files) to justify criminalization. Today, regulators and lobbyists use NY Post “scromiting” headlines to justify the Disinformation Tax and the Schedule III Capture of the market.

4. The Market Extraction (The Goal): The purpose of this disinformation is to keep the Cost of Capital at 58% and keep small businesses in a state of financial siege. While the industry eats up the tabloid fear, institutional players can short and distort. Sensationalist narratives drive down valuations, creating a profitable window for short-sellers and allowing institutional players to acquire distressed assets at a fraction of their value.

You can try to cancel me, call me a “conspiracy theorist,” or a “schizo.” But the logic of the audit is solid. If medical policy is being directed by a Facebook survey and a NY Post headline, you aren’t looking at science—you’re looking at the manufacturing of a narrative.Our industry deserves to be normalized and audited by adults, not liquidated by tabloids. I’m done playing a rigged game, but I’m leaving you with the receipts.
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