The Mission of Johnny’s Ambassadors

Welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White. And today we are hanging out with a legend, Laura, I’m going to call you a legend, Laura Stack.

I don’t know about that. A legend in my own mind, maybe.

Well, I’m going to tell y’all a little bit about Laura and then we’re going to dive into what she’s up to. And I will just say how you can benefit from all the great work that she’s doing. So Laura for 30 years, she was known in the business world as the productivity pro. Her career as a keynote speaker, bestselling author of eight books and corporate spokesperson came to a screeching halt on November 20th, 2019 when her 19 year old son, Johnny died by suicide after becoming psychotic from dabbing high THC marijuana concentrates. She responded by forming the nonprofit Johnny’s Ambassadors to educate parents, teens and communities about the dangers of today’s high THC marijuana on adolescent brain development, psychosis and suicide.

And her platform now brings prevention education to drug prevention conferences, community groups and schools to stop youth marijuana use. Johnny’s story has been told in People Magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the E-Pop Times. my gosh, y’all been everywhere. yeah, there’s PBS, like this is wild. And you even received the Drug Free America Foundation’s Moxie Award for Protecting Youth from Substances, the Leadership and Advocacy Award from the National Speakers Association my gosh, there’s a list of there as well. But when it comes down to it, I wanna highlight your book. So you wrote a book called The Dangerous Truth about Today’s Marijuana, Johnny Stack’s Life and Death Story. And you are an unstoppable force for this movement. So thank you Laura for being on the show today.

That was fun. Unstoppable, unstoppable. Thanks, Jake. I would say you are unstoppable. So thank you for having me. I’m honored to be here and happy to share whatever I can.

Of course, well, let’s jump in then. Laura, I see you at all these conferences. Are you going to CADCA next week? Are you going to be?

Well, so I usually go to CADCA and our daughter just had our second grandson a few days ago. So I will miss you all. ⁓ But we’re going to skip mid-year in favor of snuggling our new grandson, Adam Jane. But I’ll be back in January. Or I guess it’s going to be February at Forum. I typically wouldn’t miss.

YAY! That’s right. Let me know if you need materials. I’ll send you a whole bunch of stuff.

Yeah my gosh, that’s awesome. I’m sure, I mean, your materials are everywhere. I’m sure they will be there. Someone will have your book out and all that stuff.

I would love to. We’ve got swag we’ve got magazines, we’ve got brochures, we’ve got pamphlets, books, everything you need. Just let me know. I’ll send you a bunch of stuff. I’m glad you’re going. I’m glad you’re going. It’s so important to be there and talk about how we can help our young people. So glad you’re gonna be there. Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, I’m excited. We’re getting the opportunity to keynote this year, which has not happened before. So it feels like a big celebration and to get to be more part of the student experience because we’ve been a part of the adult experience before.

Yeah, thank you, Laura. Well, tell us Laura a little bit more about like if we had to get an introduction to Johnny’s Ambassadors and what you’re up to. You do a lot. You support people in a lot of ways. So how can you just describe like what does Johnny’s Ambassadors do and how can schools and coalitions utilize all that you’re doing?

Well, yes, thank you. So our nonprofit mission as filed to the IRS is to educate parents, teens and communities about the harms of THC use in adolescence. So that’s what we’re trying to do. So we really stay in a prevention awareness education mode. That’s my background.

I get very stressed out when it comes to policy and legalization and all of those issues. So we have a lot of partners that we’ve lined up to work with us in those areas. So mostly my job is creating resources. So whether I am creating materials or documentaries or literature or flyers, which is all free by the way my time is really spent talking with people, researching, and I get most of my ideas actually from teens. So full-time, Monday through Friday when school is in session. So not right now, because it’s the summer. So like September through mid-December and then kind of January through May, my husband John and I are on the road, Monday through Friday doing assemblies. So I did 211 assemblies last year. I know, it’s just crazy. So I’ve talked to almost a half million teens myself. And so that’s my real love is to be with them eye eye, face to face, knee to knee, voice to voice, and tell them the data, the research, the science. And then they come up after and give hugs and ask me questions and they talk to me because, you know, I don’t work there. I’m not a teacher.

I’m not a threat. And they ask me questions and they tell me things and I talk with their parents. know, when we do conferences or parent nights, I get a lot of really great questions and I kind of take this all in. And then I just create materials. So that’s how we get most of our funding is through assemblies. So that is the one thing I do charge for to be completely transparent. That’s how we get most of our funding is from assemblies.

Resources and Support for THC Awareness

And then we take all that funding and then we create materials which then are free. So we provide materials for teachers, for parents, for medical professionals, for communities, for coalitions, for anybody who needs it on THC. So we have PowerPoint and online learning modules and brochure. mean, it’s a little overwhelming, Jake, but pretty much anything anybody needs to take into schools and communities to educate on the harms of youth THC use. That’s what we do. think I would be safe to say we probably have the best website in the world on THC prevention. That’s what it provides is education. So that’s kind of a long short answer to everything that we’re doing.

That’s incredible. it’s like, if you need to know something about THC and its impact, like, I mean, just in general, THC impact on the adolescent brain, like all of surrounding things. And then you have all these guests, like, I’m going to point out too, you have this webinar series with all these incredible people and doctors and scientists that come and talk about it.

Hundreds and hundreds of hours, yes, with world renowned experts, doctors, scientists, researchers in cannabis and their impacts. we have, and it’s all free, right? It’s all on the website. We have a conference every year. We just finished, we do 15 credit hours and a two day conference. We do that every summer. Yeah, webinar every month. So it’s really a lot, but we really try to just engage people in learning so that when teens say, you know, God made it, it’s harmless, it comes from the ground, it’s no big deal, it’s safer than alcohol, blah, blah, blah, right? All the things that they say, you know, that you feel prepared to say, well, actually, you know, and there’s a lot of mean people out there, there’s a lot of trolls, and they’re like, read for madness, rawr, you know, and they try to spread a lot of misinformation. And so we really want people to be prepared and armed with the truth and the facts and the science and to be able to articulate that. And also to share their own stories. That’s why we call it ambassadors, right? Because there’s only one of you, Jake, there’s only one of me, you know? So we need a lot of people who can go out and spread this message. And so we wanna teach people and educate them so that they feel comfortable being that advocate, being that voice and talking with teens in a way that they’ll relate to, that’s not real preachy and they don’t relate to that.

Right. The thing we tried for like three decades and it doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work. No, but they do respond really well to science and data. I mean, people question like, it’s kind of sciencey. Are you sure you should be doing an assembly that’s sciencey? And it’s like, they love the science. We teach them CB1 receptors and endocannabinoid systems and anandamide everything about an MRIs and here’s what happens when you take THC. Here’s how it makes you high. Here’s how it looks in the brain. Here’s what it does, you know, and they are riveted, you know, they’ll, and they come up and they’ll tell you after the assemblies, you know, thank you. Nobody ever bothered to explain to me why I shouldn’t use THC. And this, this makes a ton of sense, you know, and I never judge, never preach, I never lecture, but I try to kind of weave Johnny’s story through it because it really anchors certain points and they’re like, wow, you know, that could have been me. Like he was just like me, you know? So his being that Johnny’s ambassadors, I think is what is really a good anchor for these people, for these young people

Yeah. Well, I think what I love about it is you’re giving them the science and the information, which is free from judgment or shame or anything else, or even making this a moral issue because it’s not. we want to simplify it and say it’s a moral issue because then you could have the good people versus the bad people. But it’s not. It’s like these students are coping with real challenging situations.

Yeah their environments they’re growing up in is way different than the environment that you and I grew up in. And their parents are often using, right? And their siblings and their friends and family, and it’s cultural. you stand in an auditorium with 2000 teens, 30 % of them are using. It’s like you can’t just pretend like that doesn’t exist.

Right, or demonize those people so that they don’t listen to you. You have to bring them to science so that it’s like, hey, this is not me against you. This is us together trying to help you live the best life possible.

Conferences and Collaborations

Here’s some science behind it and decision. Yes it and here’s how to make decisions. This is to inform your decisions. mean, and we’re not going to be able to keep them from using, if you teach them some, mean, I can’t tell you how many times the teens will say, oh, I was about to go out to the parking lot and use, right? mean, and it changes them right there. And I know out of every audience, three out of 10 are using like two out of 10 will never use, right? We know that. And then half of them are kind of on the fence, you know, and they haven’t really decided whether they will or not, you know? So you kind of have to simultaneously talk to these three audiences all at once, you know, and to let them know, you know, it’s never too late and it is never hopeless and there’s never a time that you cannot stop. And when you do, you know, here’s what you can expect and it’s gonna suck for 30 days and here, you know, and then, you know, but they have to get that messaging and encouragement. You can’t just be like, everything, you know, no one’s using around here. Cause they are. And I am a, I don’t teach harm reduction. I don’t, I’m not like, just use this less or use this many times. I’m, you know, I may, hey, no THC use is good for the brain at your age is why, but.

You do have to live with the reality of what’s going on ⁓ in the schools. And I think that they are pleasantly surprised by that. know, that someone’s actually willing to meet them where they are without judgment and lecturing and just be like, I’m here because I love you. And I believe I have really important information ⁓ that I want to share. And they like that. They like that. So that’s kind of what we’re trying to get parents and people to use that kind of languaging.

Well, and Laura, I learned something from you recently that I started sharing. I think it was on a video that you posted when you were speaking and you had mentioned that, and I can’t remember if this is the way I rephrase it or what exactly you said, but we always share the danger, Is like, hey, using at a young age, you’re at more risk and danger of developing an addiction and experiencing these life altering things.

And I think you said it this way, the good news is that when your brain is young and it is, your neuroplasticity is like, I don’t know, more available or whatever it might be, is you can also quit easier. So the consequences are easy to experience, but also the rewards of quitting are easily, like easier available. I think it was you who learned that.

Neuroplasticity, you’re using great words. Yeah, no, I mean, it’s very true. And you do have to let them know when they quit that it isn’t gonna be easy. This isn’t like pie in the sky, blow sunshine up your butt. Yay, I mean, is rip. THC is like the hardest thing to come off of compared to most substances. Many of them just can’t.

And you have to acknowledge that reality and tell them what they can expect for 30 days. And then, yeah, to let them know, hey, here’s the good news. Your brain has that plasticity. It’s going to continue to pick up and grow. It’s going to improve. mean, Johnny used to tell me it’s too late for me. I want them to know it is never too late.

It’s encouraging. You have to give them a little bit of inspiration because they’re kind of, a lot of them then get depressed and anxious and unmotivated and stuck. They want someone to come on stage. That’s what people, they love you so much. I mean, you have such great energy. You’re inspirational, you’re rah rah. You’re look at what life can be like without substances. you know.

How do we get high on life and what do we do instead? And they need to see what the alternatives are, you know, for that. Cause a lot of them got into this accidentally. mean, Johnny was just looking to party his friends, you know, they just wanted to try to get high. It’s not like he was depressed or self-medicating or anxious. You know, they have, it’s not like they hit a vape thinking, I’m going to get addicted. You know, it’s just, of a party drug and some of them get roped into it and then they feel like, I’m screwed. okay. Well, I ruined my brain. Thanks. You know, so you’ve got, you know, give them that help and inspiration. So that’s exactly what you’re doing. So great. I’m glad that you’re glad you’re using that. Yay.

Yeah, you and me both now. Well, I definitely want to pick your brains or at least give our audience some tools that have maybe been helpful for you because you’ve grown this movement. I mean, it’s everywhere. When I look at different coalitions and organizations and schools and you’ve worked really hard at it, you’re pooling your resources, you’re a great connector. 

If you had to identify maybe a few things, which you might not want to do because you’re very humble, but Laura, help me out. How can people that are involved in coalition work get a little bit better each day? And what are some skills that maybe they could develop or work on or strategies that you use that you think have allowed you to stand out and grow Johnny’s Ambassadors so much?

Understanding the Reality of THC Use

Wow, that’s a great question. I don’t know if anybody’s ever asked me that in that way, but I mean, I’ll just tell you my personality, okay? So I am very good at saying no. Very good at saying no. And we have two employees. I mean, my husband and me, that’s it. And I have a couple of contractors who help us out with IT and some admin work, you know? And that’s it. And people are like, how can you run this nonprofit, just the two of you? And it’s because we are laser focused, laser focused. And it allows me to say, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, right? This fits, this doesn’t, this fits, this doesn’t. And when people come and they’re like, you know, we wanna get involved in a lawsuit, okay? That’s not what we do. We do education, we wanna go storm Capitol Hill and you know, get some, that is important, that needs to be done and I’m not your gal, right? Here’s the right person. And so I think we’ve developed a wonderful web of people around us so that I can say, here’s this person, here’s this person, here’s this person, because my goal is to be helpful to every single person who reaches out to me. And if I’m not the right person,

I wanna get them to the right person, but I wanna make sure I don’t get my fingers in it because it just splinters your ability to focus on your mission. And I see so many people who are getting caught up in things that are outside of what they’re supposed to be doing. You have your priorities that your coalition is focused on, whatever your substances are. I get emails from organizations who want me to promote like a fentanyl thing. And it’s like, we focus on THC. That isn’t something I can have the bandwidth to do, but here are some other places that you can get this done  so that’s why it’s really important to have a great network of people around you. You know, and people like you, you are referable and you want to be that person. And the more.

Consistent you are and the more clear you are with what you do and what is your work and what is your expertise and how you brand yourself and how you market yourself and you have to be crystal clear about how you can help people and that way they know when they need you, that’s how they can find you. I don’t know if that makes any sense.

I think there’s so much gold there. It does make sense. And I’m thinking of, I’m receiving this trying to as a coalition director or somebody that’s running one of these grants and like, hey, I gave you these dollars and now you better make this change. And I’m thinking like you, okay, what’s my special skillset? And I think the challenge I want to give to our audience is you have your own unique personality.

Okay like Laura, like myself, the strengths that you love to do within the organization, that you need to say yes to those things because you’re doing your best work. Time and money well spent because that’s you making changes. And then some of us need to be, we need to be more unapologetic about asking people for help because we’re not the right person. Just because the work is important doesn’t mean that you have to do it. Cause you’re going to spend five hours Laura trying to look up

That’s right different stuff on opioids instead of no, THC is my lane. I’ve got thousands of hours being the THC expert. I’m going to continue being valuable and I’m going to go into a community and change thousands of lives because I know my craft. I’m not going to spend all these hours. Exactly

It’s not that those things are not important. You’re exactly right.

Yes, alcohol kills more people than any other substance worldwide. Did I just lose my connection again? Okay, mean, nicotine is legal and it can give you lung cancer and kill you, right? I’m not saying that these things are not important, but if I’m feeling frustrated like why am I doing this? Why am I spending my time on this? Why am I working on this? I mean, you have to listen to that intuition. It’s probably something that you shouldn’t be doing. I mean, I have so many great things and there’s treatment, there’s interventions, there’s, right? And I just have to keep saying, no, you know, we’re in prevention, we’re in education. So figuring out what those critical things, making sure you have the guidance from your board, from your boss, from right, that you know what those critical things are. And it helps finding a network, staying focused, getting referrals out there. All that becomes a lot easier once you’re crystal clear on your mission and where you should be spending your time for sure.

Amen. Amen. We needed to hear that. And it’d be just a reminder, right? Like for me, this is a great reminder. If it’s not getting more young people involved in prevention, it’s not 518. It’s referred out. It’s somebody else who’s great at that. Or if it’s hyper-focused on the content, which is why Laura, you got an email from me a month ago or so saying, hey, they want THC. You got to talk to Laura, you know?

That’s right. And you can, you have to be that person who’s referable because then you are the expert in that, you know, and if I know that someone needs a school wants to get a club going and it’s like, Hey, you know, I don’t do that. You need to call Jake, you know, so it just makes things a lot simpler. And it also just helps you feed your passion and spend more time on the things that you love and less time on the things that you don’t. And when I have things that I’m not an expert in and I don’t know what I’m doing, that’s when I know I need to get help, hire it out, find a contractor, delegate it, get a volunteer, so that I’m not wasting time on things that are not my gift and my talent.

That’s so good. All right, Laura, before we get to the final question, I wanna help our audience by highlighting some other opportunities that are on your website, tools that you’ve built that they should probably check out.  One that comes to my mind right away is you have like a interactive educational game that teaches people about THC and anyone can use it, right? Like you have a little training maybe, or they just, they don’t need it. They just go and use it.

Understanding the Reality of THC Use

Yes, so we have all kinds of things that you can use in the classroom and at events. There’s a game show that’s called Factor Crap. know, but kids say crap, okay? They like the word crap, so we’re not gonna be like true, false, no, factor crap, right? So you can yell that out. We have an online THC literacy quiz.

What’s we have a, do you have cannabis use disorder quiz? We have eight modules of self-paced education that are online. Again, this is free. So you can use this in health class or if any of the coalitions are going into the schools and teaching prevention modules, they can do these game shows. They can assign it as homework. There’s all sorts of.

Worksheets, there’s PowerPoint that’s free to download and use with notes, like exactly what to say. So we’ve been really purposeful about giving people tools that are contained and ready to go, that don’t take a lot of training, so to speak. All the way to a one hour PowerPoint if they want to present incredible.

Um, a, an assembly, you know, they, they, if they feel comfortable standing up to a thousand, you know, or, or make it smaller, you know, a hundred or do one class at a time. And, and they want to do my talk. Uh, I mean, it’s not exactly my talk cause they’re not Johnny’s mom, but it’s, uh, you know, the content slides are free. And I, and I tell that even if they just put a slide up and read it, right. We want to make.

I’m everything available for people to be able to go into the schools, go into the communities, talk to parents, talk to teens, and be able to educate them without me. If you use all this stuff, you do not need me to they can be an ambassador. Exactly. Like you were saying, like they can be one of the ambassadors. The last, the one too, I just saw you, you have a documentary now. So tell us about that and how we might use it.

Yes, we had a very generous donor, sadly, whose son also had cannabis-induced psychosis, like Johnny did, and gave us a very generous donation from their foundation to make a film. And so we’ve been working on it for a year and I’ve been going out and interviewing some of our parents whose children had cannabis-induced psychosis and recovered and sharing their stories, like,

What is this? How do you know if it’s cannabis-induced psychosis? What does it look like? What do you do? How do you recover? Can you improve? And so it’s done and it’s out and it’s free. So you can screen it in your community. We’ve got questions to ask the audience, trailers, different video clips that they can use. So that’s johnnysambassadors.org slash CIP. So it’s under the videos and it’s on our homepage.

So that’s really exciting. But I mean, we have posters, we have graphics, we have worksheets, we have so many materials, it can be a little overwhelming. So what I always do is just tell people, email me, tell me what you’re trying to do, and I will get you all the materials so that you can go out and provide education, whether it’s parents, children, community, whatever you need. And we can also send them things. We have a beautiful 16 page glossy workbook on THC that we ship by the thousands to send out and for schools, for fairs, health affairs, whatever they need it for. So lots of stuff.

Wow, see that’s incredible. That is incredible. my gosh.

Yeah, I’ll share those links with you for the documentary. I would love to get that out to folks. Thank you.

Tools and Resources for Education

Yes. I’ll put it on our page. if you’re listening, all our episodes get published on Vive18.com slash podcast, or you can look at the show notes. The links will go on there if you’re listening on Apple or Spotify or something. So I’ll include those there, Laura. then Laura, is there anything else? mean, I feel like we talked about a lot, but the listeners, again, we’re, we’re educators, we’re prevention pros nonprofit organizations, anything you want to leave us with that we haven’t chatted about or any final words of encouragement that you can think of, and then we’ll say goodbye.

Well, I mean, you know mine is gonna be around THC. And I think this is just such an insidious substance because it’s so misunderstood. I mean, everybody knows one pill can kill. I mean, everybody knows you can die from alcohol poisoning, right? Very few people understand the mental harms, the impacts, how THC changes the brain. So I would just encourage people who haven’t really gotten into the research and the data to spend some time doing that because people come out, change like, wow, I had no idea about any of these things and how harmful it is. They just think it’s this, you know, innocuous, you know, it’s just weed. I smoked it when I was a kid. And most people have no concept of how different it is, how potent it is.

How the vapes, the dabs that the teens are using are so, strong, like smoking 50 joints from when I was a kid. So it just, please take the time, you know, to get educated around this topic if it isn’t high on your list, you know, everybody’s looking at fentanyl, so I just sometimes feel like THC is kind of that ugly stepsister that gets passed over and people don’t spend as much time on it. But I really think it’s just a silent epidemic. It’s just taking over our kids, their lives. And if it takes another 70 years before people realize how addictive and damaging it is, I mean, we are going to lose generations of young people to mental health issues, to depression, anxiety, psychosis, bipolar, schizophrenia. know, what we’re seeing is very scary.

And so not that it’s guaranteed to be safe for adults, but it’s especially damaging for young people. So please give it a look, you know, if you’re really not that focused on THC. And I would love to do anything in my power to give you tools and help you with your education so that you feel comfortable going out and being that ambassador and talking about the harms.

So that’s always my big sales pitch. know, it’s like everybody wants to talk about everything else except marijuana, know, THC cannabis. So I’d love to, I’d love to, that’s why I’m here. You’re not bothering me. I’d love to serve in any way that I can.

That’s amazing. Thank you, Laura. And for everyone listening, like y’all know that the industry is pouring all this time and all this money and telling our kids that it’s going to solve all these problems. actually creates for them. my gosh. And so the fact, that you are being so intentional with your talents, your time and your money to fight, and you’re inviting us all in, I’m telling you, if you’re listening to this, go to johnniesambassadors.org.

Right now, like put it on your, the top of your browser and make a little like a folder that you can get to anytime share it with your email lists. Use the programs because it’s free. It’s available for you and Laura, I keep doing the amazing work and for those listening, please keep up the amazing work. You don’t always get to see the fruit from it, but it is happening and you’re planting seeds and we’re always better together. So thank you for being a part of the team and we will see you all next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. See ya.