Cassius Life Featured Video
CLOSE

If you haven’t been keeping up with The Breakfast Club lately, then you probably missed this recent interview with Dr. Wesley Muhammed, during which he suggests marijuana usage “feminizes the Black man.”

We know. You’re probably thinking, “Wait… What?” So were we.

The conversation came about when Angela Yee asked Muhammed to expound on ideas he’s previously expressed, namely in regards to medical marijuana.

“The chemical composition of what we smoke today is very different from the natural plant that was planted,” he stated. “This enhanced marijuana, feminizes the Black man and masculinizes the Black woman because the THC does so many things. The high potency THC from the plant itself, from the weed itself, it lowers the testosterone.”

And to some extent, he’s right. A study performed by a lab in Colorado found that THC levels found in both recreational marijuana have risen from previous decades, while levels of cannabidiol (CBD)—which is said to add a therapeutic component to the weed folks smoke—have dropped.

But… Have THC levels reeeaaally risen significantly enough to alter our biological make-up?

Probably not.

“What does upset the balance of Black men and Black women are the fact that over 800,000 people, before legalization happened in any of the states, mostly Black men were being arrested for simple possession,” Wanda James—co-owner of Denver marijuana business Simply Pure and the first Black woman to own a cannabis dispensary in Colorado—tells CASSIUS. “Most of those people were Black and brown men between the ages of 17 and 24. So taking Black men out of the community, putting them in jail for something as bogus as possession and personal use—we’re not talking about people that are Pablo Escobar—I think that becomes a bigger issue in the communities of how Black men and women relate to each other.”

She also notes how the absence of Black men consequently pushes Black women into “the role of both male and female” in our communities.

“Now that doesn’t mean that masculinizes a Black woman by any stretch of the imagination,” she clarifies, “but it does tip the balance of how we relate to each other.”

Thoughts?

Watch Muhammed’s Breakfast Club interview above, then holler at us on Twitter. The conversation begins around the 24:25 minute mark.