Inside the God-fearing, vape-slinging backwoods logic keeping weed illegal in 2025
By Your Boof du Jour Field Correspondent, Reporting Live from Inside a Hot Chicken-Induced Psychedelic Nightmare
NASHVILLE, TN — I am broadcasting live from the spiritual center of legislative brain rot, where cannabis is still classified somewhere between Satanism and Critical Race Theory. Tennessee: the only state where you can marry your cousin, open-carry at a Bass Pro, buy Delta-8 from a gas station vending machine—and still catch a felony for having an edible shaped like SpongeBob.
I’m on the ground at the “Southern Policy Summit on Controlled Substances,” hosted in a goddamn Marriott ballroom next to a Waffle House that smells like shame and hair grease. The room is full of men with Bluetooth headsets and women wearing American flag cardigans. The mood? Confused, defensive, and lightly racist.
Representative Jake Norwood (R-Murfreesboro) told me, dead serious:
“If we legalize weed, next thing you know, your kid’s a vegan, your wife’s bi, and you’re watching MSNBC on purpose.”
I asked about the economic benefits. He paused, looked around, then whispered, “Can’t tax sin, son.”
Meanwhile, outside the summit, protestors from Tennessee NORML held up signs that read "WEED THE PEOPLE” and “LESS METH, MORE MIDS.” They were outnumbered 4 to 1 by moms in sequined Jesus shirts protesting a local vape shop called Heady Betty’s, which sells “fully legal” THC-O dabs next to sour gummy worms and Confederate belt buckles.
Let’s talk policy:
Tennessee doesn’t even have medical weed. Not real medical. They let you “discuss” it with your doctor if you’ve got epilepsy and Jesus signs off on it. The state actually had a chance to vote on a medical cannabis bill in 2024, but it died in committee because, and I quote, “we need more time to pray on it.”
And yet: Delta-8, Delta-10, HHC, THCP—all legal. I bought a pre-roll from a Kangaroo Express that said “Contains 0% THC” on one side and “Blow Your Fucking Mind” on the other. The cashier was seventeen and had three neck tattoos.
Inside the summit, a man who identified himself as a “Christian Cannabis Consultant” told me:
“If the Lord had wanted us high, he wouldn’t have made sobriety a virtue.”
I watched a PowerPoint slide titled “Weed and the Breakdown of the Family” that featured pictures of Hunter Biden, Snoop Dogg, and a burning Little League trophy.
I am stoned. I am afraid. I am in Tennessee.
I sat in on a breakout session called “Smokable Hemp: The New Satan?” and heard a county sheriff say, “I can’t tell the difference between a CBD joint and methamphetamine. They all look like pre-crime to me.”
Other actual quotes from today:
“Cannabis makes you lazy. That’s why California fell off.”
“We already got Tylenol, don’t we?”
“God didn’t put weed in the Garden of Eden, now did He?”
“If you legalize it, people are just gonna move here for the wrong reasons.” (Unclear what the right reasons are. Moonshine and cousin-fucking?)
Scene from the expo hall: A booth selling “CBD dog treats for anxious Labradors” next to a table giving out free Bibles with fentanyl test strips stapled to the front. A guy in camo tried to convince me his hemp farm is “just a cover” for God’s real work. I nodded and took a business card shaped like a bullet.
I asked a lawmaker from Shelby County why they’re dragging their feet.
“Honestly?” he said, popping a Delta-8 gummy shaped like a watermelon slice.“The moment we legalize real weed, Nashville becomes Portland. And I didn’t fight in Afghanistan for that.”
Final thought, from a dying vape cloud outside a Krystal's in Knoxville:
Tennessee doesn’t fear weed. It fears change. It fears brown people making money. It fears medical freedom unless it’s a horse dewormer or a prayer circle.
But most of all, Tennessee fears one thing above all else:
Legalization might finally expose how many of their voters have been getting high this whole time.
I’m your correspondent, barely holding it together in a state that thinks Delta-8 is fine, but a joint is a moral collapse. Reporting live until I get arrested or baptized.