An American mother will be in Bermuda next week to warn about the dangers of high-potency cannabis.

Laura Stack’s 19-year-old son, Johnny Stack, died by suicide in 2019, after a five-year battle with drug addiction.

Ms Stack told The Royal Gazette that Johnny first admitted to trying highly-concentrated cannabis “dabs” when he was 14. Dabs are vaped.

She said: “He told us that all the boys wanted to try to get high. Someone handed a dab to him and told him to hit it, and he did.”

Ms Stack warned her son to stop using cannabis or “marijuana”; it was against house rules.

“We told him that it would destroy his brain and to never to do it again,” Ms Stack said.

Johnny’s response was: “OK, Mom.”

However, the Stacks were not overly concerned.

“We brushed it off,” she said. “We said, it is just ‘weed’ … I used it when I was a kid.”

What she did not know, at that point, was that the potency of cannabis products had increased dramatically in the last thirty years.

“It is not the same stuff that I used when I was a kid,” Ms Stack said. “I had no idea. I was very ignorant about what he was actually using.”

Things were not OK, as the Stack family soon discovered. “He snuck it for the next five years,” Ms Stack said.

Johnny’s mental health dramatically deteriorated.

His mother said: “His first mental hospital stay was three days; he was suicidal. They let him out, and he attempted suicide. They put him back in the hospital.

“He stayed a month for the next one, until the THC finally exited his body. That was the first time that he recovered and was sober.”

Ms Stack blamed the dabs Johnny was using.

“It messes with teenagers’ minds, and brain development,” she said. “Usually, the brain goes through a process of organising pathways, pruning away ones that it doesn’t need and protecting the mind. That process is disrupted when THC gets into their brains, and causes havoc.”

Johnny suffered from cannabis-induced psychosis, a mental health disorder that involves a loss of connection with reality.

“It causes psychosis, delusional thinking and depression, and sadly make suicide rates increase,” Ms Stack said. “The doctor in the mental hospital wrote ‘THC abuse – severe’ on Johnny’s chart.”

After Johnny succeeded in taking his own life, five years ago, the Stacks have been warning other parents and students.

Last December, Ms Stack published The Dangerous Truth About Today’s Marijuana. They formed a charity called Johnny’s Ambassadors Youth Marijuana Prevention, and they travel the world talking about their experience.

“We teach parents about today’s THC, and why it’s so much different to the weed we smoked back in the day,” Ms Stack said.

She finds many parents are just as clueless as she was the first time her son tried cannabis.

“We also teach them about adolescent brain development,” she said. “Our main goal is to really teach teens about the science and why it is harmful. We show them MRI scans.”

Many of the young people she meets are just as shocked as their parents when they hear Ms Stack’s story.

“They thank me,” she said. “They tell me they are sorry about Johnny.”

Sometimes they tell her that they are using themselves, and that, after hearing her story, they are going to get help.

“We know it is working,” Ms Stack said. “We know we are saving a lot of lives.“

Ms Stack believed there were things parents could do to help.

“Parents need to be doing weekly drug tests,” Ms Stack said. “You can buy, over-the-counter drug tests from Amazon.com.”

She said it is important for parents to have access to their children’s phones and social media accounts.

“You have to make sure they don’t charge their phone in their own bedroom at night,” she said. “That is how they get into trouble on their phone while their parents are asleep.”

Steve Glassman, a former Bermuda resident, is responsible for bringing Ms Stack to the island. He also lost his son, Nick, to strong THC.

“I met Laura after the tragic loss of my son Nick in January 2022,” he said. “He took his own life after being impacted by cannabis-induced psychosis.”

Nick, a New Jersey college student, had a long battle with THC addiction.

He ended his life at age 20, while his parents were desperately struggling to get him into a drug treatment facility.

“Before he went to college he was a super-balanced kid,” Mr Glassman said. “We never had to tell him to do his homework. He was very focused academically.”

Two weeks before Nick ended his life, he seemed happy and took his girlfriend to a production of the musical Hamilton in Manhattan, New York City.

“I will never be able to wrap my head around it,” Mr Glassman said. “Sometimes the demons talk to you for 15 minutes, and you listen.”

During the struggle to help their son, the Glassmans made contact with Ms Stack.

“At the funeral, we asked that funds be donated to Johnny’s Ambassadors in Nick’s name,” Mr Glassman said.

Since then he has brought Ms Stack to New Jersey several times to talk to local schoolchildren, parents and educators.

One day Mr Glassman was chatting to Karen Warren, a former colleague in Bermuda.

“She said we have these issues in Bermuda,” Mr Glassman said. “She said ‘I would love to have her come to Bermuda’.”

Ms Stack will speak to parents and teachers at a number of schools on the island when she is here next week.

• The public are invited to a community conversation with Ms Stack on November 30 in the Ruth Seaton James Auditorium at CedarBridge Academy.Registration is at 5.30pm and doors open at 6pm. The event is free. Somersfield will also be holding a parent night with Ms Stack on November 27, with 5.30pm registration. RSVP here. For more information, see johnnysambassadors.org