Christian nationalist hate pastor Joel Webbon — a man who blames Jewish people for everything he hates and thinks maybe Adolf Hitler wasn’t so bad after all — said in a May 30 X video that Christian men should smoke tobacco to help restore the nation because marijuana makes men “spiritually gay.”
“I think you know one of the biggest propaganda psyops that we’ve experienced in the last 50-60 years is the war against tobacco and nicotine, that tobacco and nicotine are the worst thing in the world, and they’ll kill you and give you cancer. I don’t believe that,” he said, ignoring decades of scientific and medical research.
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He suggested that tobacco-related cancers are actually caused by chemicals and pesticides sprayed onto the leaves. He said that nicotine is anti-viral (which isn’t true) as well as anti-inflammatory and anti-parasitic (which are true). He also said tobacco and nicotine boost testosterone levels to make men “more masculine,” increase focus, and reduce appetite and weight.
While tobacco and nicotine can temporarily induce these effects, doctors don’t use them for those purposes due to their high toxicity, adverse side effects, addiction risks, and long-term harm to the cardiovascular system and lungs.
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“Do you think the government has perhaps a vested interest in kind of boarding that type of man, because that man is a lot harder to control, harder to manipulate?” he claimed, suggesting that government anti-smoking efforts are to make a docile population rather than say, to prevent respiratory illnesses.
He also said the government has increasingly legalized marijuana because, “It makes you less masculine, more feminine, soft, gay — at least spiritually gay,” adding, “Marijuana causes you not to focus, not to lock in, not to be ambitious. It makes you cloudy, fuzzy, lazy, unambitious.”
While his generalizations apply to some marijuana users, the same cannot be broadly applied to successful users like billionaire entrepreneurs Martha Stewart, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, and famous artists like Whoopi Goldberg, Stephen King, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg, not to mention numerous politicians.
“Hard times create nicotine men,” he said. “Nicotine men, they work hard and create good times. Good times create weed boys, and weed boys ruin the world. That’s where we are right now. We don’t need weed boys. If anything, we need nicotine men. It built the country, and perhaps by the grace of God, it can restore the country.”
Numerous nicotine addicts who commented on Webbon’s video said there’s nothing manly about addiction, noted that nicotine reduce sperm production, talked about the positive benefits marijuana had on their appetite and spiritual life, told him not to connect Christ to drug addiction, and wondered whether he was being paid to promote tobacco.
But interestingly, Webbon isn’t the only religious fanatic to make these kinds of claims.
In early 2017, Dr. Wesley Muhammad of the Nation of Islam (a doctor of Islamic Studies, by the way, not medicine) presented his conspiracy theory that the U.S. government introduced chemically-treated, “weaponized” marijuana into Black communities as a way of “feminizing” its men.
According to Muhammad, the secret manhood-destroying properties of this gay-inducing marijuana partially diverts or blocks masculinization of the nervous system through use of an anti-androgen that bonds to “melanated (Black) tissue,” releasing poisons into Black bodies for life.
The only proof Muhammad offered was his repeatedly use of the phrase “we have documented.”
To figure it out if Muhammad was correct, drug writer JS Rafaeli asked Jason Tantra, the man behind Tantra 4 Gay Men, a group that uses spiritual and sexual exploration as a sacred act to elevate gay and bi men to a higher spiritual plane, if marijuana does actually make men gay.
Rafaeli told Tantra that some male web users have reported feeling more open to sex with men when stoned. Tantra replied that marijuana can dull inhibitions and remove the filters and protections that people use to conform to everyday life.
“A straight person is not going to become gay – but if there are some latent feelings towards either sex, their repression may be lifted to act on that truth in themselves,” Tantra said.
Rafaeli also spoke with gay drug users who say that marijuana allowed them to feel more of a bodily high and feel more present in their lovemaking.
Tantra concluded that, because cannabis heightens one’s sensitivity to touch, taste and sound, it can definitely make one feel more openly sexual, and that one should approach its “powerful and enriching” effects cautiously and consciously.
Webbon previously blamed Jewish people for turning the United States into “a very gay nation” filled with transgender people, abortion, low wages, and “the LGBTQ.”
In June 2024, Webbon went off on “degenerate” gays, saying that death, as a “maximum penalty,” would act as a deterrent to homosexuality. He also heartily agreed with a guest that 17% of gay men regularly eat feces.
Webbon has also previously said that Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is in Hell and that racist, slave-owning Confederate leaders are in Heaven.
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