The horror in Brentwood has left the country stunned and asking hard questions about what went wrong at every level: at home, in medicine, and in our culture. Nick Reiner — the son of Rob and Michele Reiner — has been charged with first-degree murder after their bodies were found in their Los Angeles home, and the case has already exposed a complex tangle of addiction, mental illness, and alleged medical missteps. This is not a celebrity scandal to be gossiped about and forgotten; it is a warning sign about how we treat the most vulnerable among us and how we normalize dangerous substances.
Reporting suggests Nick had long struggled with substance abuse and serious psychiatric illness, and that his medications were recently changed before the killings, a shift described by sources as precipitating a violent break from reality. Law enforcement and court filings indicate a sealed medical order and ongoing questions about whether the right interventions — psychiatric holds, proper medication management, or family-supported treatment — were taken in time to prevent this tragedy. The facts in this case read less like a Hollywood tabloid and more like a systemic failure: money and fame can’t paper over the cracks in our mental-health and addiction systems.
Alex Berenson’s point — made bluntly on conservative platforms and in his writing — is that we can no longer pretend marijuana is harmless or merely a benign vice when mounting evidence shows it can trigger psychosis in vulnerable people and worsen violent outcomes. He has spent years pushing back against the elite narrative that legalization is an unalloyed good, arguing that high-THC products in particular have real psychiatric harms that legislators and media elites either ignore or gloss over. Whether you agree with every argument Berenson makes, his insistence that data and real-world anecdotes deserve scrutiny rather than cancellation is a welcome break from media spin.
This isn’t just one man’s opinion; authoritative scientific reviews have found a substantial statistical association between cannabis use — especially frequent or high-potency use — and the development of psychosis and schizophrenia. The National Academies’ exhaustive 2017 review concluded that heavier cannabis use corresponds to higher risk of psychotic outcomes, a conclusion too many policymakers conveniently forget when crafting legalization bills and industrializing drug sales. If legalization policies proceed without acknowledging and addressing these documented harms, we will be importing new public-health problems while pretending we’ve solved anything.
We must be blunt: Washington and coastal elites who cheerlead normalization of marijuana profit from lax rules while communities pay the price with damaged families, emergency rooms full of psychotic episodes, and tragedies like the Reiner killings. Legalization turned an illegal substance into a market, and markets push consumption; more consumption among the young and among those with mental illness means more harm. No one is asking to return to medieval drug policy, but common-sense safeguards, honest public health warnings, and limits on potency and youth access are long overdue.
Berenson’s book gathers case studies of horrific violence linked to cannabis-related psychosis and mental-health deterioration — stories that shock the conscience and ought to shock policymakers out of complacency about “safe” weed. These are not abstract statistics; they are mothers, children, and neighbors destroyed by a toxic mix of untreated disease, ready access to powerful intoxicants, and social denial. If judges, doctors, and lawmakers don’t start telling the whole truth about drug harms, the next headline won’t be about a famous family; it will be about another mom, another child, another community in ruins.
The Reiner case should force every American who cares about families and public safety to demand accountability: better psychiatric care, sensible limits on intoxicant industries, and a criminal-justice system that protects victims while ensuring those who are dangerous because of untreated illness get appropriate care. We can defend liberty and property while also defending children and families from preventable tragedies — that’s the conservative common sense the elites have lost.
This moment is a test of our national character: will we continue to let fashionable ideas and corporate profits dictate policy while families pay the price, or will we reclaim responsibility for protecting the vulnerable and preserving public safety? The answer should be obvious to anyone who values life, decency, and the American family.
