Big Tobacco’s getting desperate

American Christian Pastor Claims Smoking Weed Makes Men ‘Spiritually Gay’

Christ (as it were). I’ve never actually been a stoner (it’s probably 25 years or more since I last tried the stuff), but I have seen films like Reefer Madness so I have some idea of the sort of propaganda that’s been deployed against it over the decades. This, however, is a new one to me, though Joel Webbon himself isn’t…

If you had “American Christian nationalist pastor launches pro-smoking campaign because he reckons marijuana is making men gay” on your 2026 bingo card, congratulations I guess! You may now mark off the square and mourn the ridiculousness of the world we live in.
Far-right pastor Joel Webbon is copping widespread ridicule after claiming Christian men should embrace tobacco and nicotine because marijuana makes men “spiritually gay” and is contributing to the decline of Western civilisation.
In a video posted to X on 31 May, Webbon argued that anti-smoking campaigns have been one of the biggest “psyops” of the last half-century, dismissing decades of factual medical evidence linking tobacco use to cancer and other serious illnesses.
“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 says in the video. […]
“Marijuana makes you less masculine, more feminine, soft, gay — at least spiritually gay,” he said, before claiming cannabis users are lazy, unfocused and lacking ambition.
Webbon went on to declare that “hard times create nicotine men” while “weed boys ruin the world,” suggesting tobacco helped build America and could help restore it.

Well, I must give Joel some credit, that is an original spin on the tedious far-right “good times create weak men” bullshit meme; given how much of his schtick otherwise seems to be boilerplate bigotry, it’s a good distinguishing mark. Incidentally, Joel Webbon has apparently only just turned 40, making him a bit more than a decade my junior, yet looking more than a decade my senior. Hate ages you, doesn’t it? Perhaps he should have a spliff and relax a bit.