Laura Ingraham raises issue of marijuana use and ‘psychosis’ in rising violence and mass shootings

(Video: Fox News)

Word has emerged that Uvalde mass shooter Salvador Ramos was an ardent pot smoker with a violent temper. According to Fox News host Laura Ingraham, this may perhaps be no coincidence.

Speaking on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle” this Wednesday, she drew attention to several studies that “have explored the connection between regular pot use and an increased risk for serious mental illness and even violent psychotic episodes in some cases.”

“In March 2019, the prestigious journal of The Lancet conducted a case control study from 11 sites across Europe and Brazil. It found that with daily cannabis use, there were increased odds of a psychotic disorder compared to those who never use it. And when it comes to high potency weed, the psychotic disorder went up fivefold,” Ingraham said.

“A paper published in 2020 by one of my next guests analyzed past cases of violence and marijuana use looking specifically at the deadly attacks. So in researching the Parkland and Sutherland Springs mass shootings, the Times Square attack in 2017, and the Boston Marathon bombing, his study found recurring consequences of marijuana-induced paranoia and marijuana-induced psychosis. It also found that more potent marijuana resulted in a greater risk for psychosis,” Ingraham continued.

To be clear, Ramos’ toxicology report has yet to be released, so it’s not clear if he’d recently been smoking marijuana or if perhaps he’d even been high when last week’s mass shooting occurred.

Nevertheless, Ingraham argued, the issue of pot psychosis still seems relevant. And indeed, even the mainstream press used to admit this:

“It is worth exploring, is it not, given what we’ve already learned? The Daily Mail reports his father spent time in jail for multiple assaults and possession of marijuana. The Washington Post reports multiple people told them about his mother’s drug use, and a neighbor even reported she was about to be evicted over it,” Ingraham said.

“Independent journalist Ali Bradley told ‘The Ingraham Angle’ that Ramos’ grandfather served time in prison for drug trafficking. So given his family history, it stands to reason that someone surrounded by illicit drugs could have potentially had access to them as well,” she added.

For answers, Ingraham then turned to addiction psychiatrist Dr. Norman Miller and physician and IASIC president Dr. Eric Voth. IASIC is short for the International Academy on the Science and Impact of Cannabis.

Speaking first, Dr. Miller slammed the media for trying to hide the truth.

“I’m interested in the association of marijuana and violence, and when I hear these unfortunate incidences, the unthinkable mass shooting in Texas, I looked to see if marijuana was involved. And I find often that the newspapers — the media — hide it when it really is a major factor,” he said.

“And if as a country we are really interested in solving the gun violence problem, I think we’re gonna have to look under the rock and look at the role of drugs, particularly marijuana, in causing the violence, particularly the mass violence,” he added.

In fact, the media did the same with Ramos, according to journalist Alex Berenson.

Moving on to Dr. Voth, Ingraham then asked him about the profit motive behind the legalization of marijuana that’s been occurring in blue states.

“I think this is clearly driven by a marijuana industry that’s looking to profit off of people’s suffering. They have just walked past standards of care. This whole medical charade is really nothing more than a way to try to get marijuana justified and in people’s hands,” Voth replied.

“And I think it’s time that [there’s] more federal oversight and [the feds] step in and try to roll back this terrible mess. I mean, I call it a runaway train, and we’re riding this thing to a real point of disaster, I think.”

Ingraham then played a clip from July 2021 of a Colorado emergency room doctor being interviewed about what she was seeing in the ER at the time, following the state’s legalization of marijuana.

“These patients come in and they have like repeated vomiting or acute psychosis. They tell us it’s super hard to stop, which says to me it’s addictive,” the doctor says in the clip.

In a written update penned to Ingraham, the doctor added, “Invite any politician to spend a day in an ER. They need to see the end point of legalization from our side. Desperate families, psychotic/addicted children. … This is going to be a substantial problem for our country.”

While that may be so, Ingraham is nevertheless facing intense mockery from the left, including from the establishment press, for daring to raise the same concerns about marijuana that they were raising just a few short years ago:

The irony, critics say, is that these same hypocritical far-leftists were screeching in horror about the need to listen to COVID emergency room stories just a year ago …

Vivek Saxena

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