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Mass shooters and smoking weed connections are too many to ignore

July 7, 2022 | | Print Article

Suspected Highland Park mass shooter Robert Crimo III’s marijuana-smoking habit has reignited the debate over whether there’s a link between the narcotic drug and mass shootings, and whether this possible link is justification for maintaining prohibition.

Some, like Miranda Devine of the New York Post, believe it’s a connection worth exploring, at minimum, and that marijuana should remain 100 percent illegal.

“Those who knew the 21-year-old suspect, Robert Crimo III, say he habitually smoked cannabis, a habit he appeared to share with young mass shooters, including at Uvalde, Dayton, Parkland and Aurora. Obviously weed didn’t make them commit their evil acts, but it may have scrambled their brains enough for empathy to take a holiday,” Devine wrote on Wednesday for the Post.

“As the country rushes headlong into the embrace of Big Weed, we need to heed the warning signs, not least in the scientific literature which increasingly shows that cannabis triggers psychosis, and in the emergency rooms where mentally ill kids are the living proof of its harms. The higher the potency of THC, the worse it is, especially for the developing adolescent brain.”

According to Crimo’s former friends, he used to just be a “timid” and “quiet” kid who skateboarded. But then everything changed when he turned 18 and reportedly became depressed over a girl.

“Instead of therapy he turned to drugs. … He definitely thought there was a border in the mind that needed to be broken through the mind. Very third-eye type of stuff that kind of goes along with the psychedelic rap and drugs,” one of these friends said.

Another former friend said Crimo turned into “an isolated stoner who completely lost touch with reality.”

Yet another former friend described him as “lost.”

None of this seems coincidental, Devine suggested.

“We can’t address the [mental health] crisis without considering the effect of teens’ cannabis use and the increased potency of the products they consume,” she wrote.

She then proceeded to list a couple of recent findings to bolster her point.

“THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, 20 years ago was at about 4% potency, but today’s Big Weed products are close to 100%. We have known for at least 15 years that cannabis use can increase the risk of psychosis in susceptible people by about 40%, according to the medical journal Lancet,” she wrote.

“A study last year of 204,000 people aged 10-24 in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s pediatrics publication found that cannabis use and abuse is associated with depression, bipolar disorder and increased risk of ­suicide.”

These facts are all accurate.

“The one thing we should not have done was make it easier for young people to access such a potentially harmful drug. But that is the political climate heading to the midterms in November,” Devine concluded.

She clearly stands in strong opposition to those states that have decriminalized or outright legalized marijuana.

She’s not alone.

But not everybody agrees with her conclusion.

“There are indeed well-documented ties between heavy marijuana use and psychosis, particularly among the young. But teasing out the causality is incredibly difficult. Does marijuana use cause psychosis, or are people who develop psychosis already more predisposed toward marijuana use?” The Washington Post noted in a report last year.

“Beyond that, scholars have done plenty of rigorous work directly examining the relationship between marijuana use and crime, and for all intents and purposes, they haven’t found one. In 2013, a sweeping review of the evidence conducted by the Rand Corp. on behalf of the White House concluded that ‘marijuana use does not induce violent crime.'”

Still, should a drug that can cause psychosis be decriminalized or legalized? Democrats certainly say they should. In fact, so-called “progressive” Democrats are currently mad at President Joe Biden for disagreeing.

As previously reported, six “progressive” senators have openly criticized the president and his administration for their “extraordinarily disappointing” decision to not remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.

If anything, these Democrats believe that the psychosis-inducing drug is good for people.

“It is obvious that cannabis has widely accepted medical benefits, affirmed by medical and scientific communities both here and across the globe. The therapeutic properties of cannabis caused by the effects of both the tetrahydrocannabinol-alpha (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) components make it an excellent alternative to highly addictive opiates for pain relief,” they wrote in a letter to the president.

Interestingly, the letter made no mention of the negatives of THC, including its tendency to sometimes induce psychosis …

Vivek Saxena
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