Pentagon Shooter and 'Medical' Marijuana
The Wall Street Journal reports that Patrick Bedell, who shot two police officers protecting the Pentagon, was legally using marijuana in his home state of California, despite his parents' concerns about his mental health. He also was an outspoken advocate for using marijuana plants as the basis for a new monetary system, according to postings on Wikipedia. His comments on other sites indicate other extremist positions about the U.S. government, including rants about an "international criminal conspiracy" and predictions concerning "the sacrifice of thousands of its citizens."
Just two days earlier, news about a longitudinal study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry once again confirmed the complex but very real relationship between marijuana use and psychosis, especially for long time users. Researchers found that the longer a person smoked, the higher the risk of psychosis: after six years of use, study subjects were twice as likely to develop mental illness as nonusers.
What risks are we taking as a society when we vote on medicine?
Comments
junk science
This man was crazy. He also used marijuana. I fail to see how this case makes any argument whatsoever against medical marijuana. Had he been taking aspirin we wouldn’t be questioning if aspirin was a safe medication. Had he been taking Paxil it would never even be mentioned. Are you trying to make the suggestion that had this man not used marijuana he would be a normal, sane individual?
This man used marijuana. He also used the internet. The vast majority of those who develop psychosis later in life used and continue to use the internet. The same with automobiles, telephones and calendars. You can take that same junk science and turn it around and make just about anything the cause. The fact is if cannabis use really did lead to an increased risk of schizophrenia, then there would be a correlation between cannabis use rates and rates of diagnosis of schizophrenia. This quite simply isn’t the case. As cannabis use rose over the years, schizophrenia cases stayed round about the same. This has been debunked several times over now.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19560900
What this study found was a correlation between cannabis use and psychosis, but not a cause and effect relationship. If anything this demonstrates the tendency of those developing mental illness to self-medicate. 40 years ago these people would be using alcohol. And that reality would not at all be shocking to anyone. No one would be suggesting alcohol lead to their symptoms. Now more of them are using cannabis. More people in general are using cannabis. Congratulations. You have discovered what people in the real world have known for years now.
10 percent of American citizens use cannabis on a regular basis. If there really was a cause and effect relationship between cannabis use and actions like this, we would see this kind of thing happen more frequently than isolated cases like this. Had this man been diagnosed with schizophrenia, he would have been put on powerful psychotropic drugs. Drugs that, on a far more regular basis, cause psychotic events like these. How is cannabis any more dangerous than alcohol or prescription drugs? You may feel that you can sum up this “complex relationship” in 160 words, but the fact is the relationship between cannabis use and psychosis really is complex. Not black and white as you wish to paint it so briefly. And not at all a reason for continued prohibition, especially when you consider the risks of widely available prescription drugs (as well as alcohol). What risks are we taking when we take ANY medicine, drug or substance into our body? If we held all other substances to the level of safety you hold cannabis to, where would that leave basically everything else we put into our bodies on a daily basis?
So does DFAF have a study
So does DFAF have a study showing that killing sprees by psychotics rise and fall with the popularity of cannabis? A study showing that a disproportionate number of psychotics who commit killing sprees smoke cannabis?
I didn't think so.
Personally, I wonder if the guy who flew his private plane into the Austin IRS office wouldn't have been better if he'd just learned to chill out with some ganja.
FATAL SHOOTING: Suspect says
FATAL SHOOTING: Suspect says he was drunk
Police say 21-year-old admitted firing gun, killing mother of two.
A man arrested Monday morning told police he was drunk when the gun he was handling accidentally discharged, killing a mother of two stopped at a red light.
Calvin Lee Kirklin, 21, was driving Friday evening with three adult passengers and his infant son when he fired through the front passenger window, striking in the head 39-year-old Blanca Gonzalez, whose own two children were in the car with her.
Jabriel Fernandez, who was in the car with Kirklin, told police that "Kirklin held the gun in his right hand, fully extending his arm, as if aiming the pistol at Gonzalez's vehicle," according to an arrest report by Las Vegas police.