In fact, all of the available evidence indicates that Jared Loughner is psychotic and that his documented use of marijuana and other mind-altering drugs may have triggered it.
Obama, a former marijuana user, may not want to acknowledge this fact because his administration is soft on drugs and even buys into the “medical marijuana” scam. In 2004, Obama favored decriminalization of marijuana. As president, his Attorney General, Eric Holder, has withdrawn some federal resources from the war on drugs.
Marijuana has been linked not only to the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords but also to a death threat against Rep. Jim McDermott, (D-Washington).
Charles Turner Habermann, a 32-year-old man from Palm Springs, California, was arrested Wednesday for leaving threatening voice messages on McDermott’s telephone. CNN reports that Habermann “said he used medical marijuana for depression, and he apologized for the voice messages…” Another report put it somewhat differently, saying he was “high on medical marijuana.”
Not surprisingly, the FBI complaint against Habermann notes that he has exhibited symptoms of paranoia.
James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, linked marijuana and schizophrenia last year in an interview in which he said: “It’s clear that if you’re pre-disposed to schizophrenia, smoking marijuana will tip you over. But marijuana won’t tip over someone into schizophrenia that is probably not predisposed to it. So, you know, most people smoke it and do not end up in mental hospitals. But some do.”
In addition to the scholarly work, Marijuana and Madness, the British Journal of Psychiatry published a study, “High-potency cannabis and the risk of psychosis,” which concluded that “people with a first episode of psychosis had smoked higher-potency cannabis, for longer and with greater frequency, than a healthy control group…” It said this finding was consistent with the hypothesis that 9-THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, increases the risk of psychosis.
The authors said: “This has important public health implications, given the increased availability and use of high-potency cannabis.”
Nasser Rey, a friend of Loughner’s from elementary and middle school, is quoted in The Washington Post as saying that, after high school, Loughner talked a lot about smoking marijuana and taking mushrooms. Rey said, “I just never thought he’d be the type who would be getting high. I thought he was like a goody-good. He was pretty smart in school. I was more of a partyer.”
This adds to the abundant evidence that Loughner’s curious behavior was related to the heavy use of marijuana and other dangerous drugs.
Commenting on the Loughner case, Rush Limbaugh noted: “Mental health issues like this [are] often caused by drug use…”
Writing at the American Thinker, Jan LaRue, senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union, noted: “Mental health experts have opined that Loughner’s threatening and bizarre behavior, his videos, and nonsensical writings are consistent with a history of heavy marijuana use. The facts indicate that Loughner preferred a pot party to a tea party. So it’s not surprising that the advocates of legalizing marijuana are silent. They never talk about the negative side of the ledger — the costs and consequences of drug use on society.”
Some in the liberal media may be coming around to reality. Time magazine’s Joe Klein acknowledges the possibility that Loughner “was a paranoid schizophrenic whose illness was exacerbated by frequent marijuana use.”
He doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge the complete truth because he has been a supporter of marijuana legalization. He goes on: “I’m not saying that marijuana was the cause of this — again, no one knows why Loughner went berserk — but as Massimo Calabresi writes below, frequent drug use can have a deleterious effect on those with schizophrenic tendency.”
The Calabresi piece, “Environmental Influence on Violent Psychotics,” asks whether drugs or other factors fueled Loughner’s rampage.
The link is apparent not only in the Loughner case but was evident when it was revealed that John Patrick Bedell, who was killed after opening fire and wounding two police officers at the Pentagon, had a history of marijuana use and had in fact been receiving “medical marijuana” in California.
At that time, Charles Lane of The Washington Post had noted that “the legalization of physician-recommended pot in California is a prescription for disaster because it authorizes the ‘treatment’ of a wide range of real maladies with a spurious ‘medicine’ — marijuana — that might be ineffective or actually harmful. And Bedell’s case illustrates my point.”
Ominously, on Nov. 2, Arizona legalized “medical marijuana,” to be dispensed by the state, by passing Proposition 203.
A fact sheet from the Drug Enforcement Administration, one part of the federal government still run by a holdover from the Bush Administration, identified George Soros as one of the major funders of the initiative and noted that taxpayer dollars would be used to cover the costs of “the free marijuana program.”
The DEA called it a “drug legalization scheme disguised as a ‘medical marijuana’ initiative.”
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