…and all the dopeheads cried "reeee"

Is Marijuana Use Linked to School Shootings?

I know it is hard for most people to put the two together. I never used to believe in the connection between pot and violent behavior either. That was not part of our experience. The stereotype of the stoner has always been the sedate, slow-thinking individual. Think Cheech and Chong, or Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. In the wake of the Uvalde school shooting, Whoopi Goldberg perpetuated the pothead stereotype by joking, “People who smoke weed are not carrying AR-15’s. They don’t even know where they put them.” The other hosts of The View chuckled but Whoopi’s joke wasn’t only tasteless, it was inaccurate.

With the advent of high potency weed and THC concentrates, a small percent of heavy users develop psychosis that can be traced to marijuana. The data are incontrovertible. In a landmark study, eminent researcher Marta Di Forti studied patients who presented to psychiatric services in 11 sites across Europe with first-episode psychosis. They were compared to representative controls. The figure shows the odds ratio of developing psychosis as a function of marijuana potency and frequency of use.

Psychosis risk is not increased with infrequent marijuana use. Only with frequent use of high THC product does the psychosis link become obvious.

In addition to studies, recent experience supports the link between marijuana and psychosis. In Colorado, the first state to legalize recreational marijuana, Emergency Department physicians see cannabis psychosis daily:

“Almost every day I see a patient in the ER who is having a psychotic break after taking high-potency THC,” Dr. Karen Randall worked in emergency rooms in Detroit for 19 years but she said she never saw anything like the acute violent psychotic reactions from high potency THC cannabis that she is seeing now in her emergency room in Pueblo, Colo. She added that working in a downtown Detroit emergency room didn’t prepare her for what she characterized as the high volume of “acutely violent psychotic patients” in Colorado.”

Still, I imagine many readers are doubtful. I don’t blame you. I was skeptical, too, until I met Anne Hassel. She is a mild-mannered, soft spoken young woman. She was a marijuana enthusiast who got her dream job of working in a medical marijuana dispensary. Her fringe benefits included discounts on the strongest stuff available. One day, I had lunch with her at a meeting. I almost fell off my chair when she told me she started buying knives as part of her plan to stab co-workers. She wrote up her experiences with high potency marijuana in Journey of a Budtender:

“I bought one of the dispensary’s side-car dab rigs, a butane torch, and shatter testing at over 94% THC. Though I had consumed our dispensary’s high THC flower, doing a dab was a sensation that I had never attained with marijuana before in my entire life, or from any drug for that matter, including cocaine….We have always been told marijuana should have a calming, peaceful, happy effect on people. However, my patients and co-workers were describing being ill, they were looking unhappy and angry. I noticed that patients who consumed dabs would be prone to IED (Intermittent Explosive Disorder) outbursts in the dispensary. As for me, as my concentrate usage continued and escalated, my physical and mental health declined.

“I had started to experience escalating thoughts of committing violent actions. First I was vividly daydreaming about vandalizing cars, then beating people with a baseball bat, then shooting people with a gun. After dabbing for 9 months, I felt completely devoid of spirit, truly despising myself and on the brink of suicide. Non-violent person by nature and a yoga practitioner for 20 years, I would rather end my life than take another.”''

A co-worker of the Uvalde shooter was quoted in the New York Times as saying the shooter shot his grandmother mother in the face because she wouldn’t let him smoke pot. The teenager who killed 17 people at a Florida high school told investigators that he heard voices in his head telling him to “burn, kill, destroy” and that he smoked a lot of marijuana.

It is unclear what role marijuana played in these school shootings. There may be no causal link at all, but it is important to know that cannabis-induced psychosis is a real entity and its prevalence has increased with the advent of high-THC products.

https://authenticmedicine.com/2022/06/%EF%BF%BCis-marijuana-use-linked-to-school-shootings/

Stop taking the pots - Whoopi Goldberg wants you to take it - stop taking the pots.