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Psychotropic Drugs May Be To Blame For Mass Shootings
Tennessee has just passed a law requiring toxicology testing for mass killers. That means the bodies of these sickos will now get a full drug screening during autopsy, including for psychotropic drugs like antidepressants. It’s about time.
Other states should follow suit. Wyoming is already considering doing so. In fact, I’ll go further: RFK Jr. should strike while the iron is hot and announce an investigation at the federal level. He’s spoken before about the links between antidepressants and school shootings, and of course, he’s taken more than his fair share of flak for it. Now he can actually do something.
Tennessee Bill HB1349/SB1146 has passed both houses of the state legislature. It will mandate a full panel of toxicology screening for mass killers — defined as anybody who kills more than four people — and a detailed report will be made available to the public in each case. Investigators will study drug interactions in killers’ bodies, because combinations of drugs can have different effects than they would individually. Investigators will also consult with providers of mental health services in cases where the killer has used them.
The law was drafted with the help of the advocacy group AbleChild. Its co-founder, Sheila Matthews, had this to say: “This law isn’t just about Tennessee. It’s a blueprint for dismantling the wall of secrecy protecting industries that profit from ignorance. When someone commits mass murder, the public has a right to know if mind-altering drugs played a role.”
The issue of psychotropic drugs and their role in mass killings, especially school shootings, has been mired in controversy ever since it was revealed that one of the Columbine killers, Eric Harris, was on the powerful antidepressant Luvox, way back in April of 1999.
Do these drugs play a role or not?
RFK Jr. has long maintained there’s a plausible link between antidepressant use and school shootings. In an interview with Elon Musk two years ago, he said, “Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had none of these events.”
During his confirmation hearings in February, he maintained that the link between antidepressants and mass killings “should be studied, along with other possible culprits.”
He went on to say antidepressants are overprescribed and that they’re dangerous and addictive.
“I know people, including members of my family, who’ve had a much worse time getting off SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, one of the main classes of antidepressant] than people coming off heroin,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy’s questioners in the Senate, of course, wanted to make him out to be a kook and a conspiracy theorist and pretty much every other bad thing under the sun, and they seized on comments and opinions they thought made him sound as kooky and unhinged as possible. But the truth is, when it comes to antidepressants and violence, the evidence is compelling. Broadly, there’s a well-established link between SSRIs and violence. For example, a massive Swedish study from 2020, looking at over three-quarters of a million people, showed a clear link between SSRI use and violent crime, especially in 15-24 and 25-34 year olds. The risk was elevated even up to 12 weeks after users stopped taking the drugs. The US FDA’s adverse event reporting system (FAERS) shows that SSRIs are consistently associated with violence among adults.
There aren’t many studies that look at school shootings and antidepressants use in particular, but those that do claim there is no causal link. In so many specific cases, though, we simply don’t know whether the shooter was on antidepressants or not. That’s where laws like HB1349/SB1146 come in: let’s do some tests and find out. (RELATED: Police Arrest Teen For Allegedly Plotting School Shooting, Say She Owned Bulletproof Vest)
It’s hard to understand the objections, at least the moral ones anyway. During its passage through the two houses of the Tennessee legislature, Bill HB1349/SB1146 was subject to some pretty fierce challenges. On the one hand, you had people like Rep. James Carter, who claimed the bill was simply a distraction from the real issue with mass killings: guns. I can understand why this objection is raised — guns really do kill people, in the same way that knives and bats and pretty much any object, from a brick to a bookend, can be used to kill someone — but so what? Which is to say, it’s a facile objection and one that shouldn’t be entertained, unless America wants to become like Britain and start removing the tips from kitchen knives and requiring licences for dessert spoons.
Other objections, like those of Sen. Lisa Monroe, were just, well, bizarre. She questioned whether mandatory testing was a violation of the killer’s right to privacy in death, which is a question nobody, anywhere, has ever asked before — with good reason. Some thoughts are best left unspoken, Lisa.
The pecuniary objections, which weren’t given voice by any of the senators or representatives — they’re much easier to understand, and they get to the heart of the matter, I think. Drug makers have untold billions of dollars riding on these drugs, which are prescribed to tens of millions of people the world over, not just in America. In Scotland, a full quarter of the entire adult population is now prescribed antidepressants, and a further third are also prescribed a variety of mental-health drugs from benzodiazepines to so-called “z-drugs” like zopiclone and zolpidem. In America, it’s something like 20% of adults over a certain age who are on antidepressants.
Makers of antidepressants already have to deal with embarrassing questions about their efficacy, like a massive meta-study in the British Medical Journal, which recently showed just 15% of users enjoy benefits they wouldn’t get from a placebo. These questions don’t go away, even as rates of prescription rise. The questions are only — rightly — asked with greater urgency. A proven link to mass killings would be a disaster.
But if Make America Healthy Again is about anything, it’s about getting to the bottom — the real bottom — of what’s making America so sick. And only a sick society could regularly produce people who go into schools with guns and kill as many kids as they can. If antidepressants are even partially to blame, Americans have a right to know and to seek a different form of treatment.
sure he ded?
>melmac F