Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Fri 04/19/2024 View Thu 04/18/2024 View Wed 04/17/2024 View Tue 04/16/2024 View Mon 04/15/2024 View Sun 04/14/2024 View Sat 04/13/2024
2019-08-09 -Lurid Crime Tales-
The link between pot and mass shootings may be closer than we think
[New York Post] Even as evidence mounts of the health problems associated with marijuana, New York has insisted on joining other greedy states scrambling to legalize this deceptively dangerous drug.

It makes no sense at a time when American youth is suffering from an unprecedented mental health crisis.

And, in all honesty, we cannot rule out a connection between increasing marijuana use, mental illness and the recent spate of mass shootings by disturbed young males.

We don’t yet know much about the mental state or drug use of the El Paso or Dayton killers. But a former girlfriend of Dayton killer Connor Betts, 24, has indicated he was mentally ill, and two of his friends interviewed by reporters this week mentioned his previous drug use.

Just last year, the Parents Opposed to Pot lobby group tried to sound the alarm on the link between marijuana and mass shootings, compiling a list of mass killers it claims were heavy users of marijuana from a young age, from Aurora, Colo., shooter James Holmes and Tucson, Ariz., shooter Jared Loughner to Chattanooga, Tenn., shooter Mohammad Abdulazeez.

Until we understand those links, it is nuts to enact lax laws that ­encourage more young people to use a drug proven to trigger mental illness.
Posted by Besoeker 2019-08-09 02:55|| || Front Page|| [14 views ]  Top

#1 given that we can extract THC and CBD from marijuana it seems to me that we could make both legal (with some restraint on quantity) and keep marijuana illegal

the problem with marijuana is that there are dozens of different chemicals in it (double that if it is smoked) and each one may have different effects including synergistic ones
Posted by lord garth 2019-08-09 04:02||   2019-08-09 04:02|| Front Page Top

#2 Why are we taking the risk?

We found out - decades are the fact - that introducing lead into the atmosphere was a contributing cause for the extraordinary increase in violent urban crime in the late 20th century. We got rid of lead paint and lead as an additive in gasoline, and by the 2000's, this had helped to bring down the rate of violent crime in many of our big cities, especially New York. (See James Q Wilson's research on this.)

Why are we so callous about this? How does society benefit?

Nearly all of our society's wounds are self-inflicted.
Posted by Lex 2019-08-09 08:11||   2019-08-09 08:11|| Front Page Top

#3 I think the crazy folks that become mass shooters might use pot to help control the crazy. That doesn't mean pot made them do it.
Posted by ruprecht 2019-08-09 10:17||   2019-08-09 10:17|| Front Page Top

#4 They tend to be gamers too. Gonna ban games?
Posted by Iblis 2019-08-09 10:30||   2019-08-09 10:30|| Front Page Top

#5 People are often self treating with pot.

It doesn't help that Pot is becoming much more varied in strength/effects/content with time. This is not helped by it being illegal.
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2019-08-09 11:51||   2019-08-09 11:51|| Front Page Top

#6 People do indeed try to self-medicate with pot — and with alcohol, too. And we know what a bad idea the latter is, when that approach is used long term.

The thing about pot is that for those who are genetically susceptible, it flicks the switch for schizophrenia. For those who do not have that specific genetic mutation it isn’t a risk, as far as I am aware, except for changes in the developing brain if used too often when young, but alcohol poses the same risk there.

It’s the kind of thing that, knowing there is a risk of alcoholism in the family, I talked to the trailing daughters early and often about being careful about drinking and drugs because they were at risk for problems. They also inherited near-sightedness and crooked teeth, which we watched out for and dealt with when it became necessary. *shrug* Genetic variability is a reality.
Posted by trailing wife 2019-08-09 12:20||   2019-08-09 12:20|| Front Page Top

#7 A little Bayesian statistics may help. GIVEN that someone is a mass shooter, we can find that they used pot, or had a traumatic childhood, or that they had a triggering event, or that they bought a gun, with just about 100% certainty.

BUT GIVEN that someone did any or all of the above, we can find that they will become a mass shooter with almost infinitesimal probability.

In other words, the probability works one way but not the other.
Posted by Tom 2019-08-09 13:09||   2019-08-09 13:09|| Front Page Top

#8 Green tracers at night are really cool when you're toked up.
Posted by Skidmark 2019-08-09 16:37||   2019-08-09 16:37|| Front Page Top

#9 As for the El Paso guy, I think his mommy called the cops to state that he was procuring an AR and that she didn't think he could handle it with his misdeveloped brain.

Call it what you want. Law enforcement is always to blame. If bureaucracies do their jobs right instead of turning to systems theory and assembly-line jurisprudence, these things would be fewer and far between.
Posted by Dron66046 2019-08-09 19:17||   2019-08-09 19:17|| Front Page Top

#10 The highest Bayesian probability is a prior shooting, amplified beyond all restraint by saturation media which glorifies, in the minds of depressed/bipolar/alienated/abused/grievance-laden individuals, the act of mass killing.

Take away the media coverage, and the incidence of mass shootings will fall to where it was 40 years ago: once a decade instead of 3x per year.
Posted by Lex 2019-08-09 19:50||   2019-08-09 19:50|| Front Page Top

02:55 Grom the Reflective
02:08 Grom the Reflective
00:54 Besoeker
00:41 Angealing+B.+Hayes4677
00:40 EMS Artifact
00:22 Angealing+B.+Hayes4677
00:20 Besoeker
00:11 Besoeker









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com