Posted on 05/15/2019 6:15:32 PM PDT by Kaslin
Contrary to the image of potheads as peaceful stoners, "cannabis-dependent psychotic patients were four times as likely to be violent," Alex Berenson writes in his magnificent new book, Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence. "No other factor was nearly as important. Alcohol use, which was common among the patients, made no difference."
So where are all the marijuana-induced murders?
As Berenson says, they're hiding in plain sight. But until you're told about the cannabis-psychosis link, you don't even notice. Crime reporters don't want to look uncool by asking about the perp's marijuana use, and, inasmuch as being high isn't a legal defense, neither prosecutors nor defense lawyers have an incentive to request that suspects be tested for pot.
At the end of his book, Berenson runs through a slew of depraved murders, inexplicably gruesome -- until you find out the perpetrators were high on marijuana. None of these were reported as cannabis-induced homicides.
In 2016, 35-year-old comic book artist and screenwriter Blake Leibel scalped his girlfriend, stripping her skull to the bone, drained her body of blood, then hid out in their West Hollywood condo with her desiccated corpse for more than a week. Only after the girlfriend's mother tricked the police into knocking down the door did they discover the grisly scene.
The girlfriend had complained to her mother that Blake smoked "huge" amounts of marijuana.
In 2017, Dean Lowe, a 32-year-old cannabis dealer in Cornwall, England, beat his girlfriend to death, chopped her body into tiny pieces and made a necklace of her teeth. Like Leibel, Lowe lived with her remains in their apartment for eight days, disposing of her body parts, bit by bit, by flushing them down the toilet and leaving the rest for the garbage collector.
The murder was discovered months later, after Lowe texted a cousin, saying, "Either I'm getting set up or I've murdered (my girlfriend). I had a blackout, hazy memory and woke up with a body on the floor. I am scared so I just got rid."
Lowe had long boasted that he was "the biggest stoner in the world."
In December 2017, William T. Jones Jr. walked up to a complete stranger, 21-year-old Jared Plesec, a Salvation Army volunteer in Cleveland, and shot him in the head. Jones then hysterically raged for a solid four minutes -- captured on Facebook Live by a passerby -- screaming "F*ck Trump!" and "They're going to kill us all!"
Over the next hour, he rampaged through Cleveland, shooting at people and committing several carjackings before finally being captured by the police.
Jones had never been diagnosed with any mental illness. Blood samples taken after his arrest showed the presence of only one drug: marijuana.
After reading Berenson's book, you'll suddenly start noticing pot-induced murders all over.
Just last week in Ventura County, California, a preliminary hearing was held in the case of Bryn Spejcher, an employed, well-educated 28-year-old with no criminal record or history of mental illness. She stands accused of stabbing her boyfriend to death -- after smoking pot for the first time.
On May 28, 2018, police arrived at Chad O'Melia's apartment around 1 a.m. to find Bryn kneeling over his lifeless body. As soon as Bryn saw the deputies, she took the 8-inch serrated knife she was holding and stabbed herself in the neck.
The coroner testified that Chad had been stabbed 108 times, from his head to his knees, cutting his trachea, jugular vein and carotid artery and perforating his heart twice. Bryn's Siberian husky had also been stabbed.
Bryn told police she'd never smoked pot before and wanted to try it, but when she felt nothing, Chad said he'd give her something more "intense." After one puff from the bong, she said she felt like she was dying, ran to the bathroom, then back to Chad and began frantically stabbing him because voices were telling her to keep fighting to stay alive.
A forensic scientist from the crime lab confirmed that no drug other than THC was present in Bryn's blood and no drug other than THC was found in the bong.
The Los Angeles Times has yet to mention this case.
Last Sunday's New York Times magazine featured a story by Wil Hylton about how his cousin tried to murder him for absolutely no reason a few years ago. Hylton blamed toxic masculinity: "the conventions of male identity were toxic ... Masculinity is a religion."
There was a rather more obvious explanation screaming out from his story:
-- Hylton's repeated mentions of his cousin's pot smoking, e.g.: "He always wanted to smoke a bowl";
-- The cousin was apparently thrown out of the military for selling hashish; and
-- The reason his cousin beat Hylton to a bloody pulp in the middle of a child's birthday party was that ... he was hearing voices no one else could hear.
Times readers filled the "Comments" page with indignation at toxic masculinity, but one, a Toronto psychiatrist, wrote: "The article doesn't mention that his cousin's regular marijuana use could be one possible cause of his paranoid hallucinations."
Finally, you may have seen the story about a quintuple-homicide near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, earlier this year. Around 8 a.m. on a Saturday in January, 21-year-old Dakota Theriot is accused of fatally shooting his girlfriend, his girlfriend's father and brother, then driving to his parents' house, where he killed them, too. (His father lived long enough to identify his son as the killer.)
Perhaps Theriot is just a run-of-the-mill schizophrenic. But I happened to notice that his only prior arrests were for: possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of marijuana.
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I have seen it up close: siblings and co-workers.
I have never been drunk or drugged; I am a sober witness.
There are numerous studies demonstrating that marijuana causes permanent brain damage, psychosis and schizophrenia.
What’s the frequency, Kenneth?
Wasn’t this something copied out of Reefer Madness? Are we supposed to forget all the people killed in alcohol related car crashes,or all the people killed by cancer caused by tobacco? We are supposed to swallow this shallow attempt to demonize weed?Please...
Impossible! Pot heads have repeatedly told me that marijuana is not addictive, better for you than cigarettes, have no side effects and no worse than alcohol, not a gateway drug... and and and
My doctor and I recently kind of had this discussion. I take Tramadol for back pain and I told him....if I could smoke pot for the pain instead I would. I can’t. It makes me Exorcist sick. He said that’s because it’s not the same stuff we smoked a little of when we were young. Now half a puff would be like smoking a whole joint when we were young.
Placemark.
Varma and Sharma (3) found an increased prevalence of cannabis use disorder in the first-degree relatives of schizophrenic probands. Working from the other direction, McGuire et al (4) found that within a sample of patients admitted with acute psychosis, the morbid risk of schizophrenia was increased for the relatives of probands who had tested positive for cannabis on urinary screening. These findings are consistent with the notion of a common genetic risk factor for cannabis abuse and schizophrenia. [...]
Most anti-psychotic medications work by suppressing dopamine. Drugs (like marijuana) that increase dopamine, might well be called pro-psychotic, in that they have the opposite effect of the anti-psychotics, on dopamine levels.
So people who are borderline, are pushed over the border by the increase in dopamine from marijuana or THC.
Reefer madness may not be for everyone, but it is for some.
A plausible theory - but I'm aware of no evidence that isn't equally well explained by the alternative theories above. And I'm not aware that there is yet any epidemiological evidence demonstrating the expected increase in incidence of schizophrenia within populations exposed to high levels of cannabis.
"Link" is not "causation." The statistical connection may be simply that persons willing to break laws against violent crime have no compunction about breaking laws against marijuana.
Astounding!
Your screen shot includes no citations for these studies - and I'm not inclined to take the word of a newsletter than froths about marijuana's "destruction of civilized society itself." LOL! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
I call BS. Let's see some links.
That makes sense. Rule breaking assholes are more likely to use drugs and to engage in interpersonal violence creating a correlation between dope and violence.
Old news being presented as something new & ‘dangerous’.
People who suffer from thought disorders shouldn’t use cannabis.
That’s a VERY small population of people.
Been using cannabis daily since 2015. Every aspect of my life has improved & continues to do so. Listen at the link to learn how it all came about!
https://www.carnivorecast.com/podcast/brett
Just google “marijuana psychosis,” you’ll get hundreds of results.
I call BS. Let's see some links.
Just google “marijuana psychosis,”
I'm not doing your homework for you - when YOU make a claim the burden is on YOU to support it.
you’ll get hundreds of results.
I wouldn't expect any of them to be studies demonstrating that marijuana causes permanent brain damage, psychosis and schizophrenia - as you claimed.
“we lack the crucial epidemiological evidence”
Lack of evidence, is not evidence. Such populations (exposed to high levels of cannabis) are markedly different in many respects. Accurate diagnosis and record keeping of psychotic events are very likely to be different across such cultures and sub-cultures. Hallucinations might be viewed as a feature, rather than a bug, to people seeking them, or in shamanic cultures -therefor not diligently reported to the authorities. Violent or destructive behavior from psychotic breaks might be recorded and treated as simple crime.
An epidemiological study is a very academic and abstract method of looking for effects, full of complex confounding factors, especially when direct biological models are easily available (although possible ethically riskier or more difficult for a non-medical academic, better suited to just library research).
Dopamine modulation can very reliably be shown to produce psychotic episodes in vulnerable individuals - just get a borderline psychotic and give them a hundred doses of THC in an extract oil - predictable and repeatable results - they will be tripping.
Give a less susceptible individual a thousand or 10,000 doses. They will also hallucinate profoundly. Seeing and hearing things that are not there is the very definition of psychosis. They would not be diagnosed as psychotics for epidemiological record keeping however, because the condition was induced, and not innate. They would pass a psychological evaluation easily, after the drugs wear off.
to;Dr == “Dave’s not here.”
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