Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Drug Connections to Mass Shootings


Although the recent school shooting is blanketing the news, everyone is avoiding the question as to WHY these mass shootings occur when the answer might be all too obvious. It is too easy for lazy minds to blame it on guns, as if guns walked to the schools and malls and pulled their own triggers. Maybe there is a common link we don’t want to see.

Drugs for anxiety and mental challenges carry the warning that they may cause harmful and suicidal thoughts, so why don’t we see the possible connection? Kids are placed on drugs in their preteens and grow up dependent on them and their altered thinking seems normal to them. Not everyone on these drugs is off the chart like these people are who choose to murder, but it is a common denominator among them that news outlets refuse to consider or even talk about.

After all, almost every commercial break carries an ad for one drug or another. A drug company pulling their ads would cost them big and the bottom line is more important than any safety issue to them.

I quickly and plainly make no assertion that everyone on such drugs are potential killers for that would be ludicrous. Most people benefit greatly from their help and they enable them to live healthy and functional lives when otherwise they would be challenged daily due to the effects of depression and anxiety. Most of our investigations and questioning, however, happens to be conducted after the fact and there does seems to be a link, albeit ignored by many.

In June 2014, Aaron Ybarra, killed one student and wounded two others with a shotgun at the Seattle Pacific University. His plan was to kill as many people as possible and then kill himself. Two years before, Ybarra admitted that he had been prescribed the antidepressant Prozac and antipsychotic Risperdal. His counselor said that he was taking Prozac.

In Austin, Texas in August 1966, Charles Whitman shot 16 people from a university tower while on amphetamines and barbiturates.  In March of 1981, John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. He was on Valium at the time. William Cruse killed 6 people in 1987 while on psychiatric drugs.

Jeffery Dahmer killed and dismembered 17 people while on tranquilizers and anti-depressants in 1991. In 1997, Jeremy Strohmeyer was charged with the rape and murder of a seven-year old girl while on Dexerdrine, known to cause hallucinations, confusion, anxiety and violent behavior and mood swings.

In the famous shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007, where 32 were killed, prescription drugs “related to the treatment of psychological problems” were found by investigators among the shooter’s effects.   

In 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children while under the influence of Effexor and Remeron, known to cause thoughts of suicide in young people as well as impulsive, irritable, agitated, hostile, aggressive, restless, hyperactive (mentally or physically) behavior, and the possibility of becoming even more depressed. The list goes on and includes the most recent shootings as well.

According to British psychiatrist Dr. David Healy, a founder of RxISK.org, an independent website for researching and reporting on prescription drugs, 90 percent of school shootings over more than a decade have been linked to a widely prescribed type of antidepressant called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs.


There is no question that the mind-altering drugs influence behavior and therefore they carry warnings of “suicidal thoughts and feelings of violent behavior.” 8.7 million Americans contemplate suicide each year and 1.1 million actually act on those thoughts.

253 million prescriptions for antidepressants are filled every year in the United States, the second most prescribed drug in America, second only to cholesterol-lowering drugs.

An alarming fact is that a study in 2010 found that effectiveness of antidepressant drugs to be “minimal or nonexistent, on average, in patients with mild or moderate symptoms.” Yet, there is ample evidence on the other hand that such behavior-altering drugs “intensify violent thoughts and behaviors, both suicidal and homicidal, especially among children.”

So, is there a connection between these mass shootings and violent behavior we have seen in recent years? It appears a very distinct possibility. Personally, I think the pharmaceutical companies, or politicians whose pockets are lined with campaign donations by them, are reluctant to make that connection because it is a multi-billion-dollar industry and as we all know, money talks.

The next time you hear some politician giving lip-service to “protecting our children” especially after a school shooting, as they always do, ask yourself where their main priority is, safety of our children, or winning their next campaign and getting rich with donations and contributions?

In fact, the next time you have the opportunity to question one, ask them yourself.

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