The left says he was a right-winger; the conservatives say that he was a leftist. What is abundantly clear, from reading his Internet commentaries, is that Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell was a psychotic pothead. He hated a government that he believed was standing in the way of his desire to use, grow and glorify marijuana. He virtually worshipped the drug. "I'm a cannabis enthusiast," he proclaimed.
In terms of ideology, he expressed conservative ideas about limiting the role of government, but opposed the war in Iraq and favored open borders.
But rather than try and make silly ideological points by accusing Bedell of being either left or right, there is an urgent need for the blogosphere-and the major media-to address the question of how he became criminally psychotic and a patsy for conspiracy theories. The answer is marijuana, which alters the ability of the mind to comprehend reality but which is depicted by most of the media as safe and harmless.
The author expresses disdain for "silly ideological points", yet the majority of his piece is nothing more than him making those same silly ideological points. Somehow this is lost on him.
This connection-between pot and mental illness-is a matter of the medical record but is conveniently being ignored in the many stories about this young man's strange journey and tragic end.
The book, "Marijuana and Madness," cites studies and evidence from around the world, some of it going back 40 years, linking the use of marijuana-supposedly a "soft"drug-to mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and psychosis. One of the latest studies finds that "Marijuana use at a young age significantly increased the risk of psychosis in young adulthood..."
The public laughs at the old propaganda films such as "Reefer Madness," which depict marijuana smokers as crazed zombies. However, the Pentagon rampage was likely triggered by marijuana-induced psychosis. Bedell was not only a heavy marijuana user and had been busted for possession and growing thedrug, but dedicated much of his life to glorifying the substance.
He had declared cannabis "to be one of the most useful plants known to humanity" and said that he looked forward to the day when "billions and billions of carefully cultivated, highly valuable cannabis plants [are] growing throughout the United States with complete security of property." He said he envisioned "the use of cannabis as a monetary system."
Faulty reasoning abounds, as the author gives us a prime example of a deductive fallacy.
His premise is true. There have been studies, including a recent one out of Australia which linked marijuana with the onset of psychosis.
His conclusion is however deeply flawed. Any mood altering drug, including alcohol, has been shown to have the same result in patients
predisposed to psychotic illness. That's a far cry from asserting that marijuana can cause psychosis in healthy individuals. The fact is, and any psychiatrist would tell you, the physiological origins of psychosis are in fact unknown.
If we accept the mere inductive reasoning of these statistical studies and the author's assertion at face value, if triggering the onset of psychosis alone is a reason for prohibition of marijuana, then we should ban alcohol as well. The effect is identical according to similar studies.
The book that he quotes, has an interesting first page. It describes how a scientist named J.J Moreau and his assistants took doses of marijuana extract (THC). The amount that one of them took was
16g. If you took that much of nutmeg you would go insane, if you took the same relative dose of alcohol you would promptly die. Nobody could conceivable inhale or ingest that much marijuana without passing out cold.
Interestingly, at the top of the
second page of the book is the following statement.
Some of the effects described by Moreau- obsessive ideas, irresistible impulses, persecutory delusions and many others - are certainly seen in psychiatric patients, but any relationship of the physiological and biochemical basis of cannabis action to that of mental disease is still questionable.
The author is obviously not a scholar, but if he's going to put forth a textbook and say it supports his position...it would be nice if it didn't contradict his position on the first two pages.
The "Medical Marijuana" Scam
The rampage at the Pentagon has also raised disturbing questions about the Obama Administration's policy of allowing "medical marijuana" dispensaries in such places as California, where Bedell was living, to operate free from fear of federal prosecution. President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder have been accused of encouraging marijuana use by refusing to use federal resources to prosecute "medical marijuana" users and the "dispensaries" which supply them with the illegal dope.
He reportedly claimed during one pot bust that he had a "medical marijuana" card which entitled him to use marijuana for "health" reasons.
That's interesting, as the author writes this piece for a supposed conservative blog site. In this piece ironically he's making an anti-federalism argument? A real conservative is not a fly-by-night or fair-weather federalist. Getting to pick and choose when to follow the intent of the founders is usually a position reserved for the liberals he so derides in the second half of his piece.
Bedell, 36, had a bachelor's degree in science and was enrolled in graduate school. A professor called him helpful, hardworking and intelligent. At some point, however, he developed an addiction for marijuana and a psychosis that led tothe Pentagon rampage. How many other intelligent young people with good backgrounds and a good future get exposed to marijuana and other drugs and throw it all away?
The same thing happens to people who abuse alcohol or prescription drugs. Abusing anything and letting it take over your life is a bad thing. I would assert that more deaths occur and more lives are ruined through abuse of those legal substances.
One can hope that the tragic story of John Patrick Bedell and his victims will cause our major media to review the dangerous implications of allowing more and more people access to thedrug , on the spurious grounds that it is somehow medicinal, and start a much-needed examination of the billionaires and organizations pushing drug legalization in America.
Billionaire George Soros has been called "an extremely evil person" by Calvina Fay of the Drug Free America Foundation for putting millions of dollars into groups like the Drug Policy Alliance dedicated to legalization of pot and other drugs. Another billionaire, Peter Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance Company, has also put millions of dollars into the cause. Lewis, who was arrested in New Zealand and admitted to three charges of importing drugs after customs officers found two ounces of hashish and 1.7 ounces of marijuana in his luggage, is being honored with the "America's Future Lifetime Leadership Award" at the June 8 awards gala of the "progressive" Campaign for America's Future.
This is also flawed reasoning. A variation of the old "poisoning the well" fallacy.
The fact that third parties might have called George Soros names, or a CEO of some insurance company having ben arrested with an ounce of weed in his luggage, has no rational bearing whatsoever on the legitimacy of marijuana as a medicine, or the justification of continued prohibition.
I would point out to the author that the 10th Amendment Center, recently issued a press release in favor of marijuana reform based upon a federalist argument. They are about as far from a vitriol spitting lunatic group such as Moveon.org as you can get. How does that fit into the author's narrative? It doesn't.
The fact is you can be against marijuana abuse and still support legalization for a variety of reasons. Just as rational people are not in favor of bringing back prohibition of alcohol, but are against it's abuse. This reasoned line of thought seems to be lost on the author in his partisan zeal.
Conspiracy Theory [/b]
While he thought the U.S. Government had itself been taken over by a drug-trafficking cabal, Bedell was such a believer in marijuana that he tried to grow it out in the open, on the balcony of his apartment. He wrote, "I deliberately did not seek permission of any kind, and did not obtain a doctor's recommendation for the use of cannabis, which would have made my garden relatively acceptable under California state law."
Not surprisingly, Bedell was busted by the police, adding fuel to his anti-government mentality.
He believed conspiracies, such as an alleged plot to cover-up government involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "This organization," referring to the alleged conspiracy pulling the strings behind the U.S. Government, "like so many murderous governments throughout history, would see the sacrifice of thousands of its citizens, in an event such as the September 11 attacks, as a small cost in order to perpetuate its barbaric control," he said.
He apparently targeted the Pentagon because of his belief that military officials had covered up the alleged murder of a Marine Colonel with knowledge of drug trafficking.
Here we have the curious irony of the author pointing out the raving conspiratorial thoughts of an individual, yet the rest of his piece is comprised of the author suggesting there is a conspiracy of George Soros and the liberals to effect marijuana legalization. So I would ask the author, what is the source of his psychosis?
Society Reaps What Soros Sows
Although drug legalization has been mostly a left-wing cause, funded by "progressive" billionaires such as George Soros and Peter Lewis, the libertarian Cato Institute has been promoting legalization of dope for many years. It, too, has been funded by Soros.
"I smoke marijuana, and I like it," declared Cato research fellow Will Wilkinson in a controversial and eye-opening column. He added that "the casual pleasure marijuana has delivered is orders of magnitude greater than the pain it has assuaged, and pleasure matters too. That's probably why Barack Obama smoked up the second and third times: because he liked it."
John Patrick Bedell liked it too; in fact, he was a marijuana addict. But he inflicted a lot of pain on other people, including the two guards he shot at the Pentagon.
The pain has also been evident in other cases, such as admitted pot lover 16-year-old Jeff Weise, who murdered nine people and injured five others in Red Lake, Minnesota, in 2005, and Charles "Andy" Williams, a regular marijuana user who smoked thedrug just before killing two schoolmates and wounding 13 others in a San Diego suburban school on March 5, 2001.
This is an interesting section.
Marijuana prohibition itself, as well as prohibition of alcohol was driven purely from the progressives. That fact seems to be lost on the author. Democratic congresses gave us every marijuana law from the stamp act forward. Joe Biden was the one who pushed for drug testing in the workplace and gave us the Drug Czar and mandatory minimum sentences in the 80's.
Now that the liberals are trying to undo that mess with a federalist argument is ironic indeed. What's sad, is while the author purports to be a conservative he's making the same arguments they used to put these laws into place and is rejecting federalism. I would ask the author which section of the constitution gives power to the congress to abate the state's sovereignty on this issue. Conservative indeed!
The author then gives three examples of the 'pain' caused by marijuana. I could recount quite a few more examples from just the
local news about individuals causing just as much pain under the influence of alcohol. There is a reason why they park smashed up cars outside of high schools every prom season. Any mind altering substance, when abused, inevitably results in tragedy.
That is a fact, however it has no bearing on the legitimacy of medical marijuana. As is true throughout this piece, it's fallacious logic based upon an appeal to emotion. Something the liberals he chastises are quite good at.
Legal Dope is the Next Step
These dangers are rising because of the growing number of people with access to marijuana on so-called medical grounds. However, "medical marijuana" has been shown to be a fraud and a cruel hoax, as those on the inside of the pro-pot movement have been caught on film admitting that getting the public to accept the notion that smoking marijuana alleviates health problems is a scam designed to promote the eventual legalization of dope.
Bedell's psychiatrist is quoted as saying that he used marijuana to "self-medicate," which sounds ridiculous until you realize that thousands of people with real and imaginary medical conditions, including mental illness, are currently "self-medicating" by getting "medical marijuana" at marijuana "dispensaries" in California and other states.
I visited one of these places in Oakland, California, operating under the name of the "Blue Sky Coffeeshop," and saw lines of people flashing "medical marijuana" cards to get their marijuana in brown paper sacks. I took a tour of Oaksterdam University, also known as "America's First Cannabis College," which teaches people how to grow high-quality dope. Oaksterdam had a big cardboard cut-out of the pot movement's hero, Barack Obama, in the lobby.
Oaksterdam founder Richard Lee is proposing a November ballot measure to legalize marijuana statewide and dramatically expand access to thedrug.
The Bedell case demonstrates that people who have been led to believe that marijuana can alleviate their physical or mental problems may be coming come down with far more serious psychological problems that can threaten the lives of the rest of us.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Lamar Smith has said that "By allowing marijuana dispensaries to operate free from fear of prosecution, the Administration is promoting the use, and therefore the demand for marijuana. Marijuana fields operated by Mexican drug trafficking organizations are most prevalent in California, Oregon and Washington-three of the 13 states that allow the use of medicinal marijuana."
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that "no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use. There are alternative FDA-approved medications in existence for treatment of many of the proposed uses of smoked marijuana."
As his initial premise that marijuana causes psychosis is invalid, so too is this section. An argument needs legs to stand on.
The opinion of a representative, is just that, an opinion. Yet, the author gives it weight while discounting and diminishing those who have a contrary
opinion. It's nothing more than a classic example of Ad Verecundiam. This section, as is the rest of the piece, isn't comprised of a reasoned argument but built on a house of cards.
The author wants to give weight to the FDA's assessment, yet discount the fact that it's a political body. Conservatives complained about the politicization of it when they recently supported over the counter emergency contraception. Liberals complained of exactly the same when they were slow to approve the same drug during the Bush administration.
I would suggest to the author that instead of trumpeting political bodies because they at the current time agree with his opinion, he should instead look to apolitical bodies where deductive and inductive reasoning occur. Such as the NIH. Their opinion is that the jury is still out on the question of the validity of medical marijuana, as there have been conflicting results of studies and pointed to possible flaws. They believe that more study is needed.
Bad Timing by the Pot Lobby
Ironically, on the same day that Bedell attacked the Pentagon, the popular left-wing website AlterNet ran a column by Paul Armentano insisting that the mainstream media "are running wild with the absurd notion that marijuana use causes psychological problems" such as schizophrenia and psychosis. It turns out that Armentano is the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and the co-author of the book Marijuana Is Safer. The book has been endorsed by such figures as David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute and "progressive" writer Barbara Ehrenreich.
Rather than publicize the marijuana-psychosis connection, the major media have shied away from it, probably because some journalists use pot themselves as a "recreational" drug.
A 1,300-word article in the Washington Post on Sunday, "Pentagon shooter's spiral from early promise to madness," waited until the 21st paragraph to note that Bedell "smoked marijuana frequently" and that a family member pleaded with him to stop because "it was making his thinking more disordered."
Once again, if this individual were instead abusing alcohol or prescription drugs it would also have made his thinking more disordered. The family members would have been right in pleading with him to stop. None of that has any validity in deciding whether medical marijuana, or casual social smoking, should be prohibited.
Obama Won't Enforce the Law
A week before Bedell went on his shooting rampage at the Pentagon, parent drug-prevention volunteers from California, Oregon, Maryland, and Virginia met in Washington, D.C. with the office of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. They told the Attorney General's staff that statements from some officials of the Obama Administration appeared to support the claims of drug users and traffickers that smoking marijuana "could legally be approved by State law."
Joyce Nalepka, president of Drug Free Kids: America's Challenge (DFK) and former president of Nancy Reagan's National Federation of Parents for Drug Free Youth, appealed for help from the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) to combat the widening massive campaign by professional drug legalization lobbyists, drug users and drug traffickers to legalize "medical marijuana."
Other members of the anti-drug coalition meeting with DOJ officials were Shirley Morgan, Oregon parent drug prevention founder of the Mt. Hood Coalition Against Drug Crime; Roger Morgan, Chairman, Coalition For A Drug-Free California; and DeForest Rathbone, chairman of National Institute of Citizen Anti-drug Policy.
In a news release, they said, "Widespread publicity falsely portraying marijuana as a medicine convinces kids that pot is harmless thus leading to increasing teen drug use..." They cited a study showing that teenagers are smoking tobacco less and marijuana more.
They said pro-drug messages are coming from the efforts of "convicted billionaire international finance swindler and drug-legalization advocate George Soros," who "has provided significant financial support for professional drug legalization lobbyists and for their elaborate public relations campaigns to obtain state referendums approving 'medical marijuana.'"
Yet more Ad Verecundiam with some Ad-Hominem thrown in for good measure. There isn't a piece of deductive reasoning in this entire article.
Soros Calls the Tune
The problem, they noted, is that "Soros and the professional drug legalization lobbyists also provided substantial financial support for the Obama presidential campaign," and that Obama himself had said that it was entirely "entirely appropriate" for "medical marijuana" to be prescribed in some cases.
The anti-drug activists noted that Obama officials have followed up with more statements that have given the public the impression that using marijuana will not be punished by federal law enforcement authorities. They point to the following:
* Shortly after assuming office, President Obama's spokesman NickShapiro said that "The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws (authorizing medical marijuana.)"
* In a statement on February 25, 2009, Attorney General EricHolder said,"What the president said during the campaign ... will be consistent with what we will be doing here in law enforcement.What (Obama) said during the campaign ... is now American policy."
* A drug legalization lobbyistresponding to the above statement bragged,"Holder's statement marks a dramatic shift in U.S. drug policy..."
Such statements, the anti-drug activists said, have "caused a widespread perception among parents that drug money campaign contributions may have bought for the drug traffickers and drug users a de facto license to sell and use marijuana under the fraudulent claim that it is medicine."
To refute that perception, they called on President Obama and Attorney General Holder to "immediately and forcefully reaffirm federal primacy of drug laws and authorize a massive counteroffensive against the illegal trafficking and use of marijuana in states where it has skyrocketed under their leadership."
So President Obama says different things to different groups at different times. His actions are at times in conflict with his statements to one group or another. He's a politician. This is nothing new.
Both Maryland and D.C. are working to pass pro-drug legislation, with the Maryland legislature scheduled to hear a bill on March 18 in Annapolis.
As is their right to do so. If the medical marijuana is grown in the state and doesn't cross state borders, the federal government has no power under the constitution to prohibit it.
Nalepka noted that, during the meeting with senior Department of Justice staff, the group of anti-drug activists was told that the federal government did not have the resources to go after the problem of "medical marijuana."
Nalepka countered, "That's why we're here-we want the government to get the resources. It is well-known that marijuana is both physically and psychologically addictive and is a definite stepping stone to many drugs."
She concluded, "Allowing this to continue is treason, i.e., a betrayal of trust, against our own children and grandchildren."
Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.
Yet more Ad Verecundiam. Opinion is opinion, it is not fact, no matter what the person's title or position.
This entire piece has turned out to be a bucket of fail, filled with faulty reasoning. But it is an opinion piece, and the author is entitled to it. I just wish I hadn't wasted the minute or so it took to read it. It was enough to drive me psychotic.
Author
