By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

It is part of the Obama legacy: more drugs, more psychotic behavior, and therefore more violence.

Deranged potheads, some of them Islamists, are killing people in a series of violent and terrorist incidents on American soil.

In a recent case in Massachusetts, 15-year-old Mathew Borges has been charged with first-degree murder in the decapitation death of a classmate. But you have to read deep into the articles about the case to discover a motive. Police said he told them that he and his victim, Lee Manuel Viloria-Paulino, went away together to “smoke marijuana.”

Don’t expect our liberal, pro-drug media to draw the obvious connections between marijuana, psychosis and violence.

Dr. Christine Miller, who has written about the relationship between marijuana and mental illness, says the documented links between the heavy use of marijuana and psychosis in some people may help explain the gruesome murder in Massachusetts.

Ironically, Massachusetts was one of those states that approved the legalization of “recreational” marijuana on November 8.

President Obama’s administration has encouraged the use of marijuana through its support of state legalization initiatives.

In the Massachusetts case, the body of the victim “was mutilated so badly, including his arms and head cut off, that the autopsy took 11 hours to complete,” said the Boston Herald.

Miller cites another case out of Oregon where a pothead decided out of the blue to drive his car over another person he feared and considered a threat. Moments before he struck and killed a man with his car, the suspect in the fatal hit-and-run incident had smoked marijuana in his car and then intentionally sped toward the victim, officials on the scene said.

The pothead, Dillon Van Diviner, 22, said he had a “strong feeling” that the man he hit, Brad Goad, was somehow a threat. “Brad Goad was a loving boyfriend, father, Son, and uncle,” says the page set up to raise money for his family. “He was a hard worker and wanted nothing but good things for everyone.”

What observers in the media and elsewhere are not seeing is the ongoing evidence that psychosis linked to marijuana can cause paranoia about the intentions of others and spark violence, even murder.

In the states where legalization has occurred, Miller says, marijuana usage rates have gone up. She says that because marijuana is an intrinsically dangerous drug, the most serious results of increased use are chronic psychosis (increased five-fold in regular users) and suicide (risk for suicide increased seven-fold in regular users).

But Dr. Miller and other anti-drug advocates, such as Calvina Fay of the Drug Free America Foundation, are optimistic that President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), will turn things around.

“The news that Jeff Sessions has been chosen by the Trump transition team to be attorney general is fantastic news for our movement,” Miller told Accuracy in Media, “because not only would Sessions be more likely to enforce federal drug laws, but he is familiar with the science concerning marijuana’s mental health impacts and has cited such concerns during speeches in the Senate.”

Fay says that Sessions will have to go up against a “pot lobby” that is “pouring tons of money into the movement along with the billionaires such as George Soros.” She adds, “The anti-drug side cannot even come close to matching their money.”

The pro-drug side is “aided by a current administration that has taken a hands-off approach and has been totally AWOL on the marijuana issue,” she said. “We even have drug prevention coalitions that have had their federal funding threatened unless they remained completely silent about the harms of marijuana.”

She adds, “New research comes out regularly showing the alarming harms of marijuana and yet the public hears nothing about it because the Office of National Drug Control Policy and other government agencies have done absolutely nothing to get the information out.”

One possible problem in the development of a tough anti-drug policy by the Trump administration is the influence of libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and has become the first major investor in a marijuana company.

“It is refreshing that Mr. Thiel bucked the pressure from his liberal friends and supported Trump’s candidacy,” Fay told us. “Obviously, he recognized a Trump administration would provide a stronger business economy than a Clinton administration.  It is my hope that the advice that he may have the privilege of providing to the Trump administration will be limited to the technology issue and that he will avoid advising in areas of policy, where he is not qualified, and/or where real or perceived conflicts of interest exist.  Since he financially benefits from the marijuana industry, he should not be commenting or advising on drug policy.”

The Soros-funded drug legalization lobby is now scared. “This is looking really bad,” Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said about Trump’s cabinet picks. “First Sessions for Attorney General, then [Rep. Tom] Price at HHS, and now yet another old-style drug war character for Homeland Security [General John Kelly]. It looks like Donald Trump is revving up to re-launch the failed drug war.”

Michael Collins, deputy director of the Drug Policy Alliance’s office of national affairs, denounced Kelly as “a big-time drug war zealot,” adding, “As head of Southern Command he demonstrated that he is a true believer in the drug war, and it’s incredibly worrying that he could now head up Homeland Security.”

What Kelly understands is that failures in the drug war partly stem from a porous southern border which serves as a conduit for many dangerous, illegal drugs coming into the U.S., as well as terrorists and guns.

“We’re going to build that wall and we’re going to stop that heroin from pouring in and we’re going to stop the poison of the youth,” Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail.

In connection with the alleged medical benefits of marijuana, a condition called Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome is affecting some users, causing them to vomit uncontrollably for as long as 48 hours. “It’s confusing and paradoxical for patients because cannabis use is thought oftentimes to be a relief of vomiting and nausea,” said Dr. Matt Noble, a medical toxicologist with the Oregon Poison Center.

Christine Martinez, who said she used cannabis heavily to treat chronic pain, was quoted by the local TV station as saying the vomiting “scared me to death” about the alleged medical benefits of dope. “Never again,” she said. “I’m through with it.”


Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.