Speaker 1: So now they're blaming anti-depressants and marijuana, cannabis for the mass shootings
that the United States is plagued with.
That's where the American right wing now is.
So let me show you something interesting before we dove into these latest claims.
Here are previous stories that I that I've done over the years, covering the different
things that the right has blamed for mass shootings.
And notice what's missing from this list.
So this this is over the last many years on the show, Fox News blamed masks like COVID
masks, abortion and woke for mass shootings in the United States.
They've previously blamed Joe Biden for mass shootings.
They've blamed rap music, video games and COVID lockdowns for mass shootings.
Right winger Bryan Fischer and Fox News blamed the fact that some churches banned guns for
mass shootings in churches not long ago and famously cartoonishly, Ted Cruz, Republican
senator from Texas, blamed doors for mass shootings.
Here's one from the archives.
Way back in 2011, a wacky Arizona sheriff blamed rhetoric for a mass shooting.
Okay.
Notice that guns are completely missing.
The guns are what?
The shootings are done with a gun.
But they never talk about guns.
They talk about everything other than guns.
And now it's marijuana and it's antidepressants.
Laura Ingraham on Fox News talking about this.
We talked about this a little bit a couple of weeks ago and she's still at it.
She did this again this week based on the latest shooting in Highland Park, Illinois.
Speaker 3: But instead of selling fear and division, wouldn't it be nice if we all began
to focus on solutions?
Don't people want solutions?
I say they do.
Now, on the mass shooting in Illinois, indications are that Robert Primo was a regular pot user.
Now one look at him and to the untrained eye, he looks like a complete psychotic.
We ever seen anyone looking like him?
Speaker 1: Now, his appearance, we don't yet know.
But there are many medical professionals actually speculating that his physical appearance is
indicative of of a syndrome.
Let's just leave it there.
So the point is, if you want to look at the physical appearance, there's definitely lots
of questions raised by the physical appearance.
But the marijuana piece seems sort of like neither here nor there.
Speaker 3: And what can regular pot use trigger in young men, in particular psychosis and
other violent personality changes?
Not everyone, but a significant percentage.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it is not a significant percentage.
And we actually have good studies on this.
We have actual peer reviewed research.
It is true that some studies have found a slightly higher likelihood of violent behavior
among cannabis users, but haven't been able to establish any causality at this point.
It hasn't been established that cannabis makes people who are not already predisposed to
violence to be any more violent.
And lastly, there's no evidence I was able to find that cannabis use makes people more
likely to commit crimes, even if some criminals are high on cannabis at the time that they
commit a crime.
There's been no causal relationship that's been established.
And maybe most notable, I mean, sometimes we just have to say, does this pass the sniff
test?
The prevalence of cannabis use is way higher in a ton of countries that have almost no
mass shootings.
Look at pot use in the South American country of Chile, almost no shootings.
Look at Canada third in the world in terms of per capita cannabis use, almost no shootings,
Israel super high cannabis usage, almost no shootings.
You get the idea.
So that's cannabis.
Now, anti-depressants.
This is another one.
This is a recycling of something that others have talked about.
Alex Jones used to talk about SSRI.
SSRI are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
These are often prescribed for anxiety and or depression.
Some of these have been around at least 50, maybe even more like 70 years.
Very, very safe and well-studied class of drugs.
Marjorie Taylor GREENE, radical Republican congresswoman from Georgia, is now on the
SSRI bandwagon.
She tweeted, quote, When are we going to have an honest conversation about drug abuse, mental
illness and SSRI ies?
Deadly side effects?
Are we really going to keep pretending or covering for Big Pharma?
Because I'm absolutely done with the political plays on this B.S.
There is no evidence that SSRI caused people to be violent.
Now this requires a little more thinking.
And thinking is not a common it's not a prevalent commodities, an abundant commodity in general,
and particularly among the American right.
One of the considerations is people predisposed to violence might be getting prescribed the
accessories.
That's not evidence that the SSRI has caused the violence, but it's a potential reason
for why violent people might be on SSRI.
That's one thing.
The second part of it, and this is a really big issue, lots of young people prescribed
SSRI.
Eyes aren't actually taking them or taking them as prescribed.
There's a study and you are you guys willing to think with me here because otherwise we're
in trouble.
There's a study that found a small association, not a causation study found an association
between people 18 to 24 on necessaries and violence.
And that association doesn't exist for those 25 plus.
So you look at people 25 plus on SSRI, no association between saris and violence.
You look at 18 to 24, there's a small association between being on SSRI and violence.
Association, not causation.
And the study recognizes the study is based on what people are prescribed, not based on
what people are taking.
The 18 to 24 group might be more likely to not actually take the medication that they're
prescribed.
And if they took the medication, it might reduce their propensity for violence.
This is the exact same thing that happened with now I don't remember if it was with ivermectin
or with hydroxychloroquine.
There was this Brazil, it was ivermectin.
A Brazilian quote study supposedly, quote, found that people given prophylactic ivermectin
were less likely to get COVID or to become seriously ill from COVID.
And then the study was eventually debunked and shown to be a very poor study because
it wasn't a controlled study of any kind.
There was a community where Ivermectin was just handed out and there was no actual way
to know.
Did the did anybody actually take the ivermectin?
Did the people who didn't get sick, were they actually taking the ivermectin?
If I were to just go into a neighborhood and hand out some medication and I don't actually
know if anybody took it, and even if they say they took it, did they actually take it
the way it was prescribed?
And then I make some kind of conclusion from that.
It would be very bad science.
And similarly, the one study that found this small association among 18 to 24 year olds
between violence and SSRI, we don't know whether actually they were taken.
We just know that they were prescribed.
So it's more junk science.
And notice they will throw anything they can at the wall, see what sticks.
Other than saying we've got to deal with guns.