Mental Illness, Prescription Drugs and Violent Crimes in America

Confirmed: Aurora shooter James Holmes was on prescription meds and vaccines

January 10, 2012

Natural News - What was the most deadly element involved in the mass murder of 12 people and the wounding of 58 others at the packed Aurora, Colo., theater premier of the newest “Batman” movie last summer?

Was it the AR-15-type weapon used by James Holmes? The shotgun he had with him? The handgun he used?

No.

As it turns out it was probably a psychotropic medication he was most likely taking, a point raised by Natural News’ Jon Rappoport in August, just weeks after the massacre. [http://www.naturalnews.com].

Holmes had been treated by a psychiatrist

The Denver Post reported Jan. 7 that, according to newly released court papers, police removed a number of prescription medication bottles – four, to be exact – from Holmes’ apartment shortly after clearing it of explosives in the days following the July 20 shootings. They also seized immunization records.

“The disclosures come in a back-and-forth between prosecutors and defense attorneys over whether those items should be subject to doctor-patient confidentiality. The judge ultimately ruled in October that prosecutors could keep the items,” the paper said, adding that the names of the medications had been redacted from court documents.

This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone who’s been following the correlation between these dangerous psychotropic drugs and mass murder. After all, earlier reports confirmed that Holmes was indeed being seen by a psychiatrist [http://www.nytimes.com], so there’s a better-than-average chance he, too, was on one of these dangerous medications.

The same is true in the most recent shooting tragedy. We know that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, had psychological problems. We know, from what Louise Tambascio, a family friend of the shooter and his mother, told the CBS News program, “60 Minutes,” that Lanza “was on medication and everything….I knew he was on medication, but that’s all I know.”

But what was he taking? What was Holmes taking? That we don’t know – yet.

Like us David Kupelian, the managing editor for WorldNetDaily, is asking the right questions.

“It has been more than three weeks since the shooting. We know all about the guns he used, but what ‘medication’ may he have used?” he wrote shortly after the Lanza murders.

“So, what is the truth? Where is the journalistic curiosity? Where is the follow-up? Where is the police report, the medical examiner’s report, the interviews with his doctor and others?” writes David Kupelian at WorldNetDaily [http://www.wnd.com]

And yet the national debate, if you can call it that, is focused strictly on the gun control and the Second Amendment, as evidenced by Vice President Joe Biden’s declaration that President Obama plans to use executive power to implement new gun control regulations via the federal agencies that fall under the Executive Branch, and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s promise to enact in his state the country’s toughest gun control laws.

As usual, though, the corporate media has failed in its role as watchdog and truth-seeker. It has been left to alternative news outlets like ours and a few others to ask those probing, important questions:  

What kind of drugs were Holmes and Lanza taking? Who prescribed them? And these questions: What are some of the side effects of those medications? Can such medications cause patients to become violent?

The medications-equals-violence link is well-established

Here’s why it is vitally important for Americans to know what kind of medications Lanza and Holmes were taking – because of earlier, high-profile cases involving guns and psychotropic medications:

– Columbine killer Eric Harris was taking Luvox which, like similar drugs Prozac and Zoloft are widely prescribed antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. Luvox manufacturer Solvay Pharmaceuticals admitted that every 1 in 25 patients taking the drug developed mania, a dangerous condition leaving the patient violence-prone.

– Patrick Purdy went on a shooting rampage in a schoolyard in Stockton, Calif., in 1989, an incident that triggered the initial push to ban “assault weapons.” Purdy, who killed five and wounded 30, had been taking the antidepressant Amitriptyline and the anti-psychotic drug Thorzine.

– Fifteen-year-old Kip Kinkel killed his parents in 1998 then went to his school, Thurston High in Springfield, Ore., the next day and fired on his classmates, killing two and wounding 22 more. He was on Prozac and Ritalin.

There are many, many more examples, but you get the point: There exists a distinct link between psychotropic drugs and violence, yet virtually no one in the public policy realm or the media (both of which depend on Big Pharma for donations or advertising dollars) wants to talk about it.