Psychotropic
drugs have been used for the purpose of suppressing fear and enabling murderous
rage for a long time. In Dispatches, his extraordinary book
about the war in Vietnam, Michael Herr passes this along about the use of drugs
by American soldiers:
Going out at
night the medics gave you pills. . . . I knew one 4th Division Lurp [Long-Range
Reconnaissance Patrol] who took his pills by the fistful, downs from the left
pocket of his tiger suit and ups from the right, one to cut the trail, the
other to send him down it. He told me that they cooled things out just right
for him, that he could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it
through a starlight scope.
Today, many
of our children are prescribed the same psychotropic drugs as were given
to our soldiers, in the children's case for the treatment of such conditions as
ADHD and for psychiatric disorders. In fact, the practice of psychiatry has
become in many cases nothing more than a license to distribute powerfully
addictive, brain-damaging drugs to our children.
And where
illegal drugs such as cocaine and "speed" are often cited for their
negative effects, in fact, among the drugs that are often prescribed for ADHD, Ritalin is
chemically similar to cocaine and Adderall is a mix of four powerful
amphetamines. We're addicting more than ten percent of our children --
overwhelmingly boys -- to these drugs because they have difficulty sitting
still and paying attention in class.
And those
who aren't prescribed the drugs can purchase them without prescriptions through
online drug outlets or from friends. In fact, among many children, using
psychotropic drugs has become de rigeur. When their friends are
prescribed these drugs, peer pressure dictates that they themselves also be
able to take the drugs, and the black market for such substances among young
people is very large.
One thing
must be made very clear: psychotropic drugs of any kind, whether or not they're
stimulants, damage our brains, especially our frontal lobes. The
frontal lobes are the area of the brain that enables us to make rational
decisions, to avoid taking unnecessary risks, and to experience empathy for
others. Recently, the term "frontal lobe syndrome" has been brought
into use to describe the effects of prolonged drug use that damages
this portion of the brain and increases our propensity to act
violently and with depraved indifference.
Among the
consequences of physicians' irresponsible prescribing practices is this: in
every single gun massacre over the past several decades for which we have reliable
information about drug use, the shooter has been taking psychotropic drugs prescribed
by a physician. It may be the case that if those shooters who have committed
such recent atrocities as that in Newtown had not had access to psychotropic
drugs, the shootings would not have occurred. That they are occurring more
frequently and are escalating in brutality -- if that is possible -- is
due to the fact, not that we are legal gun owners, but that we are legal drug
users.
As far as we
are aware, every study of the effects of the long-term use of psychotropic
drugs, whether illicit, "recreational" -- e.g., alcohol -- or
prescribed, indicates that such use causes brain injury, especially to the
frontal lobes, by far the least rugged area of our brains. Over time, the
consequent frontal lobe syndrome renders a person increasingly incapable of
inhibiting impulsive and violent behaviors while at the same time generally
sparing the intellect so that such drug users can systematically plan their
assaults but are unable to refrain from carrying them out.
Young people
are far more vulnerable than adults to the
negative side effects of all drugs, and criminal activity by young people under
the influence of drugs becomes an iatrogenic outcome in an anything-goes
society that does its part by placing few restraints on its younger members'
behavior and compounds that by looking the other way as they damage their
brains with prescription chemicals that magnify the youngsters' capability to
exhibit violent behavior.
How can we
talk about protecting our kids from gun violence if we don't at the same time
protect their brains from iatrogenic drug violence, the real cause of such
behavior? In fact, children who refrain from the use of drugs and alcohol --
and this includes prescription psychotropic drugs as well as illegal drugs --
are much less likely to commit violent crimes as adults than children who have
used such substances.
The area in
which we need much more restrictive laws is not gun control; rather, we need
tighter and more restrictive controls against allowing psychotropic chemicals
to get into the brains of children 21 years of age and younger, during which
time their brains are developing and very vulnerable. The war against drugs
needs to begin with eliminating prescription psychotropic drug availability to
and use by our children.
Gun control
laws, or the lack thereof, had nothing to do with the Newtown massacre. Adam
Lanza was denied a permit to purchase a gun, but that didn't prevent him from
committing a gun crime. In the meantime, and for a long time to come, there are
going to be great quantities of "legal" psychotropic drugs out there,
not least because "psych meds" are still going to be prescribed to
children as if they were candy.
Until we
have the will to demand an end to prescribing psychotropic substances for our
children, we must call for the hiring of armed security guards at schools, as
we already do in many inner-city locations, and for the upgrading of schools
with bullet-proof access portals. These are things we must do based on the
truth that it's the drugs, and not the guns, that are the real danger.
Charles Gant
and Greg Lewis are co-authors of the book End Your Addiction Now, which
presents Dr. Gant's groundbreaking program for reducing substance abuse and
eliminating addiction naturally.
Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/its_the_drugs_stupid.html#ixzz2Gyc2ntYY January 3, 2013 Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
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