Category Archives: Violence

The Role of Pot: Horrific Cases of Child Justice Failure, Part 1

(Part 1 shows child justice failures in Court.Part 2 of this series is about neglected children who died in fires.Part 3 covers children who die in hot cars and in drownings. Part 4 explains parents who are addicted or psychotic from marijuana. Part 5 shows how children die through violence related to marijuana. Part 6 presents a solution. Previous article:Three Children Die in Colorado. Download our updated fact sheet on 53 child deaths related to pot.)

Marijuana Involved in Family Court Failures

Family courts throughout the United States routinely fail to protect children when there are signs of potential abuse.  The father rights’ lawyers and women’s groups should put down their swords and consider the best interests of the child in drug abuse cases. If these parties compromised for the sake of children, they would gladly speak against joint custody or visitation when drug abuse is a threat to child safety. Here are three horrific examples involving marijuana-using parents with addiction issues. Continue reading The Role of Pot: Horrific Cases of Child Justice Failure, Part 1

Marijuana and Domestic Violence – A Personal Testimony

Breaking the Cycle of Marijuana and Domestic Violence, a 28-year Journey

I started smoking pot when I was 17. My father died suddenly when I was 13, and my home was no longer happy.  I couldn’t see that I was anesthetizing my pain.  I loved the way marijuana made me feel and I took every opportunity to smoke it. At first I was afraid to try it, but once I put my fears aside and smoked it, I decided my parents had been wrong when they warned me against using all drugs.

Instead of going to college, as my mother wished, I dropped out because my marijuana habit got in the way of studying. I had a bad early marriage and a daughter. I constantly thought about the decisions I had to make in life and felt that I had tried hard Continue reading Marijuana and Domestic Violence – A Personal Testimony

Does Accepting Teen Pot Use Increase Violence?

The shootings last week in Marysville, Washington, forces into question: What triggers school violence?  Jaylen Fryberg, who shot himself and five others, was a popular, 15-year old Homecoming Prince.  Last December at Arapahoe High School in Colorado, an 18-year old with few signs of mental illness, shot a fellow student and tried to shoot a teacher.  One died at Arapahoe HS, while three died this past week, plus the shooters.

Teachers and mental health professionals are supposed to be able to spot a troubled youth.  These teen boys defied that category.  Jaylen Fryberg, was upset over a break-up and invited friends to eat lunch with him, knowing he would shoot them.  Karl Pierson was upset with a teacher who kicked him off the debate team, and so decided to shoot people. To seek revenge and kill oneself after a disappointment is not normal.   These youth came from the states that had legalized marijuana.  Marijuana needs to be added to our discussion of what causes mass violence, along with violence in the media, access to guns, violent video games, etc.  (Since this article was written, the Twitter feed of Jaylen Fryberg showed him to be quite a marijuana user.  His ex-girlfriend said it made his stupid.)

From the esteemed Lancet Psychiatry Journal, we know that teens who use marijuana are 7x more likely to attempt suicide.  Marijuana blunts feelings.  Both Jaylen and Karl lacked empathy for themselves and others.   Did these boys use marijuana? How much? How long?  Legalizing pot normalizes it; states that have long-term medical marijuana programs have higher usage of  all drugs.   Those who support legalization proposals are promoting a system that legitimizes it.  When pot is normal (or tobacco or booze) for adults, teen usage rises.

Mass shooters James Holmes and Jared Loughner  were known to be marijuana users — and not moderate in their use.  Marijuana averages 13% THC today, opposed to 1-3% in the 1970s and 80s.   Did marijuana feed their psychosis and the psychopathology of Fryberg, Pierson, Columbine killers and others?  Using marijuana increases the  chances for psychotic episodes, anxiety, aggression, schizophrenia, among other problems.

Karl Pierson, an 18-year old shot his classmates at Arapahoe High School in Colorado on Dec. 13, 2013
Karl Pierson, an 18-year old killed a classmate at Arapahoe HS in Colorado on Dec. 13, 2013. Does his diary, now under discussion, reveal marijuana usage?

In all fairness, two of the worst mass shooters in the US, the perpetrators of the Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech massacres, appear to have never used marijuana.  They were more logical in their planning and succeeded in killing more people, unfortunately.

Modern Reefer “Madness”

For every claim of a brilliant mind that used marijuana, without negative effect,  there’s another person who was harmed by using it.  The people described below indicate that marijuana has strong adverse reactions for some individuals, and for society.

1) On September 26, Brian Howard started a fire at the air traffic controllers station in Aurora, IL, holding up commercial planes for days. He was high, and admitted to having smoked marijuana right before the incident.

2)  Amanda Bynes’ mother said she hasn’t been diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, as rumored, and blamed the weird behavior on heavy marijuana use.  Amanda alleged her father had committed child and sexual abuse, but recanted.

3) Kevin Ward, Jr., was tragically hit by race car driver Tony Stewart on August 8, 2014, after he got out of his car to confront an oncoming driver on the track.  He eventually died. It’s perplexing that he would get out of his car considering the situation, but autopsy results show he had marijuana intoxication.

4) Marijuana probably affected the mental states of Megan Huntsman and Erika Murray–two neglectful mothers who let their babies die in their homes.   Other drugs may be involved, too.

5) According to the father of Jodi Arias, accused of the bizarre behavior and the murder of her boyfriend, she has never been the same since she started to grow marijuana at age 14.

6) Johar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston bombers, was supposedly easy- going and smoked a lot of pot.   Since the Boston Marathon bombing, his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev has since been linked to a triple murder on Sept. 11, 2011.  The victims had their throats slashed and were covered in marijuana.

7) In  2012, James Holmes shot and killed 12, and wounded 58, in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater.   Though he probably had not been sane for a number of years, a neighbor reported that he was frequently seen outside by the apartment building smoking pot.

8) On May 26, 2012, Rudy Eugene was caught on tape eating another man in Miami for 18 minutes before police arrived.  When police couldn’t stop him, he was shot.  Eugene died while the disfigured man survived. Toxicology reports showed that marijuana was the only drug in Eugene’s body when he gnawed the man.

9) Casey Anthony was amazingly detached from her actions and from her daughter’s death.  According to a friend of Casey Anthony, she smoked a lot of marijuana, but he was unaware if she used other drugs.

Amanda Knox is far more emotional today.  Did marijuana blunt her emotions in Perugia back in 2007?   Photo: The Guardian
Amanda Knox is far more emotional today. Did marijuana blunt her emotions in Perugia back in 2007? Photo: The Guardian

10) Amanda Knox, when confronted by police the day after Meredith Kercher’s brutal murder.  A regular pot smoker at the time, she admitted to smoking marijuana the night of the murder.  Her blunted emotional reaction to the bloody incident during police questioning was very strange.  (THC stays in the body up to a month, it doesn’t pass like alcohol.)  Without judging Knox to be guilty, we can certainly understand why Knox’s non-reaction to her roommates’ bloody death would lead Italian police to think she was guilty.  She is also from Washington, a state that worships marijuana usage at a festival each year.  One may conclude that Knox was excessively immature and out of touch, but then what was she doing in a foreign country?

A recent  shooter in Washington, Aaron Ybarra , had also “dabbled” in marijuana, although alcohol also played into his demons.  These shooting seem frequent in western states.  We need to see the correlation between the most unexpected school shootings and having medical marijuana in a state.   Why do states without medical marijuana come up in the news less frequently?

The list could go on, but this page represents a warning against validating marijuana.   It’s ungrounded to think legalization would make marijuana less appealing to those under age 21, or regulate underage usage.  Knox, Ward, Anthony,Johar Tsarnaev or Arias were under age 21 during the incidents, or when they started using marijuana. It’s likely that every individual mentioned above began use while while in adolescence.

This “experiment” in legalization is an opportunity for us to step up the warnings and increase funding for drug education and prevention.  It’s time to stop saying that marijuana isn’t harmful, or that it’s safer than alcohol.  Most of these examples are Caucasians, but there’s also a Native American, one black and one Hispanic.  Crazy, pot-influenced behaviors and psychosis don’t discriminate.  They affect male and female, though the males are more likely to be shooters.

Violence, Anger, Explosions: Children in Danger

(Part two of Marijuana and Child Neglect/Abuse. Last week we published an article about neglect; this week we cover violence, anger and explosions.)   A 15-year old boy living in fear of his violent father was afraid to go home and confided in a friend’s family.  The friend’s mom told police, who went to investigate the child abuse. They found out more, accidentally discovering an illegal, indoor marijuana grow.  Yet marijuana activists tell us they are calm and non-violent.

Butane hash oil explosions are another way children surrounded by marijuana face grave danger.  In Medford, Oregon, a 12-year old girl suffered many broken bones when she had to jump from the 2nd floor of the apartment building to escape the flames.

After three children died in Colorado because of parental neglect while parents smoked pot followed by a string of hash oil explosions with children at home, it should have been easy to pass child protection laws in Colorado.  On April 27, 2014, an 8-month old baby had be rescued from the 2nd floor of a burning townhouse in Littleton, after a father and his girlfriend sparked a fire by burning hash oil.   The neighbor whose adjoining townhouse was damaged rescued their 4-year old.  Just 10 days earlier, on the 17th of April, a couple in Colorado Springs endangered their 3 children, the oldest a 7-year old, using fire to make dabs from hash oil.

Since the Alliance for Drug Endangered Children began in the 1990s, there are fewer meth lab explosions.  Instead, the promotion and legalization of marijuana has created one of its most dangerous by-products: hash oil explosions fueled by butane gas.   In short, it’s called BHO.

Hash Oil Explosions

As of early May, Colorado had experienced 31 hash oil explosions in 2014, 10 of them involving serious burns.  The  Colorado Alliance for Drug Endangered Children (CoDEC) has been taking steps protect children from the drug-using parents, but two child-protection bills failed to pass.

On April 1, 2014, state Senators Linda Newell and Andy Kerr introduced two Senate bills to strengthen protections for children whose parents’ drug usage, manufacture or cultivation put them in danger.   Unfortunately, an associate of the Drug Policy Alliance had written a letter to the Denver Post implying it was unfair to marijuana users.

The bills HB 177 and 178 were voted down at the beginning of May. The outcome was undermined by interests of the marijuana industry, marijuana users and politics.   When the city of Denver met September 16 to restrict unqualified individuals from making hash oil — the marijuana activists again objected.

After Failure to Pass Child Protection Bills

In mid-May, a Manitou Springs, Colorado, couple cooled the hash oil in the refrigerator.   The refrigerator door blew off and landed on the woman’s three-year old child.  Multiple charges of arson and child endangerment have been leveled against each of the parents in Colorado who put the lives of their children in danger.  They are indeed lucky that none of the children burned or died in the fires.

Making hash oil at home is perfectly legal in Colorado.   However, the state of Colorado should be blamed for putting the marijuana users’ freedom and the “good name” or reputation of marijuana ahead of the children.  The evidence is that the legalization of marijuana has put more children in harm’s way.

 Huge Problem in Other States, in West

Hash oil explosions are frequent in other states, too, particularly on the west coast.  On August 25, a man living in Santa Rosa, California, had an explosion and burned badly.  While he did not have children, the family next door with 5 children were put in the line of danger. Today, the LA Times reports of 20 hash oil explosions within the last year in San Diego County, California.  One of the 4 groups currently under investigation involved a child put in danger, and the offending party has been charged with child endangerment.

A recent hash oil explosion in San Diego
A recent hash oil explosion in San Diego

In May, the Oregonian reported that nine major hash oil blasts had occurred in Oregon since 2011, four of them in homes or hotel rooms where children, including a newborn, were present. In one case, a 12-year-old girl suffered multiple broken bones after leaping from the second floor of an apartment building rocked by a butane hash oil (BHO) explosion.

Last year a 10-day old and one-year old baby and two women suffered injuries from a hash oil explosion in Forest Grove, Oregon, the site of another extensive fire from making hash oil in January, 2014.    Two months ago, on July 22,  it was announced that the District Attorney in Seattle filed charges against seven who caused explosions in the state of Washington.

Anger Management

Marijuana users like to claim they don’t get mad and violent, like the cocaine addicts and some alcoholics routinely do.  If their marijuana usage leads to explosions, selfishness, abandonment, or narcissistic rage and anger, they fall into the same violent category as other substance abusers.

A case of violent child abuse erupted in Tampa, Florida in June. Christopher Finlayson, who babysat an 11-month old girl, tried to amuse her by tossing the child into the air.  He tripped and dropped the child face-first onto the floor. When the child continued to cry, Finlayson went into a moment of rage and he “lost it.” The baby was totally unresponsive when the mother returned home.  She took her to the hospital and authorities were called. The man admitted he had smoked a “blunt and a half” of marijuana the previous day and was unable to sleep the night before the incident.

Just a few days ago when police in Nevada went to investigate a case a suspected child abuse, they discovered a fetus in the freezer, with a gun and marijuana in the bassinet. This year authorities in Utah discovered that Megan Huntsman, heavy marijuana user, had buried 6 of her children over several years.

In July, four adults in south Modesto, California, pleaded no contest to severely beating a 7-week old girl. The child had several broken ribs, a lacerated liver and spleen and swelling on her brain. When authorities investigated the home 3 were used for growing marijuana for sale. They parents were charged with two counts of child cruelty, illegally growing with intent for sale, stealing electricity and damaging power lines.

According to a recent article “chronic [marijuana] users exhibit blunted emotional reaction to threat stimuli, which may also decrease the likelihood of aggressive behavior.”  This study is one of many articles  or studies using data while trying to promote marijuana usage.  The study didn’t show what happens when one partner does marijuana while the other does not, sometimes a problem in abusive marriages.   It also did not track child abuse.

From the website, Marijuana Makes You Violent
From the website, Marijuana Makes You Violent

Why is marijuana likely to make some people violent, if using can cause a “blunted emotional reaction to threat?”  The nature of a psychologically addictive substance is that a person needs it to feel ok and to feel normal.   Take it away and there can be panic which results in anger.  Leah Allen tells the story of how her cool, chronically high father abused her mother.  Furthermore, disagreeing with the marijuana bloggers gets them so riled and angry.

What About DEA mistakes?

The tragedies of children lost to parents’ marijuana usage, and other drug usage, are larger than the widely-publicized mistakes made by the Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA.  No teacher, parent, police agency, politician or worker of any sort is free from making mistakes.  This summer a story spread about a failed raid which resulted in a grenade hitting a 20-month old child.  It’s regretful that there was an injustice suffered by this child for that mistake.  However,  this baby and his parents will have their justice with law.   There will be no justice for the marijuana – endangered children, as long as the marijuana community holds all the cards.

It’s a tragedy that because “Drug Wars Don’t Work,” Americans have legitimized a very dangerous drug.  It’s a tragedy that the current anti-government trend spreading in American political circles also leads to more chaos and more abused children.

Based on the fire, anger, rage and explosions, we cannot continue this marijuana experiment if we are to have a saner, safer society.