Lawrence Hunter, Contributor Forbes.com 1/14/2013 @ 8:00AM

In 2000, New York legislators recognized the ubiquitous and unambiguous connection between violence, especially gun violence and mass murder, and the widespread prescribed use of psychiatric drugs. Senate Bill 7035 was introduced in the New York State Senate that year requiring police agencies to report to the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) on certain crimes and suicides committed by a person who is using psychiatric drugs, including assault, homicide, sex offenses, robbery offenses, firearms and other dangerous weapons offenses, kidnapping and arson. The preamble to the bill read, in part:

There is a large body of scientific research establishing a connection between violence and suicide and the use of psychotropic drugs in some cases. This research, which has been published in peer reviewed publications such as the American Journal of Psychiatry, The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and The Journal of Forensic Science, has shown, among other things, that: certain drugs can induce mania (a psychosis which can produce bizarre, grandiose and highly elaborated destructive plans, including mass murder);. . .and certain drugs can produce an acute psychotic reaction in an individual not previously psychotic.

The bill died in committee. Since that time, there have been at least 12 additional high-profile mass murders linked to the use of psychiatric drugs, about one a year. And, in virtually every mass school shooting during the past 15 years, the shooter has been on or in withdrawal from psychiatric drugs. Here is a partial list of 24 such horrific events that occurred since 1998, not including the Virginia Tech shootings and the recent Sandy Hook shootings where the authorities continue to suppress information about whether and to what extent the shooters were on or in withdrawal from a psychiatric drug.

These examples are not unique. According to the Citizens Commission On Human Rights International (CCHR), between 2004 and 2011, there were 12,755 reports to the U.S. FDA’s MedWatch system of psychiatric drugs causing violent side effects including: 1,231 cases of homicidal ideation/homicide, 2,795 cases of mania and 7,250 cases of aggression. Since the FDA admits that only one to ten percent of all side effects are ever reported to it, the actual occurrence of violent side effects from psychiatric drugs is certainly nine or ten times higher than the official data suggest.

Yet, federal and state governments continue to ignore the connection between psychiatric drugs and murderous violence, preferring instead to exploit these tragedies in an oppressive and unconstitutional power grab to snatch guns away from innocent, law-abiding people who are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution the right to own and bear arms to deter government tyranny and to use firearms in self defense against any miscreant who would do them harm. Therefore, it is pharmaceutical makers, not law-abiding gun owners or gun manufacturers, who should be held to account for the series of “lone-wolf,” mass shootings that have occurred since the widespread use of psychiatric drugs began.

Although it is doubtful any single variable can explain what causes someone to commit such unspeakable acts as we saw recently at Sandy Hook, one common denominator surfaces time and time again, in hundreds and hundreds of cases where a “lone wolf” commits violence, murder and mayhem for apparently no reason: Prescribed psychiatric drugs, which are well documented to induce mania, psychosis, violence, suicide and murder, including mass murder for no apparent reason by otherwise non-psychotic people.

Given the mass of supporting data linking psychiatric drug use/withdrawal and violence, and given the fact it has been ignored studiously by the U.S. Congress and federal agencies, it is well past time that Congress and state legislatures and government agencies at all levels formally investigate the well established link between prescribed use of psychiatric drugs, school shootings and similar acts of senseless violence.

Read More Here