Peter Hitchens

The link between drugs, terrorism and mental illness

Rod Liddle once actually said to me the immortal words ‘You were right and I was wrong’ at a Spectator summer party. This is a moment I shall treasure till the hour of my death. But even so, I was disappointed. For the subject was only Theresa May. I had predicted she would be a terrible premier. Rod had believed she would be good at the job. A year later, it was obvious who was correct. For one brief shining moment I had hoped that Rod had changed his mind about something much more important. I wish he and a lot of conservatives would shift their opinions about the role of mental illness in rampage killing all over the world. And, once they have done that, I wish they would be willing to examine the role of certain illegal and legal drugs in creating such mental illness.

The trouble with such killings, on both sides of the Atlantic, is that so many people have stakes in attributing or denying blame for them. Those who believe that marijuana is harmless dislike it when I draw attention to just how many such killers (about 90 per cent of them, from Lee Rigby’s killers in London to those responsible for carnage in Nice and Sousse) have been using that drug. The ‘steroid community’ is also highly sensitive about suggestions that these chemicals might be associated with serious violence. But the Norway mass-murderer Anders Breivik, the perpetrator of the New Zealand mosque massacre Brenton Tarrant, the Orlando mass killer Omar Mateen and the London Bridge killers in this country were all steroid users. So was the unquestionably unpolitical rampage killer Raoul Moat, who brought terror to Northumbria in 2010 before killing himself. As for antidepressants, anyone who suggests that these medications may be less than perfect, or that they have unintended consequences, faces a howl of fury from those who take them, and the immense power of the companies which make them.

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