Sourced from the great Lex Pelger who notes, “I didn’t spend a ton of time on the methodology here, but it looked shaky.”
I think i may have to create an award for the dumbest so called cannabis research paper of the year – this would have to be a contender especially the date range
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On August 13, 1903, a mass shooting occurred at a concert in Winfield, Kansas, United States. The perpetrator, 35-year-old Gilbert A. Twigg, fatally shot nine people and injured at least 25 others with a shotgun before committing suicide.[2]
The indiscriminate attack, uncommon for its time, has been described as “the precursor of modern mass shootings”.[3]
Perpetrator
Twigg, born in Maryland in 1868,[2] was a miller and an Army veteran who served in the Philippine–American War and the American occupation of Cuba.[4][5] Prior to his military service, he had lived in Great Falls, Montana, the Territory of New Mexico, and Burden, Kansas.[1][6]
While in Winfield, he was an employee of Baden Mills and was known locally as “Crazy Twigg”, though he was considered harmless, agreeable, and a hard worker.[6]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winfield_massacre
The Paper
Abstract
Objectives: Mass murder is associated with a lifetime history of substance use. We aimed to examine cannabis involvement among those who committed mass shootings in the United States from 1900 to 2019.
Methods: We identified mass shooting events in the United States from 1900 to 2019 using publicly available English-language media reports and court/police records. People who perpetrated mass murders using methods other than firearms (eg, knives, automobiles) were used as a comparison group. Events were dichotomised into either prior to 1996 or from 1996 onward (first legalisation for medical use by California). Post-1960 data were used for additional analyses of a more modern era.
Results: The proportion of those who committed mass shootings who had used, possessed, and/or distributed cannabis was significantly higher for events that occurred from 1996 onward, compared with prior to 1996 (11.2% vs 4.9%, p = 0.002). The proportion of those committed mass murders by other methods who had used, possessed, and/or distributed cannabis did not significantly differ for events that occurred from 1996 onward, compared with prior to 1996 (4.8% vs 5.7%, p = 0.76). When 58 mass shooting events and 31 mass murder events by other methods perpetrated before 1960 were excluded, results were similar when 1996 was used as a cutoff for the respective events (p = 0.02 and p = 0.40). Among those who committed mass shootings, those with cannabis involvement (n = 74) were younger than those without (n = 754) [28.7 vs 33.5 years, p < 0.001] and were of younger age group than older age group (11.9% vs 5.8%, p = 0.002).
Conclusion: Cannabis use may be harmful in subgroups of individuals (eg, those who committed mass shootings) who are vulnerable to cannabis use. This should be considered by policymakers, individuals with commercial interests, the public, and mental health and medical professionals when they debate related public health issues.
Keywords: Cannabis; Firearms; Gun violence; Mass shooting events.
Conflict of interest statement
RRG receives compensation for expert consulting for Noble Insights, Signant Health, Guidepoint, Clearview Healthcare Partners, Health Monitor, and IMS Consulting and Expert Services, as well as royalties from books on mental health published by Wipf and Stock and Routledge/Taylor and Francis. He also provides expert legal consulting for individual law firms. GB receives royalties and/or advances from the books The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime from Rowman & Littlefield and Understanding and Caring for People with Schizophrenia: Fifteen Clinical Cases from Routledge/Taylor and Francis. He participates in a Boston College Connell School of Nursing Innovation Grant and is on the expert forensic panel for the Cold Case Foundation. Other authors have disclosed no conflicts of interest.
