Our psychiatric-pharmaceutical drug industry that rakes in $80 billion a year through sales alone.

Markets Insider reports,

As reports are now emerging of the Las Vegas country music festival shooter Stephen Paddock being prescribed the mind-altering sedative-hypnotic, diazepam, the mental health industry watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) said this should play a role in ongoing law enforcement investigations and government response to increasing acts of senseless violence in the country. Police have been baffled by the motive of 64-year-old Paddock, whose mass shooting on October 3, where he killed 59 and wounded more than 500, was the worst in U.S. history. But CCHR says that for the public's protection governments need to ignore psychiatric-pharmaceutical interests and investigate the potential link between psychotropic drugs and both the Las Vegas shooting and similar acts of violence.

CCHR posted an informational page on its website citing facts to back up the need for a federal investigation. This highlights the lack of media coverage about the potential role of psychotropic drugs impacting the mental state of the shooter. It applauded those few journalists that did investigate this possible link. CCHR especially refers to the 27 international drug regulatory agency warnings citing psychiatric drug side effects of mania, psychosis, violence and homicidal ideation. There are also 1,531 cases reported to the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) MedWatch program alone that document psychotropic-drug induced homicidal ideation.[1]

The sedative-hypnotic Paddock was taking is from a class of drugs also known as benzodiazepines that have been documented in several studies to cause violence, aggression, homicidal ideation and suicide risk or attempts. They can become addictive within 14 days of taking them, although Dr. David Sack, board certified in addiction medicine, says, "Tolerance and dependence can develop quickly. There have been reports of people who received high doses of benzodiazepines becoming physically dependent in as little as two days."[2]

Media reporting on Paddock's diazepam use include:

Paul Harasim from the Las Vegas Review-Journal obtained records from the Nevada Prescription Monitoring Program that show Paddock was prescribed fifty 10-milligram diazepam on June 21of this year, as well as fifty 10-milligram tablets in 2016.[3]

On October 9, Scott Glover and Kyung Lah for CNN reported that court records CNN obtained indicated that Paddock had been prescribed the drugs as far back as 2013.[4]
In a 97-page 2013 court document exclusively obtained and released by CNN, Paddock himself admitted to being prescribed diazepam when he was deposed as part of a civil suit he filed against a hotel, after slipping on its walkway in 2011. According to CNN, the document revealed Paddock said he was prescribed diazepam for "anxiousness" and when asked whether he had a good relationship with the doctor who prescribed him the pills, he responded, "He's like on retainer, I call it, I guess. It means I pay a fee yearly...I have good access to him."

CNN also noted that "Rage, aggressiveness, and irritability are among the possible side effects of taking diazepam" according to a manufacturer of the drug. It is not known when Paddock last took the drug.
WND reported that according to a study published in the June 2015World Psychiatry journal there is a strong correlation between a person's risk of homicide and use of benzodiazepines. After examining 960 adults and teens convicted of homicide, the study found users of benzodiazepines have a 45 percent increased risk of committing homicide.[5]
WND also reported that nearly every mass shooter in recent decades used mind-altering drugs prior to or during their acts of violence — a trend that CCHR has been tracking and documenting, especially since the Columbine high school shooting in 1999 when an antidepressant was implicated in the mass killing.

CCHR has documented 65 high profile acts of senseless violence, including mass school shootings, mass stabbings, and even the intentional crashing of a commercial airplane, committed by individuals taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs, resulting in 357 dead and 336 wounded. Drug proponents argue that there are thousands of shootings and acts of violence that have not been correlated to psychiatric drugs but as CCHR points out, these have neither been confirmed nor refuted to have been connected to psychiatric drugs. This is largely because law enforcement may not be educated about the studies showing the link or are not required to investigate or report on prescribed psychotropic drugs linked to violence.

The New York State Senate recognized the lack of reporting correlating mind-altering psychiatric drugs to both suicide and violence as far back as 2000, when the senate introduced a bill which would "require police to report to the Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), certain crimes and suicides committed by persons using psychotropic drugs," citing "a large body of scientific research establishing a connection between violence and suicide and the use of psychotropic drugs."

Unfortunately, that bill stalled out in the finance committee, yet had it passed, a reporting system would be in place to determine the extent to which violence is committed by those under the influence of mind-altering prescribed drugs.

The FDA admits that only 1-10 percent of drug adverse effects are reported to MedWatch[6], so taking a medium range of 5 percent, the number of homicidal ideation/homicides linked to psychiatric drugs could be more than 30,600.

CCHR says that while not all of the millions of Americans taking these drugs will experience violent reactions, drug regulatory agency warnings confirm that a percentage will. And no one knows who will be next....while there is never one simple explanation for what drives a human being to commit such unspeakable acts of senseless violence as that committed by Paddock and others, one common denominator is that a percentage of cases are prescribed psychiatric drugs which are documented to potentially cause mania, psychosis, violence, suicide and in some cases homicidal ideation. The not inconsequential link can sometimes be overlooked where there is a lucrative psychiatric-pharmaceutical drug industry that rakes in $80 billion a year through sales alone.

It is long past the time that government health care agencies launch an investigation, which would help not only the families and communities looking for answers to these mass killings but also to assist the many first responders and law enforcement officers that face gruesome consequences of these. Moreover, the New York bill which would have required law enforcement to report any use of mind-altering psychiatric drugs prescribed to those who committed violent criminal acts should be reintroduced and enacted not only in that state but across the country.

Read more here.