Red Lake: Columbine II?

It turns out that, as many suspected, Jeff Weisse, the teenager who went on a shooting rampage in Red Lake, Minnesota, was taking Prozac. The dosage had recently been increased just before the killings.

For those of you who don't know, Prozac and a whole host of adult anti-depressants, such as Zoloft, Luvox, Paxil and Ritalin, have been linked to most of the shootings committed by teenagers including Columbine. These drugs are psychotropics; they alter mental processes resulting in changes in behavior and perception in the subject. They relieve stress and soften moods, which in adults are usually due to anxiety over years of built up frustrations. In the success stories, they allow people to see the world without the stress. With every good, though, comes a certain amount of bad. They also release inhibitions. This is not so much a problem with adults who have learned over the years to check their behavior through various means. Children, if you ever watched them at a play ground, typically revert to the animal instinct at the drop of the hat. Before they've properly learned to harness that animal, it's not always advisable to relieve that stress which may be nothing more than restraint of dangerous impulses.

Of course, much more study needs to be committed to this subject. It could be that the prozac was incidental to "troubled" teens. However, drug researchers have already warned about these effects.

Still, I wonder what will come of all this. As I blogged on Friday, the cacophony of the extremes is likely to drown out the truth. One side would love to use this as a gun issue, a la Bowling For Columbine. The other side would love to indict the school system. One side is protecting the generally underperforming schools. The other is protecting their doctor lobby.

On the flip side, maybe this is the best way. The drug companies can study the problem in quiet. Doctors will adjust procedures and restrict dosages to teens. All this while the two sides flail away at each other.