Fox is reporting that Joshua Steven Durcho has been picked up in Texas by police after allegedly murdering his girlfriend and her four kids. Surprise! He has a record, including doing a four year bit for marijuana possession.
In this video report the victim’s ex (and the father of one of the children, my heart goes out to the guy) talks about Durcho’s drugging being responsible, and a friend of Joshua’s who “drank beers” with him said he was freaking out about his responsibilities. No surprise there, in large doses marijuana (or really the THC in marijuana) can worsen depression and other psychiatric illnesses.
Via Breitbart:
Heavy pot smoking has also lowered the activity of the inferior frontal cortex in volunteers for The Institute for Psychiatry. This area of the brain inhibits inappropriate behavior and limits paranoia. Decreased activity there can lead to all sorts of behavioral problems. And perhaps murder.
It’s Reefer Madness, I tall ya! One puff of that stuff will turn you into a stark raving mad lunatic!!
We’re just lucky more of the millions of pot smokers in the world don’t fly off the handle and start slitting throats left and right!
Give it a break, Rob..
Thousands of of pot heads do in fact commit a variety of crimes and your sarcasm doesn’t deal with the science of the studies.
Why is it impossible for you to admit a substance people use to alter their minds actually may alter their minds? Hundreds of users of drugs and alcohol who stop using will tell you that it changes how they see things and if you yourself use you know that it affects your perception.
You keep telling me to “give it a rest” but why can’t you stop pretending getting high is harmless. Put aside the arguments about legalization for a second and tell me that you at least understand heavy users of any mind altering substance suffer consequences for that use and OFTEN burden others with their problems.
I’ve worked with teens and single mothers and without exception the ones who smoked up every day were the ones who were on the dole, had multiple children by multiple fathers, or has Social Services out to their house. I’ve been through college and Grad school and chronic smokers who didn’t have rich parents footing the bill ended up dropping out in debt. I come from East Orange NJ and plenty of pot smokers beat the crap out or their old ladies, bought pot instead of food for their kids and robbed people to get enough money for a dime bag and a 40oz.
In the real world pot smokers aren’t the guys from Pineapple Express and you know it. Maybe you should ask yourself why you can’t admit that.
Simply just stupid to legalize pot. Pot and alcohol are not the same thing. Though you can be both impaired logically, but alcohol doesn’t do as much permament damage as pot would do.
mah29001, you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.. Alcohol does not do any less damage to someone than marijuana does.. They are both bad for you.. Period. And alcohol abuse will destroy your body much faster than marijuana abuse will. Hell, people poison themselves with alcohol on almost a daily basis in this nation. How many people can you name that smoked so much pit that they died in their own vomit right there on the spot. It simply doesn’t happen…
Rob said: “You keep telling me to “give it a rest†but why can’t you stop pretending getting high is harmless.”
You keep throwing up that straw man, Rob, so I guess you just don’t get it. I never said anything was harmless. I said that you constantly act like marijuana CAUSED these people to do these things, and that is simply not the case. Your silly title theme of “Victimless Crime File” makes it clear that you believe that their drug use resulted in these victims. The truth is that these victims were the result of decisions made by these vile people who commit these crimes. They might or might not have acted differently if they hadn’t been high. The point is they are evil people.
Just as many people drink responsibly, there are plenty who smoke responsibly as well. I never said that is harmless. I’m simply saying that it doesn’t CAUSE these vile stories you are posting about. If it did there would be literally MILLIONS of stories like this every month. There are not..
Just because people die at the hands of drunk drivers every day is no reason to push for complete alcohol prohibition. We certainly should push tougher drunk driving laws. And we certainly should push for tougher penalties for selling your kids, or murdering your girlfriend. I’m with you on that. But don’t pretend like marijuana caused these acts. These stories are no valid reason for you to support a prohibition on marijuana for all adults. Just because something isn’t “harmless” doesn’t mean you have a right to throw people in jail at the point of your gun for doing it.
It is clear by your posts that you believe that marijuana CAUSES these people to kill their families, or sell their daughters, or whatever other vile thing you post about happening. These stories are all terrible, and the vile people who perpetrated these crimes might have been high, but that doesn’t give you any logic basis to use the force of law to throw millions in jail for simply sharing a bad habit with these perpetrators. their bad habit of smoking pot didn’t cause them to do these vile things.
I’ve worked with teens and single mothers and without exception the ones who smoked up every day were the ones who were on the dole, had multiple children by multiple fathers, or has Social Services out to their house.
A simple case of correlation, in my opinion. Not causation. The people who have poor upbringing and no motivation to make smart decisions in their life might certainly also extend that poor decision making to their use of marijuana as well. But that doesn’t mean that smoking marijuana caused them to get pregnant or drop out of school. Many millions smoke who don’t do these things either. You just didn’t know them because you were working in a place for troubled teens and unwed mothers..
Put aside the arguments about legalization for a second and tell me that you at least understand heavy users of any mind altering substance suffer consequences for that use and OFTEN burden others with their problems.
Of course heavy abuse of any substance can cause consequences, even ones that can be bad for others around the addict. What about the literally millions of casual users who are successful and a burden to nobody. Prohibition makes criminals out of them, and often throws them in jail, creating a huge burden for those in their family who they WERE supporting. I have seen this side of the coin as well..
Mom is a stay at home mom with the kids. Dad is hard working and semi-successful. Dad is out with buddies catching a buzz on something illegal, gets busted and thrown in jail. Was it a bad thing for him to be out partying on that night? Probably? Should he be doing it? Probably not..
But has the government doing more harm to him and his family by taking him away, throwing him in jail, making the kids temporarily fatherless, the mom temporarily husband-less, and the family temporarily income-less? You bet you ass it has! I have seen this happen!! The government does MUCH MORE harm to the family unit overall than the occasional drug use ever did. How do you justify that, Rob? It happens in this country EVERY DAY!
You want to make child abuse illegal? It all ready is.. You want to make neglecting your kids illegal? It already is.. You want to make trying to sell your daughter for beer illegal? It already is… Punish the REAL crime.. not the victimless ones…
Thousands of of pot heads do in fact commit a variety of crimes and your sarcasm doesn’t deal with the science of the studies.
And you don’t deal with the content of your study honestly.. It states quite clearly that in moderate doses, the marijuana actually had a good and calming effect on the mice.. It was only when unusually large and potent doses were injected into these poor animals that the effect became negative. You don’t even know the details of the study yourself because the article doesn’t provide the backup data..
From your article: “Excessive cannabis use in people with depression poses high risk of psychosis,” said Dr. Gobbi. Instead, she and her colleagues are focusing their research on a new class of drugs which enhance the effects of the brain’s natural endo-cannabinoids.
Well, no shit.. Excessive doeses of lots of stuff to people with depression can result in psychosis, Rob. What’s your point? Most of the millions of regular smokers don’t have depression and most don’t use it in excess. If they did, they wouldn’t be the functioning, successful members of society that they are. None of the casual smokers I know is an unwed pregnant teenager or an abusive daughter-selling dad, Rob.
“Low doses had a potent anti-depressant effect, but when we increased the dose, the serotonin in the rats’ brains actually dropped below the level of those in the control group. So we actually demonstrated a double effect: At low doses it increases serotonin, but at higher doses the effect is devastating, completely reversed.”
They increased the dose to what? To a level that a typical smoker might ingest? It doesn’t even bother to say. What about the casual user who only ingests a low dose? Should we round all them up at the point of a gun and throw them in jail as well, just in case they might one day ingest too much and suffer from Reefer Madness? Is that what you think, Rob?
I come from East Orange NJ and plenty of pot smokers beat the crap out or their old ladies, bought pot instead of food for their kids and robbed people to get enough money for a dime bag and a 40oz.
And beating your wife, neglecting your kids and robbing people are all illegal already, Rob. Just because these are the only pot smokers you know, Rob, doesn’t mean you have a right to throw peaceful people in jail. Throw all of those people you describe in jail, for sure.. For the real crimes they have committed.. But leave the rest of the world alone and stay out of their business. They are not the murderers, child abusers and wife beaters that you seem to think they are..
“you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.. Alcohol does not do any less damage to someone than marijuana does.. They are both bad for you.. Period. And alcohol abuse will destroy your body much faster than marijuana abuse will. Hell, people poison themselves with alcohol on almost a daily basis in this nation. How many people can you name that smoked so much pit that they died in their own vomit right there on the spot. It simply doesn’t happen…”
Sorry, when I see people drink alcohol, people who drink even just a sip of it don’t get impaired. All what you’re doing is certainly trying to whitewash what maijuana and other illegal drugs do to people’s mentality. I’m no drinker, but I can tell people whom have even a tiny bit of alcohol have better mentality issues than those whom smoke maijuana.
So you didn’t read the links to the studies huh? Chronic marijuan use cause schizophrenic like symptoms, increases depression and disables the area of your brain that keeps you from committing crimes. Get it? You are more likely to do crazy things (like murder a woman and her children) when you’r mind has been altered.
I though pot smokers were mellow, I guess your three comments (and the Manson family) proves that isn’t the case. Let me ask you something though. You get angry when I say getting high is bad for you but if I said to someone snorting coke is bad for you and leads to all sorts of unpleasantness and they reacted the same way, would you think they had a problem?
Pretend my post was about coke, and insert coke in your responses, then re-read them. Interesting is it not?
But to your many points, I point to studies that show pot smoking causes criminality. You should be able to (but aren’t) admit that people smoke pot (or drink) to lower their inhibitions, to relieve themselves of a imagined burden and to lose control. Why is it surprising that many are violent?
Yo have no data to support that “millions of smokers” are well adjusted people who lead healthy lives. But for every individual anecdote of a pot smoker supposedly doing well I can provide ten of ones who aren’t. Drug use is to romanticized in our culture and it’s wrong. Steven Durcho is the real face of the American drug user, not the trust fund douche from High times.
As for people functioning in society, we live in a country where 1/4th of Americans believe in the Illuminati, that Bush is a Reptilian Alien and 9/11 was a scam perpetrated by Jews. Add in the sky high teen pregnancy rates, divorce rates and statutory rape rates (most teen pregnancies are fathered by an adult) and our harmless drug culture doesn’t seem quite so benign to me.
I use to smoke myself silly in high school. I remember an avid goal of mine (and my friends) was to go to High School stoned everyday out of the year…and I succeeded. I also remember having a mini-stroke at 19 too. I didn’t stop though, I kept smoking and then went on to do “bigger and better things”. Finally, I realized I couldn’t talk to anyone, and felt uncomfortable around my own family and friends and got extremely paranoid around them.
That’s some freaky shi* if you really think about it. I couldn’t even talk to my own brothers, what the hell was wrong with me?
So I stopped one day. I lost my friends thought. I think some of them work at Burger King or something last I heard. Who knows, who cares?
Long story short, things have gotten a lot better since because of that, but it has taken awhile.
Rob, I’m going to write your name in for president in 2012, keep up the good fight.
…And that last paragraph is so damn true, it’s actually scary.
You guys believe all the myths. There are literally millions of regular marijuana smokers in the US who are completely productive, and otherwise law abiding citizens of this country. I know a lot of them myself, and chances are you do as well. You might not realize it, but you do. You don’t realize it because marijuana isn’t a huge focus of their life, so you don’t rve realize they are a occasional, casual smoker. They don’t deserve to be thrown in jail, but Rob wants to see that happen.. That is the sad fact here.
Hopefully someone who stumbles on this page and doesn’t have a clue about the truth will learn a little something from this link:
http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/factsmyths/
“You guys believe all the myths. There are literally millions of regular marijuana smokers in the US who are completely productive, and otherwise law abiding citizens of this country. I know a lot of them myself, and chances are you do as well. You might not realize it, but you do. You don’t realize it because marijuana isn’t a huge focus of their life, so you don’t rve realize they are a occasional, casual smoker. They don’t deserve to be thrown in jail, but Rob wants to see that happen.. That is the sad fact here.”
You’re telling us the “proof” is within a group funded by the far left George Soros known as the Drug Policy Alliance?
No recent studies to point out Del? Interesting.
And of course the drug use doesn’t cause permanent psychosis, once people stop drugging and drinking they will eventually pass the chemical from their system and it is the large doses of THC that mimic the psychosis, but there is no study that shows pot smoke doesn’t cause permanent brain damage.
There has been an increase in elderly dementia however. Hmmm.
But thanks for all the strawmannery (I want everyone thrown in jail, etc) since it shows that “non-addictive” marijuana is just habit forming enough to make users foam at the mouth when criticized. You’ve never taken my bet Del, can you go a month without toking up?
I really don’t ca
Dear Rob,
You are one of the most ignorant asshole I’ve seen on the internet. Honestly you just find fucked up people, who just so happen to smoke weed and then blame all their actions on weed.
Did you know that Charles Manson ate bread and water almost everyday? This clearly proves that bread and water are the cause of psychopathy.
It is simply amazing that an individual would cite marijuana as a reason for murder. Being high or previously using marijuana has nothing to do with being a crazy bastard. If someone is messed up like that it doesnt matter if they smoke weed or not, you wouldn’t say he killed them because he went to the movies, or because he smoked cigarettes – its the same thing. crazy people are crazy people regardless of pot, you should be ashamed of yourself for hosting a website like this.
Are you claiming getting high doesn’t alter your behavior or perceptions?