Insight on the News 
 

June 28, 1999, Monday

SECTION: COVER STORY; Pg. 10

Doping Kids

 

By Kelly Patricia O'Meara; INSIGHT

   SUMMARY: Though shocked by bizarre shootings in schools, few Americans have noticed how many shooters were among the 6 million kids now on psycotopic drugs.

TEXT: Just three weeks after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on their April 20 killing spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., President Clinton hosted a White House conference on youth violence. The president declared it a strategy session to seek "the best ideas from people who can really make a difference: parents and young people, teachers and religious leaders, law enforcement, gun manufacturers, representatives of the entertainment industry and those of us here in government."

There was, however, complete silence from the president when it came to including representatives from the mental-health community, whom many believe can provide important insight about the possible connection between the otherwise seemingly senseless acts of violence being committed by school-age children and prescription psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin, Luvox and Prozac.

There are nearly 6 million children in the United States between the ages of 6 and 18 taking mind-altering drugs prescribed for alleged mental illnesses that increasing numbers of mental-health professionals are questioning.

Although the list of school-age children who have gone on violent rampages is growing at a disturbing rate - and the shootings at Columbine became a national wake-up call - few in the mental-health community have been willing to talk about the possibility that the heavily prescribed drugs and violence may be linked. Those who try to investigate quickly learn that virtually all data concerning violence and psychotropic drugs are protected by the confidentiality provided minors. But in the highly publicized shootings this spring, information has been made available to the public.

* April 16: Shawn Cooper, a 15-year-old sophomore at Notus Junior-Senior High School in Notus, Idaho, was taking Ritalin, the most commonly prescribed stimulant, for bipolar disorder when he fired two shotgun rounds, narrowly missing students and school staff.

* April 20: Harris, an 18-year-old senior at Columbine High School, killed a dozen students and a teacher before taking his own life. Prior to the shooting rampage, he had been under the influence of Luvox, one of the new selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI, antidepressants approved in 1997 by the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, for children up to the age of 17 for treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD.

* May 20: T.J. Solomon, a 15-year-old at Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga., was being treated with Ritalin for depression when he opened fire on and wounded six classmates.

Two other high-profile cases from last year show a similar pattern:

* May 21, 1998: Kip Kinkel, a 15-year-old at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., murdered his parents and then proceeded to school where he opened fire on students in the cafeteria, killing two and wounding 22. Kinkel had been prescribed both Ritalin and Prozac. Although widely used among adults, Prozac has not been approved by the FDA for pediatric use.

* March 24, 1998: Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, opened fire on their classmates at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark. Johnson had been receiving psychiatric counseling and, although information about the psychotropic drugs that may have been prescribed for him has not been made public, his attorney, Val Price, responded when asked about it: "I think that is confidential information, and I don't want to reveal that."

A great deal has been written about all of these cases. There have, however, been no indications that all of these children watched the same TV programs or listened to the same music. Nor has it been established that they all used illegal drugs, suffered from alcohol abuse or had common difficulties with their families or peers. They did not share identical home lives, dress alike or participate in similar extracurricular activities. But all of the above were labeled as suffering from a mental illness and were being treated with psychotropic drugs that for years have been known to cause serious adverse effects when given to children.

At the top of the list of so-called "mental illnesses" among children is attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, which is diagnosed when a child meets six of the 18 criteria described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, published by the American Psychiatric Association, or APA.

ADHD was determined by a vote of APA psychiatrists to be a "mental" illness and added to the DSM-IIIR in 1987. By definition, children with ADHD exhibit behaviors such as not paying attention in school, not listening when spoken to directly, failing to follow directions, losing things, being easily distracted and forgetful, fidgeting with hands or feet, talking excessively, blurting out answers or having difficulty awaiting turn. The most common ADHD remedy among pediatricians and representatives of the mental-health community is, as noted, Ritalin.

First approved by the FDA in 1955, Ritalin (methylphenidate) had become widely used for behavioral control by the mid-1960s. It is produced by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, the United States buys and uses 90 percent of the world's Ritalin. A U.N. agency known as the International Narcotics Control Board, or INCB, reported in 1995 that "10 to 12 percent of all boys between the ages of 6 and 14 in the U.S. have been diagnosed as having ADD attention-deficit disorder, now referred to as ADHD and are being treated with methylphenidate."

But opponents are concerned about evidence they say confirms a close relationship between use of prescribed psychotropic drugs and subsequent use of illegal drugs, including cocaine and heroin. While the United States has spent more than $70 billion on the war on drugs, says Bruce Wiseman, president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a California-based organization that investigates violations of human rights by mental-health practitioners, "if you think the Colombian drug cartel is the biggest drug dealer in the world, think again. It's your neighborhood psychiatrist ... putting our kids on the highest level of addictive drugs."

This complaint is not new and there is a lengthy list of government agencies connecting the prescribed psychotropic drugs to use of illegal substances.

Twenty-eight years ago the World Health Organization, or WHO, concluded that Ritalin was pharmacologically similar to cocaine in its pattern of abuse and cited Ritalin as a Schedule II drug - the most addictive in medical usage. The Department of Justice followed the WHO by citing Ritalin in Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act as having a very high potential for abuse. As a Schedule II drug, Ritalin joins morphine, opium, cocaine and the heroin substitute methadone.

According to a report in the 1995 Archives of General Psychiatry, "Cocaine is one of the most reinforcing and addicting of the abused drugs and has pharmacological actions that are very similar to those of Ritalin." In the same year the DEA also made the Ritalin/cocaine connection, saying, "It is clear that Ritalin substitutes for cocaine and d-amphetamine in a number of behavioral paradigms," expressing concern that "one in every 30 Americans between 5 and 19 years old has a prescription for the drug."

Despite decades of warnings about the potential for abuse of Ritalin, experts continue to argue that the benefits far outweigh the consequences. Yet the INCB has reported that "Methylphenidate's Ritalin pharmacological effects are essentially the same as those of amphetamine and methamphetamine. The abuse of methylphenidate Ritalin can lead to tolerance and severe psychological dependence. Psychotic episodes and violent and bizarre behavior have been reported."

These are, in fact, some of the same symptoms exhibited by Eric Harris.

David Fassler, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and chairman of the APA group on Children, Adolescents and Their Families, says he is unaware of any research to suggest a correlation between the recent cases of violent behavior in school-age children and the widespread prescription of psychotropic drugs. Fassler argues that the number of school-age children suffering from mental illnesses such as depression is "more than earlier believed and it is important that there be a comprehensive evaluation by a mental-health clinician trained in this area." He stresses that "treatment should be multimodal - not left to medications alone."

Mike Faenza, president and chief executive officer of the National Mental Health Association, the country's oldest and largest mental-health group, notes that "there is little known about how the drugs affect brain function." Faenza adds that "we do know that a hell of a lot of kids commit suicide because they aren't getting the help they need. It's irresponsible not to give them the help just because we don't know what causes the mental illness."

Opponents are quick to capitalize on this admission. "There is no such thing as ADHD," declares Wiseman. "It's not a deficiency of 'speed' that makes a kid act out. If you look at the criteria listed in the DSM-IV for ADHD, you'll see that they are taking normal childhood behavior and literally voting it a mental illness. This is a pseudoscience, entirely subjective. Unlike medical conditions that are proved scientifically, with these mental illnesses the only way you know you're better is if the psychiatrist says you're better. That's not science."

Pediatric neurologist Fred Baughman not only agrees that there is no such illness as ADHD, but says: "This is a contrived epidemic, where all 5 million to 6 million children on these drugs are normal. The country's been led to believe that all painful emotions are a mental illness and the leadership of the APA knows very well that they are representing it as a disease when there is no scientific data to confirm any mental illness."

Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist and director of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology and author of Talking Back to Prozac, Toxic Psychiatry and Talking Back to Ritalin, for years has waged a war with the APA about what he regards as its cavalier diagnoses of mental illnesses. "Psychiatry has never been driven by science. They have no biological or genetic basis for these illnesses and the National Institutes of Mental Health are totally committed to the pharmacological line." He is concerned that "there is a great deal of scientific evidence that stimulants cause brain damage with long-term use, yet there is no evidence that these mental illnesses, such as ADHD, exist."

Breggin points out that the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, admitted as much at their 1998 Consensus Development Conference on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Thirty-one individuals were selected by NIH to make scientific presentations to the panel on ADHD and its treatment. The panel made the following observations and conclusions: "We don't have an independent, valid test for ADHD; there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction; existing studies come to conflicting conclusions as to whether use of psychostimulants increases or decreases the risk of abuse, and finally after years of clinical research and experience with ADHD, our knowledge about the cause or causes of ADHD remains speculative."

If so, there is little evidence to support a scientific basis for classifying ADHD as a mental illness. On the other hand, there is an abundance of evidence that stimulants such as Ritalin can produce symptoms such as mania, insomnia, hallucinations, hyperactivity, impulsivity and inattention. And the DEA's list of potential adverse effects of Ritalin includes psychosis, depression, dizziness, insomnia, nervousness, irritability and attacks of Tourette's or other tic syndromes.

While Ritalin is the drug of choice for treating ADHD, other mental illnesses such as depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, from which Columbine shooter Harris suffered, are being treated with new SSRI antidepressants. Harris' autopsy revealed that he had used Luvox (Fluvoxomine), an SSRI, prior to the shooting spree. And days earlier he had been rejected by the Marine Corps because he was taking the psychotropic drug.

Luvox, a cousin of Prozac, has been approved by the FDA for pediatric use, although research shows that a small percentage of patients experience adverse effects such as mania, bouts of irritability, aggression and hostility. But many physicians still prescribe it to children.

More disturbing to those who believe sufficient evidence exists that prescription psychotropic drugs may play a role in the violence being carried out by school-age children is the response of physicians to the issue. Rather than erring on the side of caution by reducing the number of kids on mind-altering drugs, physicians instead are prescribing psychotropic drugs even to infants and toddlers. The warning label states that "Ritalin should not be used in children under 6 years, since safety and efficacy for this age group has not been established" and "sufficient data on safety and efficacy of long-term use of Ritalin in children are not yet available."

A report in the July 1998 issue of the Clinical Psychiatric News revealed that in Michigan's Medicaid program, 223 children 3 years old or younger were diagnosed with ADHD as of December 1996. Amazingly, 57 percent of these children, many of whom are not yet capable of putting together a complete sentence, were treated with one or more psychotropic drugs including Ritalin, Prozac, Dexedrine, Aventyl and Syban. Thirty-three percent were medicated with two or more of these drugs.

But it is Ritalin that is being prescribed to 6 million American children. Children's Hospital in Washington has been running television advertisements expressing concern. According to its spokeswoman, Lynn Cantwell, the ads were part of a series covering many medical issues. "We wanted to advocate that children get a comprehensive evaluation because we are finding that children were coming in who were taking Ritalin who actually did not have ADHD."

Wiseman has suggested that the only way to gain control of the situation is to expose widespread "fraudulent diagnoses" of psychiatrists. "Without the diagnoses, you can't get the drugs," he says. Baughman's answer isn't too far from Wiseman's. He says, "A big-time class-action lawsuit needs to be filed."

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Insight on the News

June 21, 1999, Monday

SECTION: SYMPOSIUM; Pg. 25 

Q: Would new requirements for gun buyers save lives?; 

No: New gun controls will pose greater dangers to persons threatened by armed criminals.

By John R. Lott Jr.; SPECIAL TO INSIGHT 

Following the horrifying Columbine High School attack that left 13 victims dead, President Clinton and Senate Democrats have worked hard to pass a long list of new gun-control laws. Clinton says that we must "do something" and that he knows "one thing for certain:" If these rules had been law, "there would have been fewer kids killed." 

Yet, would more gun laws have stopped the Columbine attack in Littleton, Colo., or the recent shooting in Conyers, Ga.? Would they save other lives? 

There already are a large number of laws in place. The Columbine High School murderers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, violated at least 17 state and federal weapons-control laws. Nationwide there are more than 20,000 gun-control laws that regulate everything from who can own a gun and how it can be purchased to where one can possess or use it. 

Regulations have both costs and benefits, and rules that are passed to solve a problem can sometimes make it worse. The biggest problem with gun-control laws is that those who are intent on harming others, and especially those who plan to commit suicide, are the least likely to obey them. Clinton frames the issue in terms of whether hunters are willing to be "inconvenienced," but this misses the real question: Will well-intended laws disarm potential victims and thus make it easier for criminals? Potential victims use guns more than 2 million times a year to stop violent crimes; 98 percent of the time simply brandishing a gun is sufficient to stop an attack. Crimes are stopped with guns about five times as frequently as crimes are committed with guns. 

Consider, then, the costs and benefits of Clinton's new controls on gun purchases as well as his other proposals: 

* New rules for gun shows. The Clinton administration has provided no evidence that such shows are important in supplying criminals with guns. What's more, it simply is false to claim that the rules for purchasing guns at a gun show are any different from those regarding gun purchases anywhere else. Dealers who sell guns at a show must perform the same background checks and obey all the other rules that they do when they make sales at their stores. Private sales are unregulated whether they occur at a gun show or not. If, as Clinton proposes, the government enacts new laws regulating private sales at gun shows, all someone would have to do is walk outside the show and sell the gun there. To regulate private sales, the government would have to register all guns. This is where the discussion soon will be headed as it is certain that gun-control advocates quickly will point to the unenforceability of these new laws. Those who advocate the new rules must know that they are doomed to failure and should be willing to acknowledge openly if their real goal is registration. 

The proposal offered by Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and passed by the Senate is even broader and will apply to gun shows, as well as exchanges of guns that occur outside of normal gun shows, and will prohibit even some sales or transfers in people's homes. The fees and bureaucracy that he seeks to impose will drive gun shows out of business. 

* Waiting periods. Despite using the Littleton tragedy to motivate reinstating a national waiting period, a three-day waiting period could not possibly have stopped this attack, which was planned more than a year in advance. For other crimes it is possible that waiting periods can cause people to cool off before they do something that they regret, but people many times are being stalked or threatened and waiting periods can make it difficult for them quickly to obtain a gun for self-defense. 

The data suggest that we should be careful before rushing to reinstituting the waiting period that lapsed last year. I have found, in the only research done on this question, that the Brady law's waiting periods had no impact on murder or robbery but slightly increased rape and aggravated-assault rates by a few percent. For two crime categories the major effect of the law was to make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to get a gun for protection. The risks appear greatest for crimes involving women. 

* Internet Sales. It has been claimed - falsely - that Internet gun purchases differ from purchases in stores. In fact, one cannot order a gun over the Internet for personal delivery. Any gun ordered through the Internet only can be sent to a registered dealer who then must perform all the background checks and paperwork required for any other sale. 

* Mandatory gun locks. This proposal also is unrelated to the attack in Littleton; Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold would have known how to remove any locks on the guns. Indeed, gun locks were circumvented in at least several of the six public-school attacks that we have experienced since 1997. Clinton claims that gun locks will save lives, particularly those of young children, but this is unlikely to be the case. For children younger than 5, there were 30 accidental gun deaths in 1996, and this represents a real cost of gun ownership. For children younger than 15, there are 200 accidental deaths. Yet, with around 80 million people owning around 240 million guns, the vast majority of gun owners must be extremely careful or such gun accidents would be much more frequent. It is hard to think of any other item around the home that is anywhere near as prevalent and anywhere near as dangerous that has such a low accidental death rate. 

Indeed, five times as many children younger than 5 die from fires that they start with cigarette lighters (150 vs. 30), and more die from drowning in water buckets around the home (40). For children younger than 15, almost 3,000 died in motor-vehicle crashes, 950 drowned and more than 1,000 died from residential fires. Hundreds more children die in bicycle accidents each year than die from all types of firearm accidents. 

It's hardly consoling that accidents involving such common home fixtures as swimming pools and space heaters are more lethal than guns. Yet people understand that there are tradeoffs in life and that the very rules that seek to save lives can result in more deaths. Banning swimming pools would help prevent drowning, for example, but if fewer people exercised, life spans would be shortened. Heaters may start fires, but they also keep people from freezing to death or getting sick. So whether we want to allow pools or space heaters depends not only on whether some people may be harmed by them, but also on whether more people are helped than hurt. Unfortunately, the current debate over gun locks focuses only on the costs and not the tens of thousands of children who are protected each year by parents or other adults using guns to defend themselves and their families. Mechanical locks that fit either into a gun's barrel or over its trigger require the gun to be unloaded and may prevent a few children's deaths. But locked, unloaded guns offer far less protection from intruders, so requiring locks likely would greatly increase deaths resulting from crime. Gun locks may make sense if one lives in a safe area and has children, but in high-crime areas the risk of death from crime clearly outweighs these other benefits. My research also indicates that it is poor people who live in high-crime urban areas who benefit the most from owning guns for self-protection. Many of the proposals for sophisticated, so-called "smart locks" that can only be activated by a specific individual's fingerprint or by a special ring with a computer chip will add at least several hundred dollars to gun prices and prevent those who need them most from obtaining them. 

Prison sentences for adults whose guns are misused by someone younger than 18. Parents already are civilly liable for wrongful actions committed by their children, but Clinton proposes a three-year minimum prison term for anyone whose gun is used improperly by a minor, regardless of whether the gun owner consents to or knows of the use. The rules are being created for just one product when we would never think of applying them to other products. This is draconian, to say the least, the equivalent of sending Mom and Dad to prison because an auto thief kills someone while driving the family car. What about other household products such as the propane tanks from barbecues or trailer homes that have been used to make bombs? If the motivation is to prevent accidental deaths, why not apply this rule to items that pose a much greater risk to children in the home? Most parents would consider such a sanction extreme, to say the least. 

Age limits. Clinton proposes a federal ban on possession of handguns by anyone younger than 21. Under a 1968 federal law, 21 already is the minimum age to purchase a handgun, but setting the age to possess a handgun is a state matter. While some people between 18 and 21 use guns improperly, others face the risk of crime and would benefit from defending themselves. My own research indicates that laws allowing those between 18 and 21 years of age to carry a concealed handgun reduce violent crimes just as well as those limited to citizens older than 21.

Background checks for purchasers of bomb-making materials. This will have little effect, simply because few items are likely to be covered. No one seriously discusses including fertilizer, used to make the bomb that killed 168 in Oklahoma City in 1995, or propane tanks like the ones found after the Littleton massacre. There simply are too many common household items that can be used to make bombs. Much of the debate over gun control these days is conducted without regard for facts. For example, the press reproduces pictures of a Tech-9, the so-called "assault pistol" used in the Columbine attack. Few reports even mention that at most one of the 13 Littleton victims was killed with this gun. In spite of all the rhetoric and despite its appearance, this assault weapon functions no differently from other semiautomatic pistols sold in the United States. It is no more powerful, it doesn't shoot any faster and it doesn't shoot any more rounds. One pull of the trigger fires one bullet. 

Good intentions don't necessarily make good laws. What counts is whether the laws ultimately will save lives. The real tragedy of Clinton's proposals is that they are likely to lead to the loss of more lives. 

Lott is a fellow in law and economics at the University of Chicago School of Law and is author of More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws. 
 
 

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Insight on the News

June 21, 1999, Monday

SECTION: WASHINGTON IN BRIEF; Pg. 34 

LAWRENCE-HUFFINGTON FEUD STILL SIZZLES 

By John Elvin; INSIGHT 

Shelia Lawrence, widow of late ambassador Larry Lawrence who rested temporarily in an undeserved gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery and was disinterred because of a fabricated war record (as reported by Insight in a story that caused a national sensation), has vowed vengeance against those who exposed the situation. 

One of the widow's targets, ac-cording to an article in the latest issue of George, is conservative columnist Arianna Huffington. Huffington raised questions about an affair in which Shelia Lawrence was alleged to have engaged with - guess who? - President Clinton. Lawrence says Huffington tried "to assassinate my character," and she will "use what legal means are available to me to hold Huffington accountable." 

The story in George is not particularly kind to Shelia Lawrence, going into some detail about her transition from "secret mistress to the adoring wife of a multimillionaire" via Larry Lawrence's "messy divorce." It makes much of Larry's grab for an ambassadorship and Shelia's desire for a White House position - ambitions that seemed quite realistic based on hefty campaign donations and hard-driving fund-raising efforts. 

Upon Larry's death, the article quotes a senior White House official as saying, Shelia "put the squeeze on the president one-on-one" to achieve her late husband's dream of an Arlington burial. In the aftermath of the scandal that resulted in Larry Lawrence's exhumation and reburial elsewhere, Shelia has filed a libel lawsuit against Huffington. The columnist, in turn, has taken a "happy warrior" approach to the matter and is gathering up all the ammo she can in FBI, CIA, Justice and State department files concerning the Lawrences. 

"Shelia wants to prove that Huffington is a liar; Huffington wants to reveal Shelia as a fraud," the article concludes. Well, if this goes on, it seems it will be a while yet before Larry Lawrence rests in peace. Or anyone else, for that matter. 

WHERE HAVE ALL THE SOLDIERS GONE? 

The Blue Badge, a publication of the Combat Infantrymen's Association, recently asked readers to guess what country was suggested by the following profile of its military forces: 

* 709,000 regular (active duty) service personnel and 293,000 reserve troops; eight active army divisions. 

* 20 air force and navy air wings with 2,000 combat aircraft. 

* 232 strategic bombers. 

* 13 strategic-missile submarines with 3,114 nuclear warheads on 232 missiles. 

* Four aircraft carriers, 121 surface-combat ships and support bases. 

Any guesses? Well, according to the clip sent in by washington in brief reader Albert T. Woodson, the profile doesn't fit any existing country. "These are American military forces that have disappeared since the 1992 elections," the item states. 

MARK MY WORDS ... I MEAN WHAT I SAY 

"People watch CNN all over the world. So when they bomb 'em, they're bombing my customers!" 

- Deeply troubled media mogul Ted Turner, in a quote fielded by Internet journalist Matt Drudge. 

" By taking on the gun lobby, she hopes men will decide maybe she is also tough enough to take on Slobodan Milosevic." 

- ABC's John Cochran explains Elizabeth Dole's recent comments favoring gun control. (And she's going to fight Milosevic how? Hit him in the face with a blast of hair spray?) 

"Al Gore has selected the former skipper of the Titanic to save his sinking presidential campaign." 

- Columnist and political strategist Dick Morris on Gore's selection of Tony Coelho as his new campaign manager. 

"She makes Geraldine Ferraro look like the Virgin Mary." 

- George W. Bush's uncle Jonathan describes Hillary Rodham Clinton in the New York Observer. 

DID YOU KNOW? 

About four in 10 adults say they would pay more to buy made-in-America products if doing so would safeguard U.S. jobs. Among those who indicated the least willingness to pay more to protect jobs: union members and identified Democrats (Association for Women in International Trade survey noted in the National Journal). 

* "New equipment" is the preferred solution to potential Y2K problems chosen by 40 percent of small businesses surveyed (National Federation of 

Independent Business Education Foundation/Wells Fargo). 

* Eight in 10 automated teller machine or debit cardholders in the United States expect to be able to conduct transactions at ATMs or at grocery stores and gas stations on Jan. 1, 2000, and nearly 79 percent of those surveyed said they expect Y2K to "have little or no impact" on their personal finances (Star Systems Inc., a banking equipment manufacturer/ Gallup Poll). 

WHAT'S MISSING FROM MEDIA FEEDING FRENZY? 

Somehow or other we missed the big news about how the Republicans proclaimed it is a patriotic obligation to provide free guns and ammo to lunatics and wackos. There must have been some such proclamation from the way the elite liberal media have been pummeling the GOP over gun control. But it's no easy task to defend responsible gun ownership in an emotionally charged atmosphere such as the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre. So, with a few feints toward the sickness-spawning movie and TV studios, Republicans are just taking the beating. Knowing that they won't get hit back seems greatly to bolster the fighting spirit in the liberal media, and their pundits have been pouring it on. Meanwhile, the Democrats can do no wrong. Well, they can do wrong, but they don't have to worry about any big media uproar over it. 

L. Brent Bozell III of the Media Research Center took note of this situation in comments about the appointment of Tony Coelho as Vice President Al Gore's campaign manager. Bozell observes that "Coelho's appointment drew no news stories at ABC, CBS or NBC. Time and U.S. News dispatched the news in a sentence or two." 

Bozell continues: "Tony Coelho. What? You mean, Tony Coelho, the ex-congressman who resigned in disgrace 10 years ago rather than face any investigation of his sweetheart loan deal with an S&L executive to buy junk bonds from Drexel Burnham Lambert? Tony Coelho, the man who ran the Democrats' House campaign committee in the 1980s by taking favors from the top S&L crooks and then pressuring the S&L regulators to take a hike? 

Tony Coelho, one of the top 22 check bouncers at the House Bank, with more than $300,000 in hot checks? Tony Coelho, the man who stuck up for Jim Wright aide John Mack after it was revealed this beast brutally assaulted a woman, almost killing her? Tony Coelho, the political mastermind under whose leadership the Democrats lost the House in 1994?" 

The move conjures up a few more questions in Bozell's mind that appear to have eluded the media elites. Such as, "How do you fix the image of the Buddhist-temple monk-tapper by bringing in the Sultan of Soft Money? How do you run against the Republican 'Decade of Greed' nostalgists by recruiting this reaper of rip-off artists? How do you distance yourself from Bill Clinton's callous approach to women, including Juanita Broaddrick, by hiring this defender of woman-beaters? How do you project a winning team for 2000 by topping it with 1994's Master of Disaster?" 

Those are a lot of questions. But of course, now that they have been raised, the answers surely will be forthcoming. Or maybe not. Bozell says the elite media won't trouble us with answers but "will ignore it all." 

GRAPHIC: Photos, A) Clinton gave eulogy: Shelia and Bill at Arlington.; B) Missing in inaction: Four of our aircraft carriers and 121 surface-combat ships.; C) Coelho: Gore hires Titanic captain., A&C) By AP/Wide World; B) Courtesy DOD 

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Insight on the News

June 21, 1999, Monday

SECTION: SYMPOSIUM; Pg. 24 

Q: Would new requirements for gun buyers save lives?; 

Yes: Stop deadly, unregulated sales to minors, at gun shows and on the Internet.

By Sarah Brady; SPECIAL TO INSIGHT 

The widespread availability of handguns to criminals and children in this country spurs lethal violence on a frighteningly regular basis. Consider this: In 1996, handguns killed 213 people in Germany, 106 in Canada, 30 in Great Britain - and 9,390 in the United States. Common-sense controls on gun purchases would save lives by drying up the illegal market for guns that supplies weapons to minors and criminals. The U.S. Senate recently voted to amend the juvenile-crime bill to include background checks for gun sales at gun shows, an important step in saving lives and a clear and hopeful sign that the National Rifle Association's, or NRA's, stranglehold on Congress finally may be loosening. More than anything else, this makes me sincerely hopeful that by the end of the 106th Congress, common-sense prevention steps such as closing the gun-show loophole, requiring background checks for gun sales over the Internet and raising the age for handgun purchases from 18 to 21 will become law. Fueled by outrage over the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colo., a national consensus is building to enact common-sense gun-control legislation. A critical step, as recognized by the Senate's recent actions, is to require background checks on firearm purchases at gun shows. It's a simple idea: "no background check, no gun." Every year an estimated 2,000 to 5,000 gun shows take place across the nation in convention centers, school gymnasiums, fairgrounds and other facilities, paid for and maintained with taxpayer money. 

These arms bazaars provide a haven for criminals and illegal gun dealers who want to skirt federal gun laws and buy and sell guns on a cash-and-carry, no-questions-asked basis. The Brady law's five-day waiting period and background check, which has stopped more than 300,000 felons and other prohibited persons from buying firearms, currently applies to licensed gun dealers only. The same is true of most state firearm background checks. At gun shows, however, it is perfectly legal in most states and under federal law for individuals to sell guns from their "private collections" without a waiting period or background check on the purchaser. Meanwhile, licensed firearm dealers operating at these same shows must comply with all rules regarding background checks and waiting periods. Many unscrupulous gun dealers exploit this loophole to operate full-fledged businesses without following federal gun laws. Since so many sales occurring at gun shows are essentially unregulated, law enforcement has found that guns obtained at these shows that are later used in crimes are difficult, if not impossible, to trace. 

The list of those who got their guns through transactions at gun shows includes the Oklahoma City bomber; Branch Davidian leader David Koresh; Gian Luigi Ferri, the madman who killed 8 people in a shooting spree at a San Francisco law firm in 1993; and the Columbine shooters. A recent report on gun shows by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Department of Justice found that 46 percent of the investigations involving gun shows were of felons buying or selling guns. In more than a third of these investigations, firearms were known to have been used in subsequent crimes. The volume of firearms transferred illegally at gun shows is astounding. The 314 investigations reviewed for the study involved more than 54,000 firearms, and more than a third of the investigations involved more than 50 firearms. 

The principle of "no background check, no gun" should apply not only to gun shows but to Internet sales. Too many unlicensed gun dealers are creating a small but growing market for guns on the Internet. The gun-show loophole appears to be a much bigger problem but, in the long run, we will need to take a closer look at the Internet "auction" houses. The truth is, we just don't know how many guns are being sold to illegal purchasers via the Internet, but we'd have a safer nation if we had a system of "no background check, no gun." According to the National Opinion Research Center, 80 percent of the public agrees with the idea of this simple premise. Sixty-six percent of gun owners agree. Retail gun dealers agree, and even Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert appears to agree. Echoing the opinion of the National Alliance of Stocking Gun Dealers during the Senate debate on gun amendments, the speaker said, "I think there needs to be uniformity in what they do at gun shows and what they do in a retail business." Hastert also backed the common-sense idea that the age to purchase handguns and alcohol should be standardized at 21 years of age. Currently, an 18-year-old legally can purchase a handgun from an unlicensed dealer. Recent crime data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms showed that of guns traced in 27 cities for which the age of the possessor was known, the most frequent age of gun possession was 19, followed by 18. In 1997, 22 percent of all arrests for murder were 18-to-20-year-olds. The combination of 18-to-20-year-old handgun buyers and unlicensed, unregulated sales at gun shows and over the Internet is a time bomb that Capitol Hill can easily defuse. 

To understand how out of step with the public the NRA-influenced Republicans are, it is telling to review some of what happened during the Senate debate on gun shows. In the face of overwhelming evidence that unregulated sales pose a threat to public safety, Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, an NRA board member, proposed an amendment to the juvenile-crime bill that not only did not close the gun-show loophole, but that opened new loopholes in federal gun laws. His amendment, sponsored jointly by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, created a new class of vendor that could sell guns in volume at gun shows without conducting background checks. This new class of vendor would not have been required to keep records on those sales, greatly hampering law-enforcement efforts to trace guns. 

Further, the Craig-Hatch amendment eliminated the background-check requirement for guns redeemed or reclaimed at pawnshops. Instead of enacting what the public wants - "no background check; no gun" - the Senate Republicans proposed the opposite: gun, but no background check. It is difficult to understand why the Republicans want to create a loophole that will allow criminals to store their guns and retrieve them later with no screening. 

As if these loopholes weren't enough, the amendment also would have allowed licensed dealers for the first time to sell guns at out-of-state gun shows, and it bestowed a special immunity from these and other kinds of civil prosecutions upon nonlicensed dealers who elected to perform background checks on their buyers. Luckily, public outcry forced the Republicans back to the bargaining table, and the Senate eventually adopted an amendment that closes the gun-show loophole. This amendment, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, requires background checks for all sales at gun shows and closes the pawnshop loophole, finally aligning the Senate with the wishes of the American people. 

The lesson of the Senate debate on guns is that the Republicans are starting to listen to the public instead of to the NRA. It is a shame that it took a tragedy as awful as the Columbine shooting to effect this change. The Senate debate, however, is not the first sign this year that the public is gaining, and the NRA losing, a voice. In April, the voters of Missouri handed the NRA its biggest defeat to date in a referendum on concealed handguns. The NRA placed Proposition B on the ballot, the first time ever where voters were able directly to address the concealed-weapons issue. The gun lobby handpicked the date specifically to ensure low voter turnout and they backed up their effort with $4 million - $3.7 million of which came directly from the NRA. Despite the NRA's all-out effort, the proposal lost by a 52-48 percent margin, despite outspending their opposition by nearly 5-1. 

Missouri voters' rejection of the gun lobby's agenda is especially significant for evaluating how the suburbs may vote in the 2000 elections. Republican strongholds, such as suburban St. Louis County, rejected Proposition B by a 70-30 percent margin. The Prop. B vote - called by the NRA the "last great gun battle of the millennium" - was a clear sign that suburban voters do not share the gun lobby's extreme agenda. 

The rejection of the referendum was also a rejection of John Lott's specious arguments that carry-concealed laws result in reductions in crime. In 1996, Lott, an Olin fellow at the University of Chicago School of Law, and David B. Mustard published a controversial study, later turned into the book More Guns, Less Crime, which purportedly showed that states that loosened their carry-concealed-weapons, or CCW, laws experienced a reduction in certain types of crime specifically because they made it easier for citizens to carry concealed weapons. 

Both Lott's book and his study have been reviewed by academics from a broad range of disciplines. These scholars - from Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins and Emory universities - found serious, fundamental flaws in Lott's methodology and found his claims to be unsubstantiated. Even Gary Kleck, a researcher long praised by the NRA and identified as an authority on gun-violence prevention by Lott himself, has dismissed the findings, writing in his new book, Targeting Guns, that Lott's thesis "could be challenged, in light of how modest the intervention was. More likely, the declines in crime, coinciding with relaxation of carry laws were largely attributable to other factors not controlled for in the Lott and Mustard analysis." 

Unfortunately, while flaws in his research have been widely documented in scientific literature - and his findings dismissed by numerous, prominent researchers - the gun lobby successfully used Lott's flawed conclusions to persuade several state legislatures to loosen CCW restrictions in the mid-1990s. 

But the voters of Missouri were not duped by his faulty research. They realized that if more guns made us safer, we would be the safest nation on the planet with more than 200 million guns in circulation. The Columbine High shooting in Colorado has made it clear to the American public that our children are not safe as long as easy access to firearms is prized above common-sense prevention steps and as long as the NRA's influence is more important than the will of the public. The recent events in the U.S. 

Senate and at the ballot box in Missouri give me hope that we may finally see the will of the American people realized. All it will take is for each of us to continue to say, "Enough is enough." Brady is the chairwoman of Handgun Control Inc., a Washington-based nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the illegal use of firearms in the U.S. 

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Insight on the News

June 21, 1999, Monday

SECTION: NEWS ALERT; Pg. 6 

DID TOXIC WASTE POLLUTE THE MINDS OF COLUMBINE HIGH? 

By Catherine Edwards, Eli Lehrer and Jennifer G. Hickey; INSIGHT 

In the wake of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., politicians have made much of the idea that "cultural pollution" is a root cause of teenage mayhem. But could other types of pollution be playing a role? The Colorado county in which Columbine High is located has a concentration of toxic-waste sites that one Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, official calls "quite high." But while EPA officials are insistent there are no causative links between the sites and anything that happened at the school, some environmental groups are more skeptical. 

Jefferson County, Colo., which contains the school but not the city of Littleton, has five toxic-waste sites including the infamous Rocky Flats nuclear site. 

Three other sites, including a contaminated former Air Force launch pad, send contaminants into groundwater. 

"It's highly unlikely to impossible that any sort of environmental contaminant would have caused what those boys did," EPA spokeswoman Sonya Pennock tells news alert! "Epidemiological thinking indicates that you just can't trace anything as complex as behavior to one or two sources." 

None of the contaminants found in the area are known to cause dementia. But for some extreme environmental groups EPA's assurance "isn't enough." Although an extensive Colorado study determined that the Rocky Flats site didn't pose any immediate risks to humans, the group Stand for Truth About Radiation is protesting against the site. 

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Insight on the News

June 7, 1999, Monday

SECTION: WASHINGTON IN BRIEF; Pg. 34 

ANOTHER BOW TO ACLU COMMANDMENTS 

 

By John Elvin; INSIGHT 

The American Civil Liberties Union added another feather to its cockeyed bonnet recently in a successful attack on the city hall in Manhattan, Kan. The city caved in the face of a lawsuit calling for removal of a monument featuring the Ten Commandments that had stood unmolested for 50 years. In other attempts to deconstruct the American way of life, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit seeking to prohibit public schools and military bases from sponsoring Boy Scout troops. For all the battering their program has taken of late, it seems the Boy Scouts still pledge duty to God. 

"These lawsuits are absurd," according to the Claremont Institute, a group that for many years has chronicled what it views as the Constitution-twisting, undemocratic pursuits of the ACLU. The institute issued a statement relating to the removal of prayer from public schools and the tragedy at Littleton, Colo., and quotes Thomas Jefferson: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God?" 

WHAT DO YOU KNOW? 

* Sixty-four percent of those polled said children with chronic behavioral problems such as fighting, using drugs or drinking should be removed from the regular school system and placed in alternative schools (CBS News Poll, quoted in the National Journal). 

* Will tougher gun laws stop acts like the school shooting in Littleton, Colo.? Sixty-six percent of the general public said people who really want to commit such acts will find ways. Seventy-seven percent of gun owners agreed (Fox News/Opinion Dynamics). 

* Though 72 percent of parents of children age 2 to 17 would buy a television with a V-chip to block sexy and violent shows, the figure drops to 58 percent if the addition increases the cost of the set by $25 (Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation survey). 

* Also on the topic of kids and TV, a study found that third and fourth graders whose viewing time was cut by several hours gained less weight than counterparts who stuck to their usual viewing regimen. The study did not involve any special diet or extra exercise (Stanford University, reported by Reuters). 

CEMETERY FOCUS OF PRESERVATION EFFORT 

Congressional Cemetery is the resting place of various deceased notables ranging from legendary super-snooper J. Edgar Hoover to gay Vietnam vet Leonard Matlovich, whose headstone reads: "When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one." Among other curiosities are some cenotaphs, empty tombs erected in memory of congressional eminences actually buried elsewhere. 

If that's not enough to incite a visit, the burying ground also contains the earthly remains of Revolutionary War heroes, American Indian chiefs, Cabinet officials and, as the name suggests, quite a few members of Congress. Poignantly, due to high infant-mortality rates in the District of Columbia's earlier days, most of those interred in the private, 32-acre cemetery are children. On a more upbeat note, it also contains the gravesite of John Philip Sousa. 

Located on the Anacostia River in Washington, the cemetery was listed in 1997 as one of the nation's "Most Endangered Places" by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It had suffered neglect, vandalism and theft. Better days may lie ahead, though, thanks to a $1 million restoration grant from the Office of the Architect of the Capitol. In a related move, the Association for the Preservation of Historic Congressional Cemetery has announced a fund drive to match the grant from Congress. 

MARK MY WORDS ... I MEAN WHAT I SAY 

"I grieve while the wolves howl, cry while the beasts cheer; I shower the martyrs with my tears while unsheathing the sword." 

- A popular patriotic Chinese poem, among numerous messages, slogans and photos hacked onto various U.S. government World Wide Web internet sites following the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. 

"To liken our product to cigarettes is really out in left field." 

- Sean McBride, a spokesman for the National Soft Drink Association, about the proposal by senators from dairy states to outlaw free sodas donated by various companies to children in public schools. 

"You are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun, I think you should go to prison." 

- Talk-show doyenne Rosie O'Donnell pontificates about how things would be if she ran the world. 

THROW THE BOOK AT KILLER ROBOTS 

This column recently celebrated developments in the personal-hovercraft field as providing an opportunity for lawmakers to develop reams of new rules and regulations. Now comes news that Japanese inventors have created a robot that is the closest thing to a humanoid thus far. The "P3" is a 286-pound gadget that looks sort of like an astronaut and walks with "a curiously graceful gait," according to the Christian Science Monitor. P3 waves, shakes hands, bows, climbs and descends stairs and picks things up. While P3 operates by remote control, the article notes that U.S. scientists are working on similar devices that would have built-in "intelligence." And that would seem to suggest another grand new realm for nanny-state legislation. 

Just to get the pot boiling: What if this 286-pound mechanical Jeeves the Butler gets a frayed wire and makes mincemeat of the mistress or master of the house? Will it be shipped to a maximum-security repair facility? A little creative what-iffing probably could provoke all sorts of liability questions. Hey, here's one for you law-and-order fans: Who should be charged when one of us humans gets run down by a robot-piloted personal hovercraft? 

FEDS CHARGE CUBAN SPY WITH CONSPIRACY IN SHOOTDOWN 

Four defendants have been added in the case against what U.S. authorities describe as the largest Cuban espionage operation uncovered in the United States in decades. The Justice Department also added murder conspiracy to charges against defendant Gerardo Hernandez, a Cuban intelligence officer arrested last year, according to an Associated Press report. 

It is alleged that Hernandez provided information that led to the downing of two "Brothers to the Rescue" exile-group aircraft by Cuban jet fighters over 

international waters. The exiles were searching for refugee rafts launched from Cuba. 

The new defendants bring to 14 the number of Cuban operatives charged with trying to penetrate U.S. military bases, infiltrate exile groups and manipulate 

U.S. media and political organizations. Five of the group arrested by the FBI last year have pleaded guilty to spy-related charges. 

Jose Basulto, leader of the Miami-based exile group that ran the "Brothers" operation, said his organization is pleased to see action being taken, particularly 

regarding Hernandez who, Basulto charged, participated in "premeditated murder." Four members of the rescue operation were killed. 

The FBI has information that Hernandez received a warning from Cuba that agents who had infiltrated the anti-Castro group should not fly with the rescuers 

on a certain day in 1996. That was the day the fighters attacked the civilian planes. 

GRAPHIC: Photos (color), A) P3 is here: Is the Japanese robot better than the real thing?; B) Congressional rest: Endangered grave space., A) By 

Reuters; B) By Roger Richards/Insight ; Illustration (color), NO CAPTION, By C. Hazard/Insight '99 

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Insight on the News

June 7, 1999, Monday

SECTION: SYMPOSIUM; Pg. 25 

Q: Will building more U.S. prisons take a bite out of crime?; 

No: Longer sentences and brutal prison conditions are making crime and violence worse. 

By Terry A. Kupers; SPECIAL TO INSIGHT 
 

I have toured many prisons as a psychiatric expert to evaluate prison conditions and the adequacy of prison mental-health programs. In supermaximum-security units, where prisoners remain idle and isolated in their cells nearly 24 hours per day, between one-quarter and one-half of the prisoners suffer from severe psychosis or suicidal depression. For example, Earl, a 33-year-old white man, has been in a supermaximum-security housing unit, or SHU, for almost three years. When he arrived at the prison 10 years earlier, he was dragged into a cell and raped repeatedly by several other prisoners. He has had a "cell phobia" ever since. 

Earl also is very psychotic, hears voices commanding him to cut himself and experiences intense flashbacks and nightmares related to the gang rape. He periodically cuts himself across his forearms and abdomen. He receives no mental-health treatment except for antipsychotic medications prescribed by a psychiatrist who visits him for a few minutes each week at his cell door. 

Earl explains that after he has been confined to a cell for a while the anxiety becomes unbearable and he cannot resist the impulse to cut. After cutting himself, he is taken to the infirmary where the lacerations are sutured, and then he is returned to the same cell and time is added to his term in "the hole" for having violated the prison rule against self-mutilation. Still, he insists, "It's worth it!" He believes the panic he feels in the cell leaves him no other option. In several years Earl will complete his fixed sentence and be released to the community, straight out of isolation. 

The U.S. prison population has nearly quadrupled since 1980. During the same years, despite rapid new prison construction, correctional facilities have become massively overcrowded. Crowding increases the rates of violence, mental breakdowns and suicides "inside" and raises the recidivism rate. Meanwhile, rehabilitation programs have been dismantled, and the resulting idleness has further increased the violence and mental illness. Rather than upgrading rehab programs and correcting the crowding, for example by diverting some nonviolent felons to noncorrectional drug-treatment and community-service programs, correctional systems have resorted to punitive segregation in supermaximum or maxi-maxi units. 

But, it is high time to ask: Are there that many more incorrigible criminals, or are the awful things that happen to people in brutal correctional facilities driving them further into a life of drugs, crime and madness? If the latter, far from taking a bite out of crime, harsher prisons are making the problem of crime and violence worse. 

The problem with crime statistics, as Elliott Currie, a criminologist at the University of California at Berkeley argues convincingly in Crime and Punishment in America, is they can be manipulated. It's not even clear that the crime rate has decreased in the last few years. Compared to 1991 it's down several points, but compared to 1984 it's up. 

Morgan Reynolds, an economist at Texas A&M University, claims that criminals are getting off too lightly. To demonstrate this, in one study he divides the total number of years served by those convicted of crimes in 1990 by the total number of crimes committed that year. His misleading conclusion is that the average time served for a serious crime is very short. But he fails to mention that many of those crimes go unreported, many more go unsolved and a significant number of people charged with crimes are acquitted. The skewed result of this calculation is a deceivingly low average for time served, whereas the much smaller number of people who actually are convicted serve many more years than the contrived "average." 

Even more flawed are arguments that incarceration saves money because the costly crimes a prisoner might be committing, if free, are prevented. For example, a 1996 National Institute of Justice study by Ted Miller, Mark Cohen and Brian Wiersema compared the nearly $40 billion taxpayers spend each year on corrections with the $450 billion they estimate to be the annual nationwide cost of crime. But, as Currie shows, the researchers underestimate the cost of imprisonment by leaving out the cost of caring for prisoners' children and the accelerating costs of providing medical care to an aging prison population, while they inflate the hypothetical costs of crime by including such things as awards to victims' families in civil lawsuits - including the hefty damages O.J. Simpson is obliged to pay the survivors of Ron Goldman. 

The dollar costs of building prisons also have a built-in multiplier, something that the various interest groups that profit from prison expansion fail to mention to the public. John Moore, writing in the National Journal in 1994, calculated that for every $100 million spent on new prison construction, taxpayers are committed to paying $1.6 billion in the ensuing three decades to operate the new prisons. 

nd, what about the huge intangible costs of imprisonment? For instance, Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Washington-based Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization, reported in 1995 that one-third of black males in their 20s were under the control of the criminal-justice system - in jail or prison or on probation or parole. Consider the impact of this on fatherlessness and poverty within inner-city families and communities! The folly of throwing money at prisons is illustrated by the war on drugs. We know that nearly 70 percent of today's prisoners have a history of drug abuse, yet very few undergo drug treatment while incarcerated. And research shows that a huge majority of ex-prisoners return to their drug habits soon after being released, while 60 to 80 percent of drug users who take part in credible drug-treatment programs in the community remain clean after five years. Imprisonment actually worsens drug abuse and thereby serves to increase crime. A recent Arizona study shows that diverting drug offenders into community treatment really does work much better than incarceration. But most state systems are intensifying efforts to incarcerate them. Another social atrocity is the epidemic of rape in women's prisons, the perpetrators being male staff. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have issued reports condemning this unconscionable abuse of human rights. Rape is massively underreported because the women are terrified of retaliation by perpetrators who are very unlikely to face punishment. Because of inadequacies in correctional mental-health programs, the traumatized women receive little, if any, treatment and the posttraumatic stress disorder many of them develop makes it difficult for them to succeed after being released. 

The same stressors that induce mental illness in a significant subpopulation cause all prisoners to become rageful or depressed and less likely to become productive citizens after they are released. The most serious cost of the imprisonment binge takes its toll on the entire body politic: the myriads of broken men and women so traumatized by prison brutality and so ill-prepared to reenter society when they complete their sentences that they return to drugs, crime and violence. A rapidly growing number of prisoners spend years in punitive solitary confinement. Then, like Earl, they are released with no preparation to return to the community. Not surprisingly, they pose a grave danger to public safety. 

Advocates of tougher sentencing claim that the failure of these ex-prisoners is precisely why more prisons are needed. This stance is built upon the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that sociologist Erving Goffman identified in the "snake pit" mental asylums of the 1950s. Goffman's classic study, Asylums, documented how a typical mental patient was diagnosed to be mentally ill and then confined against his will. Though the patient might protest with all the passion he could muster, the staff took his emotional outpouring as proof that the original diagnosis was correct and further constricted his freedom until he wound up in a seclusion room screaming for someone to listen to the reasons he believed he should be set free. The more vehemently the mental patient protested, the more convinced the staff became that they were right to further confine him. Similarly, when a prisoner who has been left to vegetate alone in a cell for years is released and commits a horrible crime, advocates of tougher sentencing hold the case up as proof that we need even more supermaximum-security prisons to handle the new breed of incorrigibles. 

Of course we need to quarantine heinous criminals, and no one is arguing that people convicted of significant crimes should be let off scot-free. The public's real fears about crime and violence merit our attention. But truly violent criminals are a very small fraction of the prison population. More than 75 percent of people entering prison today have not been found guilty of a violent crime. Most enter for drug-related, nonviolent crimes. And 90 to 95 percent will be released, the average within five years. Is it cost-effective and socially desirable to be locking up a huge and growing number of mainly poor people, disproportionately people of color, in brutal institutions where they will be broken or driven mad and then returned to the community? To ignore the abuses that occur inside our prisons is to succumb to the primitive vengeance that has come to permeate this country's sensibility. And that is what people are doing when they say: "Who cares how horribly they suffer? These people have committed terrible crimes." It is understandable that a crime victim might wish to seek personal revenge. But vengeance as social policy is another matter. Genocide, for instance, always is rationalized as revenge for past atrocities committed by the current victims or their forbears. 

The students responsible for the recent massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., must have believed they were entitled to their revenge for the way they had been slighted and humiliated by peers. It may be argued that the teenage killers had internalized the vengeance that permeates our social matrix. Only by building a society that solves its social problems as a whole, without seeking cruel revenge against groups of people it judges unworthy of human rights, can we proceed to enact a rational, cost-effective and socially responsible criminal-justice system. 

Kupers, author of Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About It, practices psychiatry in Oakland, California. 

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Insight on the News

May 24, 1999, Monday

SECTION: NATION: THE MOVIES; Pg. 45 

Hollywood's Right Stuff 

 

By Gayle M.B. Hanson; INSIGHT 

SUMMARY: Though Hollywood makes films filled with sex and violence, it's those films with wholesome content that now make the most money and win the Christian Movieguide Awards. 

TEXT: The scene outside the Hilton Universal Hotel was the usual crush of paparazzi hoping for at least one celebrity shot to pad the week's pay as well as a geek chorus of onlookers out to catch a glimpse of a rising or falling star. 

The occasion was the Christian Film & Television Commission's 7th Annual Movieguide Awards Gala. The nonprofit organization directed by Ted Baehr, an award-winning producer, writer and director, tracks film and video trends through its Movieguide: A Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment. In addition, Baehr also acts as an industry consultant on Christian content in film and television. 

Anxious TV-tabloid producers speed-dialed their contacts trying to find out if Jim Carrey really was going to show up to accept an award for the film Simon Birch. Blackout-windowed sport-utility vehicles loomed over fleets of Lincoln Town Cars that discharged their ball-gowned and tuxedo-clad occupants into the heat of the midday sun. 

And actor Gary Busey, whose career has roller-coastered along with his personal life, was not in a good mood as he was ushered along the velvet rope for his two-minute grips and grins with the entertainment media. Snapping at a network-television reporter who asked him in time-honored tradition what he "is working on," Busey huffed, "I'm working on myself right now." Minutes later, an official explainer advanced the thought that Busey's pain was caused by a missing button on his jacket. 

Ah, Hollywood, the city where good things can happen to bad people. But if the wattage of the star power inside the ballroom was not the equivalent of the Oscar-night crowd, the message was more compelling: Forget R-rated sex-and-violence extravaganzas, according to Baehr's Report to the Entertainment Industry. Americans want to see movies and television programs with religious and biblical-based themes, says Baehr, and he has the statistics to back up his claims. "For the last six years, Movieguide's top 10 movie choices have performed two to three times better than the top movies picked by the major secular critics because our choices correlate with the preferences and concerns of the largest audience in America," Baehr told the crowd. 

The biggest award winner at the Movieguide Awards was the DreamWorks SKG film The Prince of Egypt, which won the Epiphany Prize bestowed by Sir John Templeton. Actors Carrey and Ian Michael Smith won the Grace Award for Most Inspirational Acting in Simon Birch. Also honored were A Bug's 

Life, Antz and Madeline. It's this kind of film, says Baehr, that should receive critical support, not the Natural Born Killers or I Know What You Did Last Summers. 

At a time when the country's attention has turned inward as a result of the Littleton, Colo., mass shootings by two high-school students, more and more parents are questioning the relationship between what their children (and their childrens' friends) are watching and their behavior. While Vice President Al Gore groans lest Julia Roberts light up a cigarette during My Best Friend's Wedding, plenty of folks think that the depiction of cigarette smoking in movies is the least of the industry's problems. At the head of this pack of critics is Baehr, who has become a tireless voice in arguing that Hollywood is directly responsible for the current state of our mass culture, even as he trumpets statistics that indicate the vast majority of Americans would prefer a different type of fare altogether. 

In his exhaustive report to the entertainment industry, Baehr lays out a powerful case for an increase in the production of family-oriented entertainment, based on an exhaustive analysis of 286 films released in 1998. According to that analysis, G-rated movies grossed on average 234 percent more than R-rated films. At the same time, 38 percent of all released movies contained elements involving a Christian worldview and content. Surprisingly, while movie critics applaud such questionable fare as the overtly sexual There's Something About Mary, and The Opposite of Sex, box-office receipts show that movie viewers actually prefer films with less-racy content. According to Baehr, movies with zero or only slight sexual activity actually earned 114-120 percent more at the box office than movies with extreme sexual activity. 

So why, if viewers are clamoring for more family movies, are studios continuing to lower the standards for entertainment with each passing viewing season? Some say the problems began to arise during the 1960s following the closure of both the Protestant Film Office and the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency office in Hollywood. Both organizations worked closely with studios during the so-called "golden age of motion pictures." In 1966 both were closed, and in the three years following their closure movie attendance dropped from 44 million weekly to 19 million. By the time Baehr launched Movieguide, only a handful of family films were being released annually. 

"We've since seen the number of family films skyrocket from a handful to more than 100," Baehr says. "We've also seen a decrease in the number of R-rated films from 80 percent of the theatrically released movies to approximately 50 percent." 

In the wake of the Colorado shootings, Baehr and others are calling for a moratorium on violent films and charge that Hollywood must begin to share some of the responsibility for the increase in our cultural violence. "The largest generation in the history of our country is being trained to kill!" asserts Baehr. "We are now paying the price for legislating the Ten Commandments out of our schools, for now they have been replaced by guns and knives. Thousands of research studies now show the harmful influence of violence and sex in the media on children at susceptible stages of cognitive development." Among the work that Baehr cites is that of David Grossman, a retired military psychologist who has conducted extensive research on violence conditioning. 

"As Dr. Grossman has shown, video games are a form of conditioning similar to the kind of training young men and women get in the military," says Baehr. Grossman, who hails from Jonesboro, Ark., the site of the March 1998 schoolyard shooting which took the lives of four students and a teacher and injured another 10 people, was the lead counselor at the targeted Westside Middle School working with parents and teachers following that tragedy. Now, in the wake of the Colorado shootings, his words take on new importance. 

"When young children see somebody shot, stabbed, raped, brutalized, degraded or murdered on TV, to them it is as though it were actually happening," Grossman told students at Bethel College. "To have a child of 3, 4 or 5 watch a splatter movie, learning to relate to a character for the first 90 minutes and then in the last 30 minutes watch helplessly as that new friend is hunted and brutally murdered is the moral and psychological equivalent of introducing your child to a friend, letting her play with that friend and then butchering that friend in front of your child's eyes. And this happens to our children hundreds and hundreds of times." 

In his book The Media-Wise Family, Baehr argues that the abandonment by the entertainment industry of the Motion Picture Code that existed from 1933 to 1966 was directly responsible for the demise of family entertainment and the rise of sex and violence in films. However, few Hollywood directors will admit that. Among those who have is the renowned director Elia Kazan, who says he did his best work, including Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, during the years the code was in effect. Kazan has said that the code forced him to craft his films more carefully to get his ideas across, whereas his films lost some of their craft after the code was abandoned since he no longer had to worry about the church film offices. 

Ironically, after Kazan testified in 1950 before the House Committee on Un-American Activities concerning communist activity in Hollywood, he became scorned within the Hollywood community. This year, when he was given a special Oscar honoring his contribution to film, many of Hollywood's most politically correct were outraged. Even among those who supported him, few were willing to speak out concerning the truth of his testimony. "America was under direct communist threat at that time," singer Pat Boone reminds Insight. "Kazan did the right thing." 

If the so-called Blacklist kept communists from working in the film industry during the 1950s, there also was the "Red Blacklist," which effectively blocked the careers of writers who had testified before the HCUA or were considered to be conservatives. "There were many people in Hollywood who suffered from the backlash," says Scott McConnell, archivist at the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, Calif. "Morris Ryskind was a Pulitzer Prize winner, and he could not get one job after testifying. Albert Mannheimer was nominated for an Academy Award and could not get work after he left the Communist Party and testified in the ... hearings. His career was destroyed, and later he committed suicide." 

McConnell continues, "It was completely insidious. What they would do was spread lies that certain people were terrible to work with or would slow production down." Not surprisingly, many left the industry. While some conservatives, such as Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart or Barbara Stanwyck, were untouchable because of their box-office power, other actors and actresses found doors closed to them. 

Today's Hollywood politics still reflect the politically correct climate of the 1980s even as much of the country has moved on. Susan Sarandon and Barbra Streisand continue to bear the tattered standard of the Democratic left, and the sad truth is that the Democrats' political fund-raisers continue to outraise Republicans in Hollywood by a 6-1 margin. 

Baehr retains hope that as the stars age they will begin to look at their families and take a second look at the paths their careers are taking. He also is convinced that the bottom-line success of movies such as The Prince of Egypt and Simon Birch can't help but send the studios a message. "There are people in Hollywood who are committed to trying to do great stories," Baehr says. "I truly believe that Jeffrey Katzenberg is one of them. I think that Steven Spielberg instinctively asks the right questions, but those people in Hollywood are few and far between." 

GRAPHIC: Photos (color), A) Gala: Boone, Nancy Stafford and Baehr host the Christian Film & Television Movieguide Awards.; B) Simon Birch: Child actor Ian Michael Smith won the Grace Award for Most Inspirational Acting.; C) The Prince of Egypt: The animated blockbuster won Movieguide's biggest award, the Epiphany Prize.; D) Anticommunist: Kazan, right, recently was awarded an honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in Film., A) By Movie Guide; B) By Hollywood Pictures; C) By Dreamworks; D) By Reuters ; Photo (color), E) An untouchable: Gable, a conservative, survived the "Red Blacklist" on the strength of his box-office power., E) By Bettman 

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Insight on the News

May 17, 1999, Monday

SECTION: WASHINGTON'S WEEK; Pg. 8 

 Looking at Two Sides of Violence 

By Jamie Dettmer; INSIGHT 

SUMMARY: The massacre at Columbine High School creates pause for thought about the bombing strategy in Kosovo. How can we dissuade children from violence if we lightly make war? 

TEXT: What turned them into cold-blooded murderers? Why did two adolescent boys in ski masks turn guns on their classmates and execute one of the most shocking shooting incidents this country has ever seen? The carnage at Columbine High School and the traumatic consequences of youth violence swept even the Balkan tragedy from the airwaves. As NATO bombs continued to drop on Belgrade and the war threatened to spill across the borders into countries neighboring Serbia, a stunned America and its shocked lawmakers turned away from the bestial faraway violence to mourn the deaths of 15 Colorado youngsters and try to make sense of the sickening domestic tragedy. 

To answer the drumbeat of why, politicians as well as psychologists rushed to the TV broadcast studios to proffer ready-made explanations for the mind-numbing slaughter of the innocents April 20 in the Denver suburb of Littleton. A breakdown in family values and the loss of faith, some conservatives asserted, including GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, who quickly announced, "America got a glimpse of the last stop on that train to hell she boarded decades ago when we declared that God is dead." 

Liberals, of course, blamed America's gun culture and the ease with which kids can get their hands on firearms, even when parents remain vigilant. The Libertarian Party blamed government schools and called for homeschooling. Dan Quayle pointed an accusatory finger at the permissive culture and the low state of the American family. The president offered condolences, asked America to unite in prayers for the dead and for their grieving parents, called for yet another in his series of nationwide assessments to identify the roots of school violence and urged another round of crisis management and counseling. 

Clinton's message was clear: America needs to redouble its efforts to avoid violence and to find constructive ways to ease troubled minds. "We also have to take this moment, once again, to hammer home to all the children of America that violence is wrong," he said. "Parents should take this moment to ask what else they can do to shield our children from violent images and experiences that warp young perceptions and obscure the consequences of violence, to show our children, by the power of our own example, how to resolve conflicts peacefully." 

The remark struck one Balkans-absorbed lawmaker as inadvertently ironic. And the surprise is, he seemed to be the only one in town who saw it. "It could be a stretch but sometimes, you know, awful coincidences happen that make you stop and think and say, 'If that's the lesson we should draw from that incident, shouldn't we apply it to some of our other problems?'" The lawmaker, a House Democrat, was hesitant to put his name to a comparison between Littleton and Kosovo, but he added: "We all agree that television is a pervasive influence on kids, and what do they see now? The Balkans, us dropping bombs and calling it humane. And they see Pentagon briefers showing videos of missiles hitting buildings nice and neat. Talk about obscuring the consequences of violence." 

A still small voice of reason? One or two psychologists interviewed on National Public Radio pointed to the irony of talking about "peaceful resolution of conflict" while bombs are falling. And commentator Mara Liasson noted how different the president was in his manner and tone when talking about Littleton as compared to Kosovo. "One thing that I noticed yesterday when he came to the briefing room at about 7:30 last night to talk about Littleton, he lingered for a long time, answering question after question. Now he certainly hasn't done that on Kosovo." A disconnect between domestic horror and foreign catastrophe? If so the president wasn't alone in suffering it - the press and the pundits made no connections either, despite that Clinton remark about leading children by example. 

In the hours and days following the Littleton slaughter great efforts were made by politicians and media alike to enter the minds of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the youths who carried out the chilling Columbine murders. It quickly was remarked that both of them spent adolescence deep inside the morbid teenage subculture of Gothic fantasy, set themselves apart as outcasts and, hardly surprising, became constant targets of derision by their peers. A spiraling effect seems to have developed without early-warning alarms at the school. The authorities hadn't earmarked the pair for constructive counseling nor had parents been called on to try to calm their chaotic imaginations. No intervention occurred that might have averted tragedy. 

By contrast, in all the words that have been expended on Kosovo since the NATO strike on Yugoslavia, there has been an all but complete failure by commentators and politicians alike to go beyond the polemical talk of the cold-hearted evil of Slobodan Milosevic and to understand why he is behaving the way he is, brutally driving Albanians from Kosovo. Nor have the collective fanaticism or dark fantasies of the Serbs been grappled with psychologically or intellectually - in fact, the administration just tries to ignore Serbian support for Milosevic and to kid itself that Serbs are unwilling accessories after the fact as opposed to accomplices in the confrontation between their government and NATO. 

In a bid to keep hesitant public opinion back of violent intervention, administration officials continue to pound out their bleak cartoon of good vs. evil. Are they now trapped by the imperatives of their propaganda? Their lack of analysis, their failure even to try to understand the warped mind of the outcast Milosevic, to examine the embattled soul of the Serbian people or appreciate the historical trajectories down which the Serbian nation has been sent helter-skelter have resulted in a Washington and NATO mind-set that has become as unforgiving and rigid as the one prevailing in Belgrade. Arguably, a spiraling effect has occurred here, too. Angered Serbs act up as outcasts, an uncomprehending West treats them as such and doesn't take account of their grievances, such as the 1998 Croat ethnic cleansing of Krajina, and the cycle merely intensifies. Rage mounts, as do fears on both sides, and increasing violence is the certain result. 

The administration maintains it did everything it could to prevent war in Yugoslavia. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her British counterpart, Robin Cook, among other officials, stress that it was Milosevic who wouldn't sign the Rambouillet peace accord. He was the intransigent one, they say. But other politicians aren't so sure that NATO and the United States weren't contributors to that intransigence by thumping the table and insisting on an agreement the merest tyro must have known the Serb despot couldn't sign. GOP presidential wanna-be John Kasich, for one, argues that and believes the West ignored early-warning signs and tried to foist on the Serbs a provocative one-sided deal. 

There is violence in the heart of man and conflict can't always be avoided. Could the tragedy in Littleton have been prevented? Maybe not, but comparison of the different approaches between our response to the Kosovo problem and to America's school-violence problem is instructive. In the last year much has been done to institute techniques and schemes to head off teenage rage before eruptions occur. The series of school massacres that struck in 1997 galvanized education authorities, Congress and the White House to reassess the dangers and develop conflict-resolution plans. There was a recognition that no silver-bullet solution was available and that placing too much emphasis on increased security measures could be counterproductive and just heighten tension. A combination of intelligent vigilance and community involvement was seen as the best way forward. It was understood that it would take time and patience and that there'd be setbacks along the way. 

And despite the horror of Littleton many experts believe progress has been made slowly - last year saw a decline in violent school deaths. Persistence remains the theme. GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer emphasized it when he acknowledged that getting at the cause of school violence "is a long-term project." Administration officials concurred. "I think from the position of the federal government, we would acknowledge that there are limits to what we can do, but there certainly should be no limits on how much we try to do," said White House press spokesman Joe Lockhart. So why the diplomatic limits in the Balkans? Has NATO become a goader, regardless of whether it meant to, and is it time to bring in the counselors? 

Kasich thinks so. Writing to the president the day of the Littleton carnage, he appealed for a renewal of "efforts to find a negotiated settlement" and urged an "open attitude toward third-party mediation," adding: "Negotiation does not mean failure. Rather, sophisticated diplomacy is the only means to achieve a long-term solution for Kosovo and the wider Balkan region." 

GRAPHIC: Photos (color), A) Innocence lost: Columbine students watch and wait in horror.; B) Bombing fallout: Kosovars are armed as unrest spreads., A) By Agence France-Press; B) By Reuters 

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Insight on the News

December 13, 1999, Monday

SECTION: SPECIAL REPORT; Pg. 22

A Different Kind of Drug War

By Kelly Patricia O'Meara; INSIGHT

   SUMMARY: A school-board member's resolution calling for a higher standard of care when prescribing mind-altering drugs for schoolchildren has erupted in controversy in Colorado.

TEXT: Patti Johnson, a Republican representing the congressional 2nd District on the Colorado State Board of Education, watched the tragic events unfolding last April at Columbine High School in Littleton on CNN with the rest of the nation. She only could imagine the terror the children were experiencing, and her heart ached for parents who were praying that their child would escape unharmed.

Far too many of those prayers went unanswered. And, in the aftermath of the tragedy, another in what now is a long line of bloody schoolhouse shootings, the nation struggles to find answers for why such violence has been occurring. Johnson long had suspected a connection between violence and the children for whom psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs have been prescribed, but it wasn't until the tragedy at Columbine High that she made the decision to act on that suspicion. Soon after the massacre tests revealed that, contrary to popular presumption, the teen-age Columbine shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were not taking illegal drugs. Rather, tests from the autopsy on Harris showed therapeutic levels of the psychotropic drug Luvox (Fluvoxomine), one of the new selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, commonly prescribed for obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, and depression (see "Doping Kids," June 28). This news increased Johnson's concern that there might be a connection.

In an effort to increase awareness about the possible adverse effects of psychotropic drugs and to "provide information that could help schools and parents make sound decisions about the health and welfare of students," Johnson says, she began gathering scientific background and data about the psychotropic drugs most likely to be prescribed for schoolchildren diagnosed with such alleged mental disorders as attention deficit disorder, or ADD, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Johnson believes all sides of the issue should be explored and says that "if we're going to say our schools are safe learning environments and we don't look at these drugs, then we're being hypocrites."

In October, Johnson submitted a related four-page resolution during the working session of the State Board of Education and encouraged other board members to offer amendments. Throughout the month changes were offered concerning wording of the resolution, and a consensus developed. The meat of the final one-page resolution is in its last three statements, which follow:

Whereas: only medical personnel can recommend the use of prescription medications; and,
Whereas: the Colorado State Board of Education recognizes that there is much concern regarding the issue of appropriate and thorough diagnosis and medications and their impact on student achievement; and
Whereas: there are documented incidents of highly negative consequences in which psychiatric prescription drugs have been utilized for what are essentially problems of discipline which may be related to lack of academic success.

By a 6-1 vote in mid-November the Colorado State Board of Education adopted Johnson's resolution. Gully Stanford, a Democrat, was the only member of the board to dissent. While Stanford was concerned about many aspects of the resolution, he was most uncomfortable with the suggestion that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between violence and psychotropic drugs. "I think," he says, "there was such a presupposition on the part of the sponsor that there is overmedication and a connection between violence and these drugs that it ruled out any discussion of what is really needed - a passionate and balanced study of the issue. The way the resolution was presented precluded a balanced discussion."

Stanford based his opposition on what he believes are three flawed premises: widespread abuse in diagnosis and medication of students; rampant overdiagnosis and overmedication; and direct causality between violent behavior and psychotropic drugs.

At any time during the monthlong process, Stanford could have submitted amendments and called experts to testify before the board, but he held his objections until the day before the board was scheduled to vote on the resolution. When he finally brought in opponents to address the board, no one but Stanford was convinced by their data and the resolution was overwhelmingly adopted. According to Johnson, "Stanford could have requested a vote by the board to delay the final consideration of the resolution, but he did not take advantage of the option available to him and the vote went on as scheduled. For him to complain that the process was unfair is simply untrue. He knows the rules of the board and could have begun participating in the process long before the day of the vote."

Stanford cried foul and, driven to paroxysms of fury, others raised ad hominem arguments about the religious affiliation of one of the speakers who supported Johnson's resolution. For instance, Kyle Sargent, director of public policy for the Mental Health Association of Colorado, tells Insight, "Look at Bruce Weisman. Is there an ulterior motive with him? If you have a religion that is against psychiatry should they be taken seriously?"

Sargent is referring to the fact that Weisman, president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, or CCHR, a California-based organization that investigates violations of human rights by mental-health practitioners, is a member of the Church of Scientology. Weisman tells Insight that "the organization was founded by the church in 1969 but has for years been funded by private donors. All funds received by CCHR are contributions from individual donors - both Scientologists and non-Scientologists."

"Clearly this is an effort to attack the messenger and avoid the message," Weisman continues. "This isn't a religious issue. The issue is about millions of kids being put on psychotropic drugs. For them to try and muddy the waters by bringing religion into the mix is their attempt to divert attention from the real issue. These guys are so vulnerable that when you challenge them on drugging little children they hit new lows by attacking the next guy's religion. If they want to legitimately challenge our data and our science, be our guest. We welcome it. Everything we say can be documented because it's the truth, not a public-relations statement."

Johnson is amazed that medical professionals would resort to religious bigotry. "In no way did I ever think that the CCHR was pushing their ideas on me," she says. "No part of this resolution has anything to do with religious beliefs. My opponents are attacking this because they can't fight the science that supports my belief that there is a connection between the psychotropic drugs and violence. Because one of many speakers was a member of the Church of Scientology, my opponents have twisted this into a religious thing. That is ridiculous. All we're trying to say is that this is a warning that teachers and nonmedical professionals should stay within their academic boundaries and expertise and not pressure parents to put a child on a medication. It has absolutely nothing to do with anyone's religion."

Johnson and the rest of the State Board of Education aren't the only elected officials interested in the well-being of the children of Colorado. Nor are they the only targets of personal attacks for their efforts to raise questions that advocates of psychotropic drugs apparently don't want asked.

Republican state Rep. Penn Pfiffner - who represents Jefferson County, the home of Columbine High School - in mid-November chaired a hearing on the possible connection of violent behavior and psychotropic drugs. Rather than applaud Pfiffner for carefully investigating a tough issue, local press reports called the hearings "the big top over the circus," and labeled Pfiffner the "ringmaster in charge." Pfiffner wasn't distracted. "If we're only interested in debating gun laws and metal detectors," says Pfiffner, "then we as legislators aren't doing our job." Raising this issue, Pfiffner continues, "has unleashed a firestorm and a backlash from people who think they already have the answers. It's just the beginning, though. We have allowed both sides to offer their points of view and the next step may be to bring in health-care professionals to help decide what guidelines and policies are appropriate, if any."

Pfiffner is determined to get to the bottom of the problem. "There is enough coincidence and enough professional opinion from legitimate scientists to cause us to raise the issue and to ask further questions. I'm going to proceed with an open mind and a great deal of uncertainty to get to the bottom of whether there is or is not a connection here."

Ann Tracy, a doctor of psychology and health sciences and founder and president of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness (www.drugawareness.com) isn't surprised by the tactics being used by advocates of psychotropics to deflect attention away from what she believes to be a life-and-death threat. Tracy, an expert on SSRIs who for nearly 10 years has testified in dozens of criminal cases involving psychotropic drugs, doesn't pull any punches. "When it comes to drugs like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and Luvox, I've never seen a group of drugs so similar to PCP and LSD. Ritalin also has a strong effect on serotonin levels in the brain, but it no longer is the drug of choice for ADD and ADHD but rather is being replaced by the new SSRIs. The information about these drugs has been in medical literature for decades."

As an expert witness, says Tracy, "I was asked to go before the board and explain what psychotropics are and how they may adversely affect someone. The SSRI's can create mania and psychotic episodes. Luvox, the psychotropic drug prescribed to Eric Harris, suppresses the REM state or dream state of sleep , which is critical to good mental health. These drugs allow a person to be awake but at any time they can slip into the REM state. This is why people often discuss how they couldn't tell the difference between the dream and reality. These drugs are horribly damaging to the entire system."

Tracy has done extensive research about psychotropic drugs and violence. "In investigating 30 cases that took place over the last four years of something extremely rare before, but becoming much more common -women committing murder and then attempting suicide - there is an alarming link. Out of the 30 cases of mothers killing their children or their husbands and then themselves, 22 were on SSRI medications at the time of the murder."

Tracy's research also has delved into the growing number of school-age children who have exhibited violent behavior while taking psychotropic drugs. She has been called in as a consultant on several disturbing cases: a 15-year-old boy on Zoloft for five days shot and killed a woman and now is serving life in prison; a 17-year-old boy on Paxil for three months was killed when he jumped off an overpass and into the path of a trailer truck; a 14-year-old girl put on Paxil to deal with the death of her father (who had been on Paxil for three weeks before killing himself) drank Drano in a suicide attempt; and a 16-year-old boy on Paxil for five days stabbed a woman more than 60 times and then drove his car at a high speed into a cement abutment in a failed suicide attempt. He now is serving life in prison.

"In each of these cases," says Tracy, "individuals close to them were shocked at the violent and destructive behavior because it was so out of character for them."

Although Tracy has conducted no investigation into the shooting incident at Columbine, she is nevertheless curious about the medical background of the shooters. "Both Harris and Klebold," says Tracy, "reportedly attended the same anger-management classes. And in those situations it is standard procedure to put the kids on drugs.

"I'd love to know what Dylan Klebold was on," Tracy continued. "I would have no problem testifying in court to the fact that the psychotropic drug Harris was taking played a role in why he did the shooting. When all of this is over and we count up the dead, we're going to be in shock. We've got to stop drugging our kids," she concludes.

Tracy believes that Johnson's resolution and the courage demonstrated by the board supporting it is a huge first step in a long process of raising awareness about the possible adverse effects of the SSRIs. "I'm hoping," says Tracy, "that the rest of the country will sit up and take notice and do something in their communities. The Colorado State Board of Education has set the example for the rest to follow."

Many critics say it is past time to pay attention. In Bismarck, N.D., just 10 days after husband and father Ryan Ehlis began taking Adderall (the new replacement for Ritalin) for his diagnosed ADD, he killed his 5-week-old daughter with a shotgun and then turned the weapon on himself. He survived and was tried for the murder of his infant daughter. Judge Debbie Kleven agreed with psychiatrists who testified that the horrible crime resulted solely from the psychotic state caused by the prescription psychotropic drug and Ehlis was acquitted. Despite the fact that the drug's labeling warns that in very rare circumstances it can cause "psychotic episodes at recommended doses," nearly 3 million people this year have been prescribed Adderall.

"I don't care what it takes," says Johnson of her effort to investigate the link between bizarre violence and the mass medication of schoolchildren and others with psychotropic drugs. "These kids are our future and we've got to do something now. It's unbelievable how we're being attacked, but I don't regret for one minute that I raised this issue."

Meanwhile, in Denver, the Rocky Mountain News has been conducting a poll about Johnson's resolution. A few days into the poll, 96 percent of those responding supported taking a hard look at whether there is a connection between psychotropic drugs and violence.

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