An arrest last week in connection with the heartbreaking death of a Boulder teenager in June is a wake-up call for every parent in Colorado.
This is, in part, a sobering reminder of how treacherous social media is – a virtual bazaar for the illegal drug trade.
According to reports, 23-year-old Benjamin Charles Harmon, who is being held on $100,000 bail, arranged to sell illegal drugs to 15-year-old Ames O’Neal via Snapchat. Harmon is now facing charges including distribution of controlled substances to minors.
According to police, the suspect, who had previous convictions for assault, threats and drug possession, among other things, had used the app to conduct sales with multiple customers.
O’Neal’s tragic death also serves as a new warning signal to parents about the dangers posed to our youth by “magic mushrooms” and other dangerous hallucinogens that will be legalized in 2022 under Proposition 122.
That’s right. O’Neal did not die from an overdose of an opioid like fentanyl, which of course has a devastating effect on Colorado’s youth.
Instead, the boy climbed a crane at a construction site in Boulder, fell 44 meters and died.
The autopsy revealed that he was under the influence of psilocin – the psychoactive ingredient in some strains of psychedelic mushrooms – which police said he bought from Harmon at a park in Boulder on June 8. O’Neal had eaten the mushrooms with some friends on the day of his death, June 20.
The same supposed miracle drug, touted by its distributors as a “therapy” for emotional and mental illnesses like PTSD, ended the life of yet another defenseless teenager. And now hallucinogens are more common than ever in our state and in the hands of our children.
We’ve said it all along: Proposition 122 deceived Colorado voters. The measure was backed by big money from other states and sold as a miracle cure for mental health problems. Veterans and other sympathetic figures were held up like puppets by the sophisticated campaign to provide testimonials about being treated with hallucinogens.
The therapeutic benefits of hallucinogens are indeed speculative and questionable. A major development this year cast further doubt. A key advisory committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded that the use of the hallucinogen MDMA proposed by pharmaceutical giant Lykos Therapeutics is not an effective PTSD treatment.
A powerful confession that appeared in the New York Times last week – written by a science journalist and former advocate of the use of psychedelics in the treatment of mental illness – makes it clear that the argument for hallucinogens, if there ever was one, is faltering.
Author Caty Enders notes that in the wake of the FDA’s findings, “the journal Psychopharmacology retracted three articles on MDMA research on the grounds of ‘unethical conduct’…”
“The FDA’s recent decision has heightened my concern that Western medicine’s promotion of psychedelics may have given too much hope to the most vulnerable among us while fueling an industry once estimated to be worth over $7 billion by 2029,” Enders writes.
Decriminalization appears to have been nothing more than a self-serving plan by companies like Lykos to build another lucrative recreational drug industry in Colorado alongside the marijuana retail industry.
Hallucinogens are now guaranteed to show up in schoolchildren’s backpacks thanks to lax regulations the state passed this month to implement Proposition 122. The regulations allow the consumption of the “magic mushrooms” in licensed “healing centers” in a variety of forms – whole mushrooms, teas, capsules, tablets and tinctures, as well as chocolate and gummy bears.
Here we go again. Another dangerous substance legalized for adult use will negatively affect our children. When will we learn?
