Activist Amy Miller with the newest initiative of Children’s Health Defense, Reform Pharma, and private citizen Bernadette Pajer explained how a recent bill filed in the Tennessee General Assembly would help determine the link between Big Pharma drugs and mass shooters.
The bill, HB 2933, would require a medical examiner’s office or regional forensic center to test and document current and past use of psychiatric and psychotropic drugs when performing autopsies on deceased individuals who died under “suspicious, unusual, or unnatural circumstances,” including mass shooters.
The legislation is sponsored by State Representative Mary Littleton (R-Dickson). Its companion bill in the Senate, SB 2937, is sponsored by State Senator Rusty Crowe (R-Johnson City).
“This bill is important because we’re taking a look at the psychiatric and psychotropic drugs in violent activities such as mass shootings. What’s happening is the information that’s not being asked with psychiatric drugs or psychotropic drugs is who was on them and what harm is it causing,” Miller said during Wednesday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.
Miller went on to explain how one branch of Big Pharma in particular, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), partners with state agencies and is able to influence decisions in regards to pushing for more access to psychiatric and psychotropic drugs despite no “questions being asked” on the “black box warning” effects the drugs may inflict on individuals.
Pajer (pictured above) added that the Tennessee bill would also mandate the data from the toxicology reports be made public so that lawmakers can write “good policy” and allow families to make “good individual decisions.”
In addition, Pajer said the bill would also help to separate law enforcement from Big Pharma as it conducts investigations into mass shooters or individuals who took psychiatric or psychotropic drugs.
“We cannot have law enforcement pulling in behavioral health vendors, mental health vendors, who are tied to the pharmaceutical industry doing the investigation because they look everywhere except for the elephant in the room. And the elephant in the room is the psychotropic drugs. So this bill helps make sure we get good data so we can write good policy so that this money…actually goes to improve health,” Pajer said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Bernadette Pajer” by Bernadette Pajer.
