Media bias can come in the smallest and most off-hand of quips, comments, and subheadlines. Take the Daily Beast's "Cheat Sheet" item, "Colorado Gunman ID'd as 33-Year-Old," bearing the editorial subheader, "Gun Epidemic."
But in the digest item itself, it becomes clear the deceased shooter may have a history of drug abuse. Here it is excerpted in full (emphasis mine):
The gunman who killed three people in Colorado Springs on Saturday has been identified as 33-year-old Noah Jacob Harpham, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the case. According to witnesses, Harpham had a rifle in one hand and a revolver in the other while he shot and killed a bicyclist. He then walked and fatally shot two women on a porch, after which Harpham engaged in a gun battle with police. The names of the victims have not yet been released.
Harpham appears to have had a blog, where the sole post begins with Harpman saying he is at one of the addresses hit in Saturday's shooting. In the post called "Is my Dad in a Cult? Even Worse, Is It Satanic?!" Harpham rants about Colorado pastor Bill Johnson and his father's relationship to him. The url used for the website appears to be linked to an internet username called Ptwnblzr, who boasted about using "moda/armo and bho (cbd-rich)" twice daily. The acronyms appear to stand for a variety of drugs—the former a combination of stimulants; the latter a marijuana extract.
Recreational use of marijuana, while legal statewide in Colorado, remains a violation of federal law, and, the merits or demerits of liberalizing the nation's drug laws aside, there is no constitutional guarantee of the right to take drugs, unlike a right to keep and bear arms.
