Caffeine Kills

The Inquirer business section gets into the Navy Yard shooting today with an article about workplace shooting trends.

The Philadelphia metro area had 42 (!) such shooting in 1993, compared to only 15 last year. (The lowest total between those years was nine, in 2002.) A bunch of experts talk about ways to stop workplace shootings, etc., etc. Here’s the money line:

Workplace homicides rise and fall with demographics, the economy and the popularity of certain drugs. McGoey said there were spikes in workplace homicides in the early 1980s and the early 1990s. As for now, “we are definitely a more tightly woven society. We are so stoked on caffeine,” he said.

Yeah, that makes sense. The big drug in the early 1980s and 90s was killyourcoworkersajuana.

Violence on the job [Inquirer]