Cannabis is ruining our children

[Dragonfan]

Oct 5 2008 by Matt Aplin, Wales On Sunday

WalesOnline.co.uk

More than one in 10 Welsh 15-year-olds use cannabis, it can be revealed today

The figures – which paint a shocking picture of the state of our nation’s youth – are laid bare in a report compiled by the World Health Organisation.

According to the statistics – about to be published by prestigious journal The Economist – Wales has the third highest rate number of regular young cannabis users in North America and Europe.

The World Health Organisation quizzed more than 200,000 young people in 41 countries and regions across Europe and North America

It showed 11% of 15-year-olds in Wales have used cannabis up to 39 times in the past 12 months.

Only Canada and the United States had a higher rate out of all the countries and regions asked. England, Scotland and Ireland all lagged behind Wales in the cannabis regular use table.

The figures also showed that nearly one in three 15-year-olds in Wales had tried the Class C drug in their lifetime.

Collette White, 51, of St Mellons, Cardiff, knows the impact drugs can have on a loved one’s life. In February 2007, her son, Matthew, 18, was found dead after taking LSD at a birthday party which caused him to hang himself.

Collette believes it was smoking marijuana which sparked the downward spiral of the gifted St Illtyd’s Catholic High School pupil.

She said: “Without a doubt it was the cannabis that started it. It is phenomenally destructive.

“When I was young I knew it was there but we didn’t go looking for it.

“Now it is handed to them on a plate – in schools and in their social circle. It’s not only the drug but the people who they get involved with. You become pressurised into things without even knowing it.

“Some youngsters think they are indestructible but they are not.

“In 18 months Matthew turned from someone who was a really active individual into someone who didn’t really want to do anything.”

Dr Stanley Zammit, a clinical lecturer in the psychology of medicine at Cardiff University said the statistics are a damning verdict on how common cannabis is in Welsh society.

Earlier this year, he took part in research by Cardiff University that suggests smoking the drug can increase the risk of psychotic illness by 40%.

He said: “The study that has looked at the risk of psychosis suggests that people who use cannabis regularly, increases the risk two or three fold of developing a psychotic illness later in their lives.

“People do need to be aware of the long-term impacts.

“The more people use it the more wary they should be.

“Sometimes people can suffer from psychotic symptoms immediately after smoking cannabis like mild hallucinations.

“The people who suffer these symptoms are most at risk of developing problems in the future in my opinion.

“It’s a difficult area to study because you can’t decide whether it’s the cannabis risk or because of other choices in that person’s lifestyle or personality.

“Cannabis use has increased so much over the last 10 or 20 years. It’s almost abnormal not to use it these days.”

Chris Bryant, MP for the Rhondda, said that he was wary about the effects of cannabis on youngsters and would like to see it reclassified.

The Labour MP did not vote for it to be declassified to Class C in 2004.

He said: “I am worried about these figures because one of the biggest worries about cannabis is that it’s very unpredictable.

“It can help some people who are ill but for others it can make them sick.

“The biggest danger is psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. It makes any mental health problems much worse in young people.

“The stuff people are smoking is completely different to the stuff middle-class hippies were smoking in the 1960’s because it’s much stronger.

“People are playing with their own mental health without knowing the consequences.”

Don Barnard, of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance, said the only way to stop youngsters smoking cannabis at such a young age was to legalise cannabis and to control it.

He said: “Personally, I’m not concerned about these figures as long as these youngsters know what they are doing.

“What really matters is that if one in every 10 15-year-old is smoking cannabis then the government strategy is failing.

“Obviously, our organisation would like to see cannabis legalised and then maybe these youngsters will find it harder to get hold of it when it is controlled.”

 

What bothers me the most about THIS article is the atypical rolling out of the usual propaganda . . . s'pose it ain't gonna go away in a hurry huh?

 

Wonder how these 'journalists' [to use the term disparagingly] sleep at night knowing they're peddling lies in the guise of quoted statistics [we all know 90% of statistics are made up, don't we?] and regurgitated clap-trap!

[Al Fish]

The stories haven't changed in years because the audience hasn't changed. Same shit – different arseholes! Our job should be to flood the media with 'Marijuana Madness' horror stories: adolescents smoking joints and then conducting appendectomies on each other; marijuana addicted, pregnant old age pensioners; seminarians who take a puff and instantly become irrational, glassy-eyed serial killers, pre-school kids whoring themselves for joints; etc; etc.

'Marijuana Madness' did more for dope than all of the other efforts. Give the plebs what they want: paranoid, irrational, contradictory shit. Its working well for the War on Terrorism, global warming, the churches, politicians and the media! Hillsong church will provide the funding! I'm working on a touching story for the 'Washington Post' (the WMD newspaper) where a crippled five year old girl smelt some wafting second-hand cannabis smoke then joined Al-Qa'ida to drive suicide missions against the Coalition of the Killing. '60 Minutes' says that all they need is a grainy film of her suicide statement and they'll do the rest!

[Dragonfan]

I'm working on a touching story for the 'Washington Post' (the WMD newspaper) where a crippled five year old girl smelt some wafting second-hand cannabis smoke then joined Al-Qa'ida to drive suicide missions against the Coalition of the Killing. '60 Minutes' says that all they need is a grainy film of her suicide statement and they'll do the rest!

Okies, you win the Journalist of the Year Award! Go for it!!

[Wrangler556]

So what did we learn?

 

Marijuana effects some people negatively... check

 

A percentage of kids worldwide use MJ at a young age... check

 

Marijuana is usually the stepping stone to harder drugs... check

 

What a load of crap. No matter what people attempt to do, a percentage of kids are always going to be taking drugs at a young age, if marijuana was completely unavailable, it would just be something else in its place. And if so many kids in the UK are taking some kind of drug early on, maybe they should look at better educating them on drug use, or maybe actually research why so many kids are turning to drugs.

 

When I see generic story about some kid who OD'd on some hard drug, and the parents say " I believe it was cannabis that started it all" - all I can think is, that kid was going down that path no matter what, it wasn't the MJ that did it, it was the kids upbringing, lifestyle, unadressed emotional issues, social network, poor parenting , whatever etc.......

 

People/kids are always going to experiment with things including drugs, its human nature. In the case of kids, all you can really do is better educate them on drug use, and get parents to keep a closer eye on them, but thats still no guarantee.

 

Its much easier for parents to look at an article like that and think "cannabis is ruining my child's life" rather than thinking they have bad parenting skills or theres something wrong in the kid's life that turns them to drugs. The media plays on that to drum up support for anti drug issues...

 

Thats my hungover rant for today.

 

Wrangler.

[Dragonfan]

Its much easier for parents to look at an article like that and think "cannabis is ruining my child's life" rather than thinking they have bad parenting skills or theres something wrong in the kid's life that turns them to drugs. The media plays on that to drum up support for anti drug issues...

Wrangler.

People, least of all parents, don't want to take responsibility for THEIR actions or those of their children, much easier to blame a 'drug' that's so widely pooh-poohed in the mainstream media, it's a good cop-out - and has worked for years thanks to 'reefer madness'!