4 Corners Mon 8.30

[quizywig]

Just thought Id let people know about a 4 Corners special on Monday night 8.30 ABC, looks like more bad publicity about mental ilness and pot

[Luke Skywalker]

Yeah, read this.... Pretty much a "don't smoke if you're young or you'll go crazy." No direct evidence of this, no cause and effect, no detailed figures, no actual argument against prohibition!....

 

I'm disappointed by four corners, hopefully they'll be showing both sides, and will be interviewing other viewpoints. If not, we should be swamping their forum about it on monday.

 

But yeah, read this...

 

 

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

 

FOUR CORNERS

Investigative TV journalism at its best. (except when they ignore the facts like this...  :thumbdown - LS)

 

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Interview

Interview - Dr Andrew Campbell

Read reporter Janine Cohen's interview with Sydney pschiatrist, Dr Andrew Campbell.

 

Date: 02/03/2005

 

Q. How has the landscape changed in the 30 years since you’ve been practicing psychiatry?

 

R. Well 30 years ago when I started in psychiatry schizophrenia was a major issue. We were just learning how to treat people in the community. The major drug issues around were alcohol. A few people were getting into trouble with cannabis and we didn’t have speed and cocaine. What I’m seeing now is a vastly greater number of young people smoking cannabis and you know in the clinical work – both in the acute services and in long term community management nearly 70 per cent of the problems are related to cannabis abuse, now either acute toxicity or the long term effects.

 

Q. When you say 70 per cent of the problems?

 

R. Well I mainly see people who aren’t getting better or in a very acute phase and not handling things, and that’s a skewed population. I’m not seeing people who are doing well on treatment or who are not presenting with major problems into psychiatric services.

 

Q. In what capacity are you seeing those people?

 

R. Well I’m now part semi-retired. I do locum work in various hospitals around New South Wales when someone’s on leave etc. So I have a very varied use and rather than just being in one area and dealing with the people in that area, I see problems across the whole state. I also review involuntary care, orders with the mental health review tribunal and that, so I get to see what sort of problems are occurring and how we’re managing people throughout the state.

 

Q. Is there one constant problem?

 

R. Well the big problem is, that’s coming out of it is – if you ask what was happening when you first got into trouble, people would’ve said they were smoking cannabis on a daily basis. If you ask how long they were smoking it, they will tell you, “Well look I started when I was 15 or 16 and I’m smoking for 4 or 5 years”, and then these problems started. About half of these people will then say, “I stopped”, and a lot of these people are no longer using cannabis because they recognize, well they attribute it to the problem that for them was only a problem in that the psychiatrist treating them tended to say, “No it wasn’t use of the drug”, or, “This is schizophrenia, this is not a cannabis-induced problem”, so they tend to be in disagreement with the people that are trying to treat them. I guess less than half of the people I see still use cannabis and they’re having a much more problematic course. They’re really having trouble surviving. They wind up, I see them – see people typically in their mid-30’s and they’ve had a ten year history of bouncing in and out of the psychiatric hospitals and living alone – they’ve got no job and few friends – they’re very disabled by the cannabis use and the psychotic experience.

 

Q. Why was cannabis regarded in the 70s as a harmless drug?

 

R. Cannabis has always had the effect of making people feel good and relaxed, and I guess people like to think that something that felt that good wouldn’t cause any problems, and a lot of people can smoke with impunity and go to work the next day and function normally, but it’s emerging that it is highly addictive. There’s a withdrawal stage and it seems that it does lead people to take risky behavior .

 

Q. Just describe to me what the 70s was like?

 

R. The drug came on the scene with a whole lot of other social values at the time. It was associated with freedom, independence, a youthful culture. It was emerging out of a very conservative 60s, so there was a lot of, as I see it, hope and positive regard for the future. The drug made people – when you take it, it feels good. People feel great and powerful. They think they’re getting brilliant ideas, and people feel relaxed and calm, and it certainly probably did enhance a lot of the – or changed people’s musical taste and appreciations, because it does change the way the brain focuses, so that the music of the 70s was really cannabis music and a lot of people enjoyed that.

 

Q. Why was it seen as being fairly harmless and why do people of that generation still have that view?

 

R. I guess one of the big changes we’re seeing from now – from the 70s until now is that it was a drug that you took at university, it was 18, 19, 20 plus and the – it was a drug used on weekends, not all the time. It made certain events very memorable and other things blotted out. It perhaps helped people cope with some of the threats and problems of the era – they were just getting over nuclear weapons threats and cold war and all the rest of it – you could feel safely cocooned. It’s very hard to generalize why, but it certainly – the main thing is that it makes people feel good. The second thing is that the cannabis in that time was not nearly as potent in the sense that it was mainly sold as leaf. The doses that people were getting weren’t nearly as strong, although some people knew of much more powerful strains. I think a lot of the reputation came about drugs that most people never actually tried – they just tried some leaf, said it didn’t do much for me, it’s harmless, or it had no effect. People have since learned how to make a much more potent product. It’s now the biggest cash crop in the world, so people spend a lot more in dollar terms than on wheat or cotton or – and it’s relatively cheap - $25 will get you a couple of days of really feeling good, and the people I see that get into trouble with it can smoke it for years without getting obvious problems. They’re feeling good. Sure, their life may be getting a bit more chaotic. They might have more difficulty going to work. They mightn’t remember things as well as they did, but they’re getting by and they are still pouring money into this cash crop. So – and the older generations were still able to smoke it and not apparently get into major problems.

 

Q. What’s changed today?

 

R. Well I think the – certainly the drug is more concentrated because the plant now is a much smaller plant. When you buy cannabis your $25 just buys you pure seeds, which is where this poison resides, and we’re also seeing more and more young people with that cash being able to use it. We’re also … seeing families supplying dope to 12 and 13 year olds. So it’s a big social change and who’s exposed to cannabis.

 

Q. So it’s no longer university students?

 

R. Well the youngest I’ve seen was ten, but quite commonly 12, 13, probably starts to peak about 15, 16 where about at least probably 15, 20 per cent of young people are using at least regularly, if not daily.

 

Q. How is this regular use of cannabis among adolescents played out in the world of psychiatry?

 

R. People using cannabis only really hit the psychiatric scene when they’ve developed an acute psychotic episode or a sudden onset of depression or mood disorder. It may also be the parents might get concerned that with kids dropping out from school, it’s poor performance at school and typically someone who started at 16 will hit the wall at 17 with their academic studies, so they’ll drop out mid-HSC. Parents might get concerned and take their young, usually son to a GP, but that’s not commonly what I see. Those kids rarely get to see a psychiatrist at that point. They’ll be told to stop and they’ll say, “Yes I will”, and not do it and continue smoking. The user doesn’t get into psychiatric assessment and treatment until something horrible’s happened, like a psychosis.

 

Q. Are there more young people with psychotic illnesses today?

 

R. Well that is a very important question and we have no data unfortunately. There are reports coming through now from various countries that yes, the rate of psychosis is increasing, particularly in young men but we’re not in a position to count that. It’s actually very difficult to nominate what is a psychosis anyway. People present initially with a few unreal experiences and it gets better – is that a psychosis? In order to qualify as having a schizophrenia, say, people have to have persistent symptoms for at least six months, so it’s very hard to tag when someone’s crossed that threshold. What we’re seeing in people who have smoked cannabis for years without showing any signs of psychosis, they might have impaired memory and other problems, but they’re not psychotic, and not obviously sensitive to psychosis because they’re able to smoke huge amounts of cannabis. Then suddenly they hit the wall, and at that point it’s a real crisis. I think we’re seeing a lot more young people doing that – getting into that situation. There is now evidence from overseas, particularly in Holland, that the odds of getting a psychosis is doubled – roughly doubled if people are using long term cannabis.

 

Q. But that’s in people that are considered to be vulnerable, isn’t it?

 

R. Well yes this is the other big point of debate, and I think – I feel very strongly about this because I think psychiatry runs the risk of – no we’ll do that again. The big point of debate is whether this cannabis is uncovering a psychosis that was going to happen anyway, or whether it’s causing psychosis in someone who wasn’t going to develop that problem at all.

 

Q. And what’s your view?

 

R. My view is that it is bringing on new cases of psychosis. I see a lot of people with long standing psychosis and if I see ten people in a day, seven of them will have been using cannabis on a daily basis at the first time of onset of psychosis. They will have been typically using that for three or four years. Another one in ten will have been using occasional cannabis. But the others will have a family history of psychosis or other causes for psychosis and not have ever used cannabis. It’s most uncommon actually now to see someone just get schizophrenia without having cannabis associated with it. We shouldn’t be seeing that. If cannabis is having no effect, we should be seeing about ten or 15 per cent of people with psychotic illnesses having used heavy doses of cannabis.

 

Q. What do you see?

 

R. I’m seeing a high association between cannabis and psychosis. About seven out of ten young men when they first develop their psychosis, are using cannabis on a daily basis and have been doing so for years. I’m seeing another one in ten who might’ve been using cannabis occasionally and are perhaps sensitive to it. The other two people that day might have had never used cannabis but have some other identifiable reason for developing a psychosis.

 

Q. So cannabis can cause a psychosis in someone who otherwise wouldn’t get it?

 

R. Well I think we’re now seeing people who are in that situation. We shouldn’t – I shouldn’t be seeing seven out of ten people developing – who develop a long standing psychosis having used cannabis at the onset of the illness. The people I see who are using cannabis don’t usually have a family history. There aren’t any of the other predisposing factors that might be associated with a psychosis. They were often doing very well at school and socially – bright young men and – who then use cannabis very heavily for quite some time.

 

Q. Now the experts say that if cannabis was inducing psychosis, we would see an increasing amount of psychosis with the intake of cannabis in the community, but the experts say we’re not seeing that.

 

R. Yeah and I’m well aware of that argument and that comforts a lot of people. But I don’t think we’re counting. Where people are counting the evidence is now coming out that there is an increasing risk of psychosis in increasing rates – particularly in young men. That’s coming out of the Netherlands, it’s coming out of Italy, there’s some reports I’ve heard about anecdotally from America which is the same problem.

 

Q. A study in the US in fact has found that adolescents smoking cannabis is a relatively new phenomenon and what the study says is we really won’t see the effects of that play out for another ten years. Do you think that could be the same case in Australia?

 

R. Undoubtedly. Yes – the big change is that younger people are using cannabis. We have got good epidemiological data it’s an urban phenomenon.

 

Q. What is an urban phenomenon?

 

R. The studies overseas and in Australia indicate that there’s high rates of psychosis in urban versus rural communities but that is probably also changing too. My own experience, and I see people with psychosis all around New South Wales. There are now very high rates of problematic cannabis use and psychosis in some rural communities, and it’s particularly a problem in the indigenous communities.

 

Q. Could it be just a case of those people with psychosis are self-medicating?

 

R. All current studies that are coming out disprove that, that people don’t use cannabis to self medicate. In fact they usually find it makes things worse and they try and avoid it if they’re thinking about it at all.

 

Q. Is it your view that the cannabis in fact could be inducing the psychosis?

 

R. Yes. I think it’s – clinically I can’t prove it because ... you can’t dissemble all the different factors. But my impression is that a lot of people out there who’ve developed a psychosis who wouldn’t have otherwise developed psychosis, and that’s down to smoking daily cannabis in their teenage years.

 

Q. What damage can you do to the teenage brain by smoking cannabis?

 

R. The teenager’s really shifting from child brain into adult brain and there’s a very big difference with the way our brain is wired up. You only have to look at the difference between the way kids behave and the way adults behave to see that there’s a difference in our behaviors as a result. But that’s a transition – it involves pruning and refining of circuitry, and I believe that having a daily dose of a powerful drug that effects chemicals that orient our brain, changes the way the brain develops, and so we see brain change.

 

Q. The Dutch study just says, “Regular use” – even twice a week can effect the brain.

 

R. Yeah, well the ones I’m seeing – the kids that I see get into trouble are using it on a daily basis. We haven’t even started studying that group yet. All these studies are looking at natural populations – they’re only ten per cent of kids use it on a daily basis, so it’s going to take us quite a while to find out what happens to those kids.

 

Q. Can you just describe to me the difference between hydroponics and bush weed?

 

R. The original cannabis plant is about six feet tall, has a few buds where the heads are in that – the seed and a lot of poison around which protects it. What people have developed is a variety that only grows about two or three feet high, is mainly heads and very little leaf ... when you buy $25 worth of cannabis these days, you’re mainly getting heads. You don’t get the leaf, which is much lower in concentrations of cannabis.

 

Q. So in fact if children or young people are smoking heads, they’re smoking a much more powerful ...

 

R. ... They’re getting a higher dose of drug. The same – one plant might produce the same amount of drug but if you get it – much more concentrated in the package. It’s like high alcohol beer.

 

Q. For young teenagers, what are the social consequences of a cannabis addiction?

 

R. A big important thing is they’re poorer. They’re spending a lot of money on it. It’s going to effect their social and functioning – their behavior. What they experience is they feel relaxed and good. What we – what other people see - is that they’re no longer as sociable. They’re not able to remember how to do their jobs. They’re not turning up to work and over a period of years it – this becomes very disowning cause you miss out on your whole teenage experience. A few will go on to experience psychosis. What’s now coming out of various studies, here, overseas particularly in my own experience is the earlier people start smoking cannabis, the earlier they develop a psychosis.

 

Q. What percentage of Australians get psychosis?

 

R. That – the standard rate for the chances of someone developing a psychosis about less than one per cent. It’s about less, it’s about a third of one per cent - point 0-3 ... and that mainly happens in men in their teenage and early adolescent period – in the early adolescent period. In fact one can almost see psychosis and schizophrenia as a problem of transition from childhood to adult life in – for men. But women are much less likely to develop psychosis in their adolescence or early adult life.

 

A. What’s the impact of other drugs?

 

R. About less than half of the people I see were using other drugs – most will say it was the cannabis that did it. About probably a third might’ve used amphetamines particularly, and that will trigger psychosis very readily – causes loss of sleep and then the psychosis goes within a few days. Ecstasy can bring on mood disorders and some other drugs that are known to cause psychotic experiences like LSD will interact and make a situation worse. But it’s usually the cannabis comes first and seems to be the major drug that’s causing the problem.

 

Q. If someone has had a first psychotic episode and continues to smoke cannabis, what does that do to their chances of recovery?

 

R. Oh I think we’ve had strong evidence for many years that cannabis always makes it more difficult to cope with schizophrenia.

 

Q. If a young teenager who has had a first major psychotic episode and continues to smoke cannabis, what will that do to their relapse and recovery rate?

 

R. Well certainly continued smoking cannabis after having a psychotic episode makes it very difficult to manage. They’re much more vulnerable to further episodes. There is actually a resistance to the medication – basically it’s a push-pull thing. We think that a lot of these psychoses are related to two chemicals in the brain – dopamine and adrenaline, and cannabis is stimulating dopamine, and we’re giving drugs to decrease dopamine so that there’s a battle and it’s harder to medicate people, it’s harder to know what drugs and medications to give and what doses should be given. My experience is a lot of these people wind up on depo long standing injections and at higher doses than they need because they’re continuing to use cannabis. But they may be discontinuing to use it because it’s the only thing that’s making them feel good at that stage. But that’s not just down to the medication as well because their whole life’s changed. They become very isolated, they’re very frustrated, unfulfilled people.

 

Q. What would your words of warning be to a young person who has been psychotic and continues to use cannabis?

 

R. Don’t. People somehow need to be able to learn how to manage their psychosis without trying to go back to drugs that might’ve precipitated it. There are a few people that develop psychosis then start using cannabis and again – it’s gonna make it more difficult for them to find a dose that works for them, to do all the other things they need to do to get back on track. You can’t study if you’re using cannabis. You can’t pass exams. You can’t maintain friendships, so all the things that would be difficult anyway are made – are compounded by continued cannabis use.

 

Q. Critics say if cannabis was having an impact they would seen an increase in illnesses like schizophrenia, with the increased consumption of cannabis.

 

R. The … standard argument against cannabis being a cause of schizophrenia is that – the data says that we’re not seeing any increase in the rates of psychosis. My concern about that is we’re not really counting very well. It’s actually a very difficult figure to obtain. It’s usually ten years out of date, and where we are starting to get reliable figures, we’re all asked to report an increased rates of psychosis, particularly in young men. So that’s coming out Italy, it’s coming out of England – so that it, it’s just something – it’s a myth, if you like, that because we don’t really know what is happening to those figures.

 

Q. Can you describe how damaging a major psychotic episode is on a young person?

 

R. It’s very traumatic to both the person experiencing the psychosis and their families and carers and loved ones. People lose confidence in their own ability of the brain to tell them what’s going on, they are having to take medication that often slows them down and makes them sluggish, all hopes that people had and hopes that family had are seen as dashed and we have to do a lot of work to try and build up confidence again. Usually the first reaction is for people to gather round and be supportive, but if the psychosis persists then people tend to lose their friends and – although my experience is the family’s never give up and they’re always hanging in there. But I see some very exhausted families after often 20 years of ongoing psychotic illness and particularly where ongoing cannabis use is a problem. It’s often also a problem that creeps up on families and I don’t think families are well guided in how to manage it. I recently saw someone who’s basically able to afford regular ongoing cannabis use because they’re not paying rent. I had another recent experience with a mother and son where the son was complaining that mother treated him like a 14 year old and mother was feeling very guilty about that, and was apologizing, saying, “Yes I do treat you like a 14 year old”. It was only when we asked how old the son acted, we – everyone agreed he acted like a 14 year old. He was 40 and his mother was 65 and they’d been doing that over and over again with no real resolution of the problems.

 

A. What’s the pattern of cannabis use?

 

R. Well the problem we’re seeing now is that a lot of younger people are using cannabis much more regularly and using more potent cannabis and that’s disabling for many of them, disabling their lives, and they’re not really aware of it because the drug makes you feel good.

 

Q. How hard is it to withdraw from cannabis addiction?

 

R. Very difficult. It’s only just been recognized in the last 12 months, two years that now people are describing. I’ve seen clinically cases where people stop using cannabis, they feel lethargic, not able to get their thoughts together, they’re irritable at the kids, they’re not remembering things, they’re not focused and they feel often get quite serious suicidal and/or homicidal ideas. They’re very emotionally unstable, and this can last for months. It certainly – the descriptions of - when you look for the symptoms, there doesn’t seem to be any end point to it. People do gradually get better, but it’s at least four to six weeks.

 

Q. How is the mental health of Australia’s young people declining and what role has cannabis played?

 

R. I think cannabis is causing a major disruption for a large, a group of people who use it regularly. I can’t see how anyone can go to school and study on using daily cannabis. You can’t maintain friendships, you don’t get jobs, you drop out, and in the words of the song – your life passes by, and it’s a critical time. People are failing to learn how to be adults.

 

Q. But why can some people smoke cannabis all their life and be okay and someone else can’t?

 

R. Well I’m obviously very concerned about cannabis, but I’ve yet to see someone who started smoking after the age of 21 who got into these sorts of problems. Other problems can emerge – they can get brief psychoses, but they always get better, so it’s a problem for young people. We’re probably going to see increasingly children being born into a cannabis withdrawal state though, and it may be in the future we will pick up, as we have with alcohol – post cannabis effects in newborn babies. The youngest I’ve seen people smoking cannabis is about ten and I think it’s a problem all the way up to 21. I see people that start at 18 who don’t develop a psychosis till they’re 25 or 26, so the danger period hasn’t passed and the basic message is, if you’re an adolescent, don’t smoke cannabis.

 

Q. What do you think we’ll see in terms of the psychiatric landscape in Australia in ten years time?

 

R. I think we’re going to see the legacy of a whole lot of disabled young people entering adult life with psychotic disorders and/or long-term motivational and organizational problems. They’re going to be much more difficult for them to find work and it’s going to create a whole range of disabilities. Unfortunately it’s going to get diagnosed in a very – wider, different widely different array of problems until we identify what the effects of drugs were, and unfortunately it’s going to turn out that cannabis is one of the major drugs contributing to this. There will be others. I think we’ll have a huge problem with ecstasy and unstable moods in adults – that’s another whole area that’s developing. We’re seeing – and we’ve always known amphetamines were a problem and they stop people sleeping and induce within a week, schizophrenic-like symptoms – psychotic-like symptoms, which used to get better. Now the kids that are using ecstasy don’t seem to get better if the brain is being affected by cannabis. I think there’s an increased rate of psychosis and I think we’re seeing that in the increased utilization of the acute beds in the acute psychiatric services. Our psychiatric services were designed for a range of psychosis that we knew of ten years ago. They’re now no longer coping. There’s no hard data in New South Wales because we haven’t actually done any studies as to what that is about, but all my colleagues will say put it down – it’s the drugs, and the two important drugs are cannabis and the amphetamine, and the amphetamine are precipitating acute range reactions of the – very disabled and take a long while to treat – particularly if they’re associated with cannabis.

 

Q. So why is it that cannabis is more of a concern than amphetamines when it comes to psychosis in young people?

 

R. Well I think that cannabis is actually changing the way the brain is wired, and it can do that – it sneaks up on people. People can smoke it for years and all the time this steady brain change going on, and then they don’t cope – people don’t develop into adults properly – or if they do it takes them a lot longer. Amphetamines just speed things up, but you can dampen it down with chemicals to reverse that and get them back to normal. However if it’s on the basis of a cannabis – steady cannabis use, the brain doesn’t seem to cope with that speed up as well, and people aren’t getting better as quickly, if at all. Someone might have daily cannabis for five years, apart from dropping out and not functioning well at school, nobody’s noticing anything, and then bang – one dose of amphetamine and they’ve got – hearing voices and think they’re God ... it might take four weeks to calm them down enough just to get them out of the acute ward and they’re still not really right after that.

 

Q. In a nutshell, what’s your message to young people?

 

R. Don’t use cannabis. Certainly if you’re young - under 21 - I’m not recommending it for the over 21s, but it’s much more of an insidious poison for the under 21s. It creeps up on people. It changes the way they’re functioning. They don’t even know it’s happening until it’s too late. Amphetamines are quite different.

 

 

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Wankers.

 

*adjusts lightsaber menacingly*

[LoveMeBucket]

what a load of crap, esp the bit about pot doin more harm than amphetamines :thumbdown

[SoDrysBro]

haha this guy is a clown, is he referring to resin glands as poison.....

[hark]

"Q. What’s changed today?

 

R. Well I think the – certainly the drug is more concentrated because the plant now is a much smaller plant. When you buy cannabis your $25 just buys you pure seeds, which is where this poison resides... "

 

what a fool! since when is it a much smaller plant? mine are huge! and pure seeds? what is this guy on about??? AHHH this is so frustrating :thumbdown

[Luke Skywalker]

Indeed, ridiculous isn't it...

 

How can you say that you know that something is harming people when you have no evidence, (he admits he's not looking at the population at large, only patients with severe psychosis) and you don't even know wtf you're talking about?

 

West Australian just had a stupid article in it quoting him too, here it is...

 

Had to type this out manually though, as they only allow some articles to be shown free on the thewest.com.au. Stupid system...

 

Anyway...

 

Cannabis linked to psychosis

AAP

Melbourne

Cannabis is not the harmless drug many people believe it to be, with new evidence showing today's genetically engineered crops are more potent and may trigger psychotic illnesses, Australian Scientists say.

 

One in five Australian teenagers smokes cannabis every week and 10 percent become addicted.

 

Psychologists, bioscientists and counsellors are seeing more young australians developing psychoses, depression and anxiety disorders through cannabis use, the ABC's Four Corners program has been told.

 

Professor VAughan Carr, scientific director of the Neuroscience Insititute, said he believed there were similarites between the effects of cannabis on the brain and schizophrenia.

 

"I think the odds are better than 50-50 that cannabis use in sufficient quantities beginning early enough in life may produce some cases of schizophrenia in people who otherwise would not have developed it," he told Four Corners, which airs tonight.

 

"But that's my gut feeling. Roughly one in five adolescents overall are cannabis users in reasonable quantities. I woulkd ahve to say that all of them are at risk, but the earlier the onset of cannabis use and the greater the frequency of use, the higher the risk."

 

Sydney psychologist Andrew Campbell said there was debate about whether cannabis uncovered an existing psychosis, or caused it.

 

"My view is that it is bringing on the psychosis," he said.

 

I see a lot of people with long-standing psychosis and if I see 10 people in a day, seven of them will have used cannabis on a daily basis at the first time of the psychosis."

 

He was supported by Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre director, Professor Pat McGorry, who said at least 70 percent of young poeple who attended the centre had used cannabis.

 

The experts also say new hydroponically grown cops have been engineered into a much more toxic drug than 30 years ago. Dr Campbell said a new variety grew only about a metre high with little leaf and a lot of heads.

 

As a result, the main chemical, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, was much more concentrated.

 

"So when you buy $25 worth of cannabis these days you're mainly getting heads. You don't get the leaf which is much lower in concentration of cannabis," Dr Campbell said.

 

Because research has shown the brain is not fully wired until the early to mid-20's, teenage users are most at risk of developing mental illness.

Copyright The West Australian, March 7, 2005

[F420]

People not knowing what the fuck they are talking about is more harmful than anything else.

 

How can you say that you know that something is harming people when you have no evidence, (he admits he's not looking at the population at large, only patients with severe psychosis) and you don't even know wtf you're talking about?

 

I reakon, bunch of idiots.

Thats like taking speed camera pictures only of mazdas and saying that only mazda drivers speed.

 

I wish these sort of people would shut their mouths at least until they know what they are talking about.

 

cannabis does not make anyone psycho, it just brings it out of that person already has it.

[garywmeyerhoff]

Media Alert

 

8th March 2005

 

The ABC: Messing with our heads!

 

Members of the Darwin-based drug law-reform organisation NAP, the Network Against Prohibition, will celebrate the network’s third birthday this Saturday at their 21st Community Smoke-in for human rights, a protest against the US led war on drugs.

 

The event comes hot on the heels of an ABC television documentary, labelled as blatant anti-cannabis propaganda by drug law-reform campaigners in Darwin.

 

NAP spokesperson Gary Meyerhoff said “Working for the ABC is a lot like smoking dope.”

 

“The harder you suck, the higher you get.”

 

In what the ABC’s 4 Corners program called “a wake-up call to a disturbing new trend,” reporter Janine Cohen interviewed doctors and so-called ‘drug specialists’, all with a vested interest in the Cannabis debate.

 

The doctors, representing big pharmaceutical companies, are determined to medicate another generation of young Australians, while the ‘drug specialists’ are keen to tap State and Federal funding dollars for treatment of ‘cannabis disorders’.

 

The smoke-in, the first for 2005, kicks off at 12 noon in Darwin’s Raintree Park and will be a perfect opportunity for the community to express their outrage at this shocking display of propaganda by the ABC.

 

For more information call NAP on 8942 0570, mobile 0415 16 2525 or checkout our website http://www.napnt.org.

 

The smoke-in poster can be downloaded from:

http://www.napnt.org/downloads/21smoke-in.pdf

 

A summary of the 4 Corners report can be viewed at:

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2005/s1315274.htm

 

[quizywig]

well that was some of the most offenceive crap I've watched in a while, looks like there trying to make pot responsible for the ills of the younger generation, suicide and mental problems have been rising among the youth for a long time, so lets blame the weed, not society parents or the massive stress kids are under today.

I think the only fact that came out of the show was that pot costs a lot of money (if you cant or dont grow)

[Luke Skywalker]

And in the end, it was more an argument AGAINST prohibition, as it's under that system of making MJ illegal which has caused most of these problems, if they exist.

 

Wankers.

 

Keep up the good work gary... liked the line about the ABC...

 

Was really disappointing to see Four Corners take this road...