Posted on 03/05/2005 6:24:32 PM PST by familyop
"Imagine taking every single emotion, memory, experience, tablet all into one … and those fighting each other to see who is the victor." - Danny, 22.
"It just f… with your head. I had to sleep with a knife under my bed 'cos I used to think people were going to come in and bash me during the night or something. Just for me mull or something, yeah." - Danni, 17.
A whole generation of Australians has grown up believing that smoking pot is a harmless pastime.
They need to think again. The view of cannabis as a benign drug is under challenge – not from conservative family or religious groups but from the science and medical community.
Clinicians now believe that modern strains of super-strength cannabis are increasingly triggering psychoses, depression and anxiety disorders in teenagers.
Many young people begin smoking cannabis before they have even hit their teens – and experts are warning that the younger the smoker, the greater the risk of mental illness.
About half the young people who seek help for psychosIs have a cannabis problem. According to doctors the proportion of cannabis users among these young patients has doubled in 20 years.
For some teenagers there is no second chance. Ten to 15 per cent of young people with serious mental illnesses commit suicide or die from other causes within a few years of diagnosis.
Even for those who do recover, only half return to meaningful work or study.
Q: "And Jake how old were you when you started smoking?" A: "Twelve." Q: "And when did it become a problem for you, how old were you?" A: "About 14 I started smoking regularly." – Jake, 18.
Q: "Where would you be if you never smoked pot?" A: "Still be at school. I ... didn’t even pass year eight." – Sam, 16.
So what accounts for this new concern about cannabis and youth psychoses?
Recent research shows that the human brain does not fully develop until a person reaches their twenties. Teenage brains, therefore, are more vulnerable than adults to cannabis.
Modern technology multiplies the dangers. Hydroponically grown, genetically modified varieties of marijuana plants are believed to contain much greater concentrations of the chemical THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol. Cannabis is cheap, too, making it more easily available to today’s teenagers than it was for their parents’ generation.
In this wake-up call to a disturbing new trend, young cannabis users in treatment for psychoses speak openly about their experiences to reporter Janine Cohen, while doctors and drug specialists explain what the new research means for young people’s mental health.
"Messing With Heads" will be screened on ABC TV’s Four Corners at 8.30 pm on Monday 7 March.
A repeat will be aired at 11 pm Wednesday 9 March February.
Not only that but it will make white women want to sleep with black men.
Nooooooooooo....not our beloved marijuana!!!!
Okay, fair enough. Now, let's add binge drinking including beer, wine, wine-coolers, vodka, etc. Sorry, while weed may be bad, I think that it's time to do some serious study about alcohol. The alcohol industry (and that means beer, too, Mr. Busch) doesn't want the competition. If we had a bunch of scantily-clad model types lighting up during spring break like the beer commercials, it would be just fine. You want an analogy? Okay, here it is, all you computer-savvy geeks: Alcohol is like Microsoft and Weed is Open Source, as in Linux. If you're going to hammer on Marijuana, folks, you'd better be fair about it and tackle that demon alcohol while you're at it. What? Dead silence? Paraphrasing the one poster who said something along the lines of "...a beer or two after work is not drug abuse, sorry." Sure, keep telling yourself that, and while you're at it, convince yourself that when you're fifteen year old knocks back a six pack of brewskies, that there's no kind of effect on his/her developing brain.
PCP maybe.
Heaven forbid anyone realizes the root cause: the fact that these kids spend every hour of the day stoned.
Now imagine the bodily damage if they spent the whole day drunk, high on coke, or eating for that matter.
Uhhh...you been smokin' some yourself, eh? Your paragraph was incoherent, even though you appear to have been quite satisfied with it...
PCP maybe.
or,
Wet
A: Why, I'd probably have found a way to make inkjet cartridges $100 apiece and make people glad to pay it. However under the circumstances I've only stayed at home and played with the dogs and fed the birds and, you know, just hung out. I even missed out on the Vioxx lawsuits. You snooze, you lose.
What part(s) didn't you understand? I'll be glad to go over them in simpler, more direct terms if that will help.
This isn't reasearch. They just asked the mentally ill if they smoked marijuana. Coincidence is not causality.
hehe! don't bother.
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