FATHER TELLS OF SON'S CANNABIS NIGHTMARE

A father yesterday told a select committee inquiry into the mental health
effects of cannabis how he had to install a burglar alarm at his home to
keep out his own cannabis-dependent son.

The Christchurch man told Parliament's health select committee how his son
began smoking cannabis at about the age of 10.

The previously well-behaved boy, from "a normal middle-class family", who
had represented his province in junior rugby league, started stealing,
missing school, fighting, and lying, his father said.

His son assaulted a fellow student, breaking his cheekbone and jaw, and was
expelled from a series of schools, before quitting school at 14.

The parents sent the boy to a fisheries course in Oamaru, but within a week
were called to collect him because he was "wasted" on a mix of cannabis and
the plant datura.

"We put him in the car and put the kiddy locks on the doors. He hallucinated
all the way from Oamaru to Christchurch."

Soon after he was thrown out of home, but returned to burgle his family to
get money to buy cannabis. He also stole his parents' chequebooks and credit
cards. The family installed a burglar alarm to keep him out, his father
said.

His son owed money for cannabis to a gang, who came to his parents' house
demanding that they pay up so they did. Shots had been fired at their house,
the man said.

He showed the committee a thick pile of charge sheets which his son had
amassed through drug-related offending. He said his son moved on from
cannabis to also take heroin, cocaine, LSD and amphetamines.

His son ended up sleeping rough in a Christchurch park before he would even
admit he had a drug problem. He then - at age 16 - entered a three-month
programme at Odyssey House in Auckland, the only residential adolescent drug
programme in New Zealand. The man said his son "came back a completely
different kid". His son was now drug-free, living in a flat, and had a job.

Children's Commissioner Roger McClay, who appeared with the man before the
committee, said not every family was lucky enough to reach such a happy
ending. He said he spent time last week with a family in very similar
circumstances, whose son had killed himself in prison, aged 17. Mr McClay
said he did not believe decriminalising cannabis would help young people,
apart from keeping them out of prison and the court system. "I think we
would be doing them a very grave disservice if we move in that direction."

Mr McClay said adolescents took risks with experimentation.

"Young people sadly don't always see drug-taking as a big deal problem -
particularly marijuana."

Advocate for the commissioner's office, Cynthia Tarrant, said cannabis use
was widely accepted as normal by adolescents. She said 45 per cent of young
people had tried cannabis by age 18, more than 7 per cent were cannabis
abusers, and 4.3 per cent were cannabis-dependent.

The low cost and easy availability of cannabis made it widely accessible by
young people, Ms Tarrant said.

She believed that New Zealand's high youth suicide rate could be linked to
cannabis use.

Checked-by: Don Beck