MAKING A HASH OF THE MESSAGE

Children Are Being Given The Wrong Signals About Drugs, Says Frances
Childs, A Teacher And One-Time Cannabis Smoker

Last year, when I was teaching drama, every now and then I would be
"entertained" by a story about drugs, usually devised by 12-year-olds.
Cannabis was their drug of choice. They would act out their piece,
air-smoking a rolled up bit of A4 paper, trying not to giggle too obviously.

Their stories would be about bullying, where the "goody-goodies" ganged up
on the spliff smokers, or about a heroic spliff-smoking fireman, or just a
group of girls crossing the road. The point was that the children wanted to
be seen "taking drugs". Not a drug such as heroin, which I think they were
afraid of, but cannabis, which was naughty but nice.

To them, smoking a joint came into the same category as swearing. Both were
"bad", both would shock me, and the juvenile actors wouldn't get into
trouble because it was a drama class, and swearing and smoking cannabis
were artistically necessary to the play.

I never really knew how to react. I didn't want to get angry or forbid any
drug references because that would merely reinforce the glamour of hash.
But neither did I want to ignore them, not when I have witnessed the damage
done by drugs to people I love.

Usually, I settled on looking slightly bored, waited until they had
finished and then behaved as normal. I invited comments from the rest of
the class, gave my own views about staging or characterisation and then
delivered a quick speech along the lines of: "I know you think there's
nothing wrong with hash, but it does actually destroy people's lives." I
would tell them about people admitted to psychiatric wards with
drug-induced psychosis. In the main, the children smirked, and argued with me.

"Cannabis isn't harmful," they would chant. "Cannabis helps people. It
helps people with diseases."

"How does it do that then?"

"It relaxes you. It's good for you. You can't get addicted to cannabis.
Cannabis should be legal."

Of course, if it were legal, that would spoil all the fun, for these
children at any rate. By downgrading cannabis to a Class C drug, yet still
insisting that it is illegal, the Government has managed at one and the
same time to reinforce the glamour of the forbidden while propping up the
idea that there is nothing really wrong with a bit of hash.

Once, during one of these silly, ill-informed dramatic representations, a
child left the class. He was clearly upset. I suspect he was in some way a
victim of cannabis. He had probably witnessed at first hand the damage it
can wreak upon people's lives.

None of the children who acted out the joint-sharing in those drama classes
had ever heard of drug-induced psychosis, and they didn't believe me when I
told them about it. The pro-cannabis lobby has done its work well. Today's
12- and 13-year-olds are convinced that cannabis is utterly harmless. They
are well aware that heroin kills, but not that cannabis is said by a number
of medical experts t cause lasting mental illness.

I stopped taking drugs when I was 18. I noticed that the weed I was smoking
was making me paranoid. I started to hallucinate when I was stoned and I
didn't like it. Several people told me cannabis was non-hallucinogenic and
that I must be imagining I was hallucinating. But it felt real enough to
me, so I just stopped smoking hash.

There are people in psychiatric hospitals who did not stop smoking hash -
people who ignored the warning signs and, convinced that cannabis is a
soft, safe drug, carried on smoking it. Psychiatric wards are grim places
to be, full of society's most vulnerable individuals, many of whom have
messed about with mind-altering substances and are now paying the penalty
with paranoia and psychosis.

So I believe that hash does destroy people's lives. It destroys people who
smoke it, and those who love them. It is a dangerous, addictive,
mind-altering substance. I would like the Government to pay for a public
health campaign. I want it to inform the children who, giggling, pretend to
pass the spliff, just how lethal cannabis really is.

I remember the government adverts featuring blackened lungs and interviews
with dying cancer patients that tried to persuade an addicted Britain to
give up smoking. It has been a phenomenally successful public health campaign.

Most of the children I teach don't smoke. They don't think it's naughty or
cool. They just think it's stupid. Today's youngsters are well aware of the
dangers of tobacco, but not of cannabis. They persist in seeing it as some
sort of benign herb that should, by rights, be sold in health food shops
alongside organic mint tea.

Instead of trying to make itself fleetingly popular by pandering to
ill-informed school children and ageing hippies, the Government should do
what governments are supposed to do and show a bit of leadership.

How about a campaign featuring the doctors and nurses who work with the
victims of cannabis abuse? And how about a TV campaign showing just how mad
and frightening - and very, very frightened - people with drug-induced
psychosis are?

It won't be pretty or glamorous or naughty, but it might just get the
message across. Cannabis, legal or illegal, messes up your mind.