CANNABIS JOKE

FOR many years cannabis has been treated and thought of as a joke. Today,
nobody should be laughing. There now is much evidence of the harm caused by
this mind-altering drug.

There are concerns about the Government's proposal to relax laws for the
possession and cultivation of cannabis. Cannabis users and the mental
health system go together. Cannabis users are in the psychiatric hospitals,
particularly our youth. This is no myth.

Research shows that those who drink alcohol to become intoxicated are more
prone to alcoholism than those who drink but avoid intoxication. Drugs such
as cannabis are used solely for their intoxicant affect. Softening drug
laws will result in more people, particularly the young, experimenting with
cannabis, more experimenters becoming regular users and more regular users
becoming addicts.

There is a rapidly increasing number of parents whose lives have been
seriously disrupted by their children's use of cannabis. Their kids become
abusive, violent and foul-mouthed antisocial individuals. Such kids do not
respect rules, laws or personal property.

They not only become self-destructive but intent on destroying everything
around them, including the people who most care about them. It isn't the
adolescent who is bad but the drug they use.

Why should parents have to witness the liberalisation of the laws and allow
cannabis to grow in their backyards? Two plants and a fine. This is truly
the biggest joke.