CANNABIS 'CAUSES MENTAL ILLNESS'

A significant increase in cannabis smoking is leading to serious mental
health problems among the young, two leading drugs experts said yesterday.

They warned that the effect of cannabis on the body was equal to cigarettes
but was "far more dangerous" on the mind.

Prof John Henry, a toxicologist at Imperial College, London, said: "Regular
cannabis smokers develop mental illness.

"There is a four-fold increase in schizophrenia and there is a four-fold
increase in major depression and that is something very, very different to
what cigarettes do to you."

Dr Ian Oliver, independent consultant to the UN Drug Control Programme,
said cannabis on the market today was 10 times stronger than that smoked by
the "flower power" generation of the Sixties. "The result is doped-up kids
who lose all motivation to do anything except lie in bed," he said.

Doctors in Holland have given the medical condition its own label:
"amotivational" syndrome. This, say medical practitioners in the field,
simply means cannabis is creating a new generation of layabouts.

Last year the Government decided to reclassify cannabis from a class B to a
class C drug after hearing recommendations that it was much less damaging
than other drugs.

But there were fears that the reclassification would see an increase in
smoking cannabis, and Prof Henry said that use of the "soft" drug was on
the rise.

"There are 13 million cigarette smokers and the numbers are going down," he
said. "There are 3.2 million cannabis smokers and the numbers are going up.

"There is no Government health warning against cannabis but there are all
kinds of restrictions against tobacco. People who smoke cannabis ought to
be aware that it has equal effects on the body to cigarettes and worse
effects on the mind."

Prof Henry and Dr Oliver were speaking at the Royal Society of Medicine
conference in London.