LEGALISE THE OLD STUFF BUT MAKE THE NEW STUFF A CLASS A DRUG

The evidence is coming in thick and fast. Yesterday came news of yet
another survey showing the damage cannabis does to young lives. A
study published in the journal Addiction says that by the end of the
decade one in four of new cases of schizophrenia could be triggered
by smoking cannabis.

I work in London as a child psychotherapist, and the facts at the
coal face leave me with very little doubt. The "old" type of cannabis
that used to be available in the 1960s and 1970s is worlds apart from
much of the stuff that is easily acquired nowadays. People will argue
about the precise difference in strength (the amount of
tetrahydrocannabinol - THC), but, indisputably, skunk is often 15
times stronger than that which used to be available. If I had my way
I would legalise the old stuff and make skunk a class A drug.

To anyone who sees what goes on in courts, in hospitals, in hostels
for the homeless, and in the faces of the children who have been
smoking too much, the influence of skunk is clear. When a new case of
a psychotic young person comes to me, the chances are that skunk has
played a part in their troubles.

In an age when children grow up frighteningly quickly, it is easy to
forget that the brains of teenagers are nothing like fully formed.
Scientists used to think that the brain was mature at the age of 18.
Nowadays the belief is that it happens at around 21. Up until then,
youngsters, particularly males, struggle to make sense of the world.
The Kevins, of Harry Enfield fame, are only a slight exaggeration.
Teenagers, by their very nature, lack responsibility and are
extremely sensitive. So if a THC-rich drug is inflicted on immature
frontal lobes, their neural pathways can be badly distorted. This is
not about a drug that makes you feel a bit woozy and then passes. It
is doing physical violence to one of the body's most sensitive parts.

What makes it worse still - which few defenders of cannabis use are
prepared to take on board - is that precious little is known about
how to treat these young brains when they hit real trouble. We have a
rough idea how to treat anorexia, we are coming to understand
self-harm, there are established treatments for addressing cocaine
addiction. But we know next to nothing about skunk-induced psychosis.
Adolescents gripped by psychosis can reach a point of no return. We
can tank them up with heavy anti-psychotic medication to prevent them
having hallucinations and hearing voices, but it is far from ideal if
they stay on such strong medication. After that, we are virtually
stuck for answers. Those who see skunk as being "like the stuff we
used to smoke, only a bit stronger" would do well to remember that.

Does skunk actually cause psychosis or simply act as a catalyst to
those with a psychotic predisposition (or, as some claim, does it
have no link at all)? My own view - a hunch based on 20 years in the
field - is that there is some sort of link between psychosis and the
increases we have been witnessing in learning difficulties, such as
dyslexia, dyspraxia, right on up to Asperger's syndrome. Research
shows that one in five boys and one in seven girls now have some such
problem. My guess is that it is those with a disposition towards one
of those disabilities who will be prone to suffer most from skunk's
ill-effects. And it is precisely those people for whom life may be
trickiest, who may feel the greatest need of some sort of
self-medication with the stuff. If you see lawless groups of young
kids in the street or teenagers who threaten passers-by with knives,
there is a strong chance that they have used skunk in the previous 24
hours. I am not saying that skunk has caused the lawlessness, but it
definitely won't have helped. If you see a sheet-white young person
who looks lost and mentally ill, then the same is probably true.

If an amiable, middle-aged, would-be hippy tells you that the odd
spliff never did them no harm, they are probably right. But the world
has moved on.