Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Cannabis legislation | |
Posted by: | Dan Evans | |
Date/Time: | 10/09/15 14:23:00 |
Andy, I didn't say cannabis didn't work - quite the opposite in fact if you take the time to read my post. What I did say was that cheaper, safer more effective treatments are available. If it works best for you fine but, as with homeopathy, that is as likely to be down to your belief in its effectiveness as anything else. '"noticeable proportion of the current generation of teens having their lives permanently blighted" is a huge overstatement' Michael, I don't think it is. I've heard of a number of cases of my teenage children's contemporaries who were heavy cannabis users having psychotic incidents or paranoid delusions that in at least one case led to them being sectioned. This is anecdotal but reinforced by similar experiences told of in conversation by parents and teachers from other schools - state and private, inside and outside London. A semantic quibble over whether psychosis is a symptom or an illness is not likely to give the families of those harmed much comfort. This puts aside entirely the even greater incidence of children who appear to have failed to meet early academic or sporting promise after starting to use cannabis. Talk to any secondary school teacher and they will confirm that a noticeable proportion of teens see a dive in performance due to demotivation and a lack of ability to concentrate as a result of cannabis use. There is an increasing body of academic research which links cannabis use directly to psychosis undermining the rather weak defence that it simply unmasks a pre-existing condition. The problem here is that it is very difficult to collect accurate data on teen use of cannabis and its impact for obvious reasons. But we can see first hand the problem - to argue that there isn't a serious issue with teenage health and cannabis at the moment because there is no specific research that definitively proves a link is a bit like arguing there isn't a Syrian refugee problem because no peer-reviewed academic paper has yet been published to say there is one. |