A series of articles in today's Australian about renewed government interest at a Federal level in making marijuana sentencing tougher.
From The Australian
From The Australian
From The Australian
Old and off their faces
The number of people still using marijuana in their 30s and 40s is escalating and their children are following suit, writes Carmel Egan
November 14, 2005
JOY expected one of her children to experiment with cannabis. It was almost inevitable, living on Sydney's northern beaches where the drug culture is as entrenched as the pursuit of surf and sun.
She anticipated her child would be induced by a friend to take that first toke, just as she was as a schoolgirl in the 1970s.
"Those were the days of Buddha sticks," Joy says. "I can't even remember how we used them." Two of Joy's four children became regular cannabis users between the ages of 15 and 17. Both are now in their 20s and although one is an occasional user, Joy is confident his dalliance will have no long-term effect. But the 46-year-old, middle-class mum didn't tell her children of her own teenage experiences until years later. "It just hadn't come up in conversation," she says.
Lana Coleman plans a different approach. She will wait for her 10-year-old daughter to ask but plans to tell all. In anticipation of that day Coleman, also from Sydney's northern beaches, enrolled in a Parents Prepared course at the Manly Drug Education Centre. "Kids are going to experiment, you need to give them information," she says.
Coleman's first puff was with a boyfriend in the company of a group of older children when she was 13. She sees it now as a fairly typical teenage adventure, along with sneaking into pubs for an underage drink. It caused her no harm and her interest faded.
"I have a small percentage of friends who are still using it," says Coleman, soon to turn 40. "Some are still hooked."
The National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2004 (a federal Government initiative) identified a significant change in marijuana use among 30 and 40-year-olds. Rather than dropping off dramatically as it had in the past, the number of people still using marijuana in their 30s and 40s is escalating.
"I come from a generation at university in the '70s where everybody smoked," says David Murray, chief executive officer of Melbourne's Young People's Substance Abuse Service. "A lot of my friends would have smoked well into their 40s, just as they might have a glass of red at dinner. In baby boomers there is a cultural association with cannabis and an attitude that [smoking it] is a harmless event."
The household survey found 15.9 per cent of 30 to 39-year-olds and 8.7 per cent of 40 to 49-year-olds had used the illicit drug in the past 12 months.
The concern is that a growing number of Australian adults continue to use cannabis at an age when they are likely to be parents of teenagers.
"The belief is that [parental use] is going to have an impact on what their children do," says Paul Dillon of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre. "I often get parents coming up saying they use occasionally. They don't promote it, but if they had to choose they would prefer their children use cannabis to amphetamines, which they don't understand. The sad part for me is that what we are seeing with the young is very different patterns of cannabis use from their parents. They are smoking more, smoking more often, smoking stronger parts of the plants and they are doing it in a riskier way with bongs instead of joints."
Cannabis is the most commonly reported illicit drug used by 12 to 19-year-olds, with 13.5 per cent having used it in the past 12 months, according to the household study.
Another 2004 national report for the federal Government analysed data collected from 23,000 secondary students at 363 schools. It found 25 per cent of 12 to 17-year-olds had used cannabis at least once in their lives. Thirty-nine per cent of 16 to 17-year-olds had tried it.
A family history of drug-taking is known to have a significant influence on juvenile offenders' harmful alcohol, cannabis, heroin or amphetamine habits, although there are usually a multiplicity of other causes.
"Seven out of 10 kids are introduced to drugs by somebody they know. If it is their parents then you are taking away some of the prohibitions: you expect mum and dad to say no to you," says Moses Abbatangelo, acting CEO of Odyssey Institute of Studies. "The earlier the onset of drug use the more likely there will be problems. Naturally it flows that if mum and day say OK then maybe everybody else is wrong."
It is the method, quantity and frequency that is most alarming in the young, particularly as evidence mounts of the impact of heavy use on still-developing brains.
Many professionals believe evidence is firming of an association between marijuana use and schizophrenia or anxiety and depression in people with a predisposition -- although some dispute a causal link.
The release last month of the landmark report into Australia's deteriorating state of mental health provision, Not for Service, highlighted the issue when co-author Ian Hickie warned drug-using parents of a false sense of security about children and cannabis.
"Cannabis would be the best example of something that's assumed by parents and teenagers themselves to be not particularly harmful," Hickie says. "It's often portrayed as similar to alcohol.
"If parents continue to smoke, their kids smoke. If parents are significant users of alcohol or other drugs, their kids use at much higher rates."
Former premier of Victoria and now chairman of Beyond Blue Jeff Kennett once advocated decriminalisation of marijuana before backing away from it. "We haven't as a community given cannabis smoking -- or being opposed to cannabis smoking -- a high enough priority," Kennett says in response to the Not For Service report. "It has almost been a leisure drug. It's almost been a hip thing to do so no one has given it a priority above the norm.
"Because we are all different it could change significantly the level of psychosis within an individual and that could lead to depression."
Yet, the cannabis debate remains polarised. On one side are the anti-drugs campaigners and conservative politicians such as federal parliamentary secretary for health Chris Pyne, who exhorts state governments to toughen up their policing of cannabis.
On the other side health are professionals and researchers such as John Toumbourou, of the Centre for Adolescent Health, at the University of Melbourne, who believes Australia's open attitude to cannabis use is paying dividends. Toumbourou argues the Australian approach to education and counselling ahead of punishment of first-time offenders has been successful in slowing the growth in drug use among young people.
Illicit drug use is less in Australia compared with the US. While the household survey found 13.5 per cent of 15 to 17-year-old Australians used cannabis in the past 12 months, the figure is 23 per cent in the US. "The important point is a tolerant attitude [of parents to drugs] is a two-edged sword," Toumbourou says. "A parental history of drug use is reported more frequently in our studies, but in the US a more hardline view results in a disaffection among drug users. The tolerant community and family attitude to cannabis is one of the differences between us and the US. The great strength is that it allows open debate and discussion.
"We are less likely to suspend children from school in Australia for cannabis use or other problems. In the US they are thrown out and that probably creates an alien subculture. And there has been a move in the past five years of clever policing using diversion. So in the first instance they may go in for counselling.
"But many teenagers we know are actually using the substance daily on an ongoing basis and may continue that for some years and that's the pattern of use which appears to be much more problematic in terms of depression and suicide. I agree with Chris Pyne that research is firming that cannabis is contributing to mental health but if we go in the direction of using the law to crack down we will create a greater problem."
Toumbourou's advice to a parent who has used cannabis in the past is to read the research, be frank and upfront and open with your children. Discuss the risks and the potential for health risks -- it is the reason Australians have reduced their cigarette smoking from 75 per cent of the post-World War II population to 17 per cent today.
It would not be hypocritical of parents to say they were unaware of the risks a generation ago and that theirs was uninformed behaviour. "But you are playing russian roulette if you are a parent who encourages cannabis use," he says. "If you have an addiction as your children enter adolescence it is time to consider doing something about it."
From The Australian
PM urges nation to get tough on dope
Patricia Karvelas
November 14, 2005
JOHN Howard has called for a crackdown on cannabis use, saying marijuana is linked to mental illness, and warning that decriminalisation has gone too far.
"Far from embracing further decriminalisation, authorities should be examining going in the opposite direction," he said.
"There is a higher rate of drug use among people experiencing mental health problems. When it comes to cannabis, the time has arrived for us -- legislators and parents -- to get tougher."
The Prime Minister said that while there was some debate about the specific relationship between drug use and mental illness, there was a consensus that people with drug problems had an increased risk of mental health problems.
"There is mounting evidence of the strong link between cannabis and mental illness," he said. "Cannabis use has been linked to health problems, with fears it can exacerbate psychotic illness and symptoms of schizophrenia, as well as mood swings, panic attacks, delusions, hallucinations and paranoid thinking."
He said governments needed to deal with the legal environment, and that parents "have to tackle their own and their children's habits".
Federal parliamentary secretary for health Christopher Pyne said he would be asking state and territory health and justice ministers, when the ministerial council on drug strategy meets early next year, to toughen their laws.
"There's no doubt that the decriminalisation of (personal use and cultivation of cannabis) sent the wrong messages to people about the dangers of cannabis, and I would like to see personally a re-criminalisation of personal cultivation and use of cannabis," he said.
"That's something I'll be discussing with the health and justice ministers at the ministerial council on drug strategy when next it meets."
Mr Pyne said the mental health problems caused by marijuana were costing taxpayers more and more money.
"Many of those people (affected) are being found to be heavy users of marijuana." he said. "In the end they are a major burden on the health dollar."
Mr Pyne said the current laws sent the message to people that marijuana was not much more dangerous than alcohol.
He has asked the federal Health Department to set up an advisory panel of experts to review the evidence that cannabis causes mental health problems and recommend action to the Howard Government.
"In South Australia when they decriminalised cannabis in the late 80s it did lead to a seeming increase in cannabis use," he said.
Mr Pyne said young people who had seen their parents take drugs such as cannabis thought it was not harmful.
"Those people whose parents used cannabis and whose children saw them using cannabis, there's plenty of evidence to suggest they feel that the example to them is that cannabis is not much worse than alcohol," Mr Pyne said.
"The response from the states so far has been disappointing, with many of them simply dismissing a review of cannabis laws but I hope community support might build.
"If something is bad for people and wrong, it should be treated that way."
From The Australian
Pot psychosis? What am I saying ... er, what was I saying?
Imre Salusinszky
November 14, 2005
"THE nation's crumbling mental health services have exposed a disturbing link between cannabis use and a host of behavioural and psychological problems. These range from criminality to psychiatric conditions such as depression and psychosis, a group of disorders including schizophrenia that feature loss of contact with the real world. Think hallucinations, delusions, paranoia and strange, shifting moods." The Australian, November 5.
AS a child of the 1970s, now a respectable man of the suburbs, I'm getting sick of the new wave of wowserism on the issue of cannabis. It is a wave all-too-eagerly surfed by conservative politicians, the medical establishment and sections of the media.
We've heard this stuff before, of course, ever since the US government-sponsored scare campaigns of the '60s. Those with a history of cannabis use, we were told back then, had laid waste to their short-term memories. They could forget something they'd said only moments before. These prematurely senile dope zombies would get to a point where they would not be able to finish their own sentences.
So let's take these latest alarmist suggestions one by one. I'll deal, first, with the bizarre suggestion cannabis use can lead to paranoia, schizophrenia and loss of contact with the real world. Anybody can see this is nonsense.
All you need to do is study the headlines of the anti-cannabis stories. Assign every letter of the alphabet its own number (disregarding consonants higher up the alphabet than T). Notice the coded messages in the headlines?
True, some of these messages are being planted by the CIA. But that's only to throw us off the track. Most of them are direct from -- dare I say it? -- God. And they are assuring us that cannabis use is entirely harmless.
Harmless! Hear that, tiny microchip implanted in my brain by aliens?
So these latest wowserish suggestions are ludicrous. They remind me of those US government scare-campaigns in the '60s, warning that regular users of cannabis would forget what they'd said only moments before, or even be unable to finish their
Now, let's take up these latest alarmist suggestions one by one. We're used to all the drivel about schizophrenia and paranoia. We know it's being orchestrated from a mysterious Central Command that is able to insert subliminal messages into all radio and television broadcasts. But "criminality"? Now that's a new one!
I've been around jails quite a bit. First, there was that stupid break-and-enter matter. (OK, so I thought it was my house and it wasn't. Is that a hanging offence?) And then there was the fraud charge a couple of years later. (Fraud? I call it convenience to have a different name and bank-account for each personality.)
Anyhow, let me assure you, on the basis of these experiences, that it's not long-term cannabis use that leads people into criminality. And if you don't believe me, I can name at least 20 other people I used to hang out with in the '70s who've been in trouble with the law and will say the same thing.
Now, taking up the latest round of scaremongering suggestions one by one, let me start with "strange, shifting moods".
It makes me just a little a bit angry to hear rubbish like this. I'll bet the so-called "mental health experts" in crisp white lab-coats who come up with phrases like this never have "strange, shifting moods." Don't make me laugh!
No, wait -- do make me laugh! I hereby laugh at all you experts: Ha! Ha! Ha! But I do so from a height so far above anything you will ever experience that ...
I'm sorry. I've been under a lot of stress lately. I've hurt you, haven't I? I spoke stupidly, hastily, and as usual I've gone and smashed everybody and everything that matters. I deserve to be crushed like a pathetic ant. If I said I was deeply sorry, and that the job you people in the mental health services do for us all was outstanding, would that start to make up for the pain I've caused?
Is that a smile? Is that a teentsy-weentsy smile I see at the corners of your mouth?
Good! Now let's deal with these latest wowserish suggestions, one by one.
From The Australian
