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(This was 12 years ago…it’s even worse now!!!)
- By Jonathan Owen Sunday 18 March 2007
Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago.
More than 22,000 people were treated last year for cannabis addiction - and almost half of those affected were under 18. With doctors and drugs experts warning that skunk can be as damaging as cocaine and heroin, leading to mental health problems and psychosis for thousands of teenagers, The Independent on Sunday has today reversed its landmark campaign for cannabis use to be decriminalised.
A decade after this newspaper's stance culminated in a 16,000-strong pro-cannabis march to London's Hyde Park - and was credited with forcing the Government to downgrade the legal status of cannabis to class C - an IoS editorial states that there is growing proof that skunk causes mental illness and psychosis.
The decision comes as statistics from the NHS National Treatment Agency show that the number of young people in treatment almost doubled from about 5,000 in 2005 to 9,600 in 2006, and that 13,000 adults also needed treatment.
The skunk smoked by the majority of young Britons bears no relation to traditional cannabis resin - with a 25-fold increase in the amount of the main psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabidinol (THC), typically found in the early 1990s. New research being published in this week's Lancet will show how cannabis is more dangerous than LSD and ecstasy. Experts analysed 20 substances for addictiveness, social harm and physical damage. The results will increase the pressure on the Government to have a full debate on drugs, and a new independent UK drug policy commission being launched next month will call for a rethink on the issue.
The findings last night reignited the debate about cannabis use, with a growing number of specialists saying that the drug bears no relation to the substance most law-makers would recognise. Professor Colin Blakemore, chief of the Medical Research Council, who backed our original campaign for cannabis to be decriminalised, has also changed his mind. He said: "The link between cannabis and psychosis is quite clear now; it wasn't 10 years ago."
Many medical specialists agree that the debate has changed. Robin Murray, professor of psychiatry at London's Institute of Psychiatry, estimates that at least 25,000 of the 250,000 schizophrenics in the UK could have avoided the illness if they had not used cannabis. "The number of people taking cannabis may not be rising, but what people are taking is much more powerful, so there is a question of whether a few years on we may see more people getting ill as a consequence of that."
"Society has seriously underestimated how dangerous cannabis really is," said Professor Neil McKeganey, from Glasgow University's Centre for Drug Misuse Research. "We could well see over the next 10 years increasing numbers of young people in serious difficulties."
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Relations to Substance Misuse, Mental Health, and Pain Experience - Journal of Addiction Medicine: doi: 10.1097/ADM.0000000000000493
Results: Results suggest that, compared to opioid use alone, opioid and cannabis co-use was associated with elevated anxiety and depression symptoms, as well as tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, and sedative use problems, but not pain experience.
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"I've chilled out on weed. I used to love it, but now I think it's the one thing that gets in my way," he admitted. Evans further opened up about the effects weed has had on his productivity. "It zaps your motivation. I think apathy kind of bleeds in, and you start to think, 'Well, I'm not apathetic, I just don't feel like doing that.' And it's like, no—you would feel like doing that if you weren't stoned. And, you know—I'm 37. I can't be smoking weed all the time. That's crazy," he said.
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One of the state’s most vocal opponents of legalizing recreational marijuana in recent years has been Dr. Deepak D’Souza, a research scientist and professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine.
In testimony before the legislature and in his role as a member of the state medical marijuana program’s board of physicians, an advisory group for lawmakers, D’Souza has laid out what he says are the dangers of legalization. His four areas of concern are the impact on young people and the developing brain; the anticipated increase in cannabis use disorder; the negative impact on people with serious mental illness; and increased motor vehicle accidents.
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Mar 19, 2019 Mark Gold, MD
Limited information exists on marijuana use and male reproductive health. A recent study from Duke University evaluated differences in sperm quality resulting from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) exposure in both rats and humans. Findings suggest that paternal marijuana use, prior to conception, may present epigenetic risks to potential offspring.
Key Findings
- Individuals who used marijuana can have higher and also can have significantly lower sperm concentrations, compared to those who did not, posing potential complications for fertility.
- THC-exposed sperm was associated with significantly altered DNA, in both rat and human samples.
- Associations were even stronger among individuals with higher levels of THC in their urine, implying a “dose-response relationship” such that chronic marijuana users may be impacted more severely.
- Authors identified three unique potential genetic pathways modified by THC exposure.