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UK: The truth about drugs
Ros Coward The Guardian
Saturday 06 Apr 2002 Cannabis and ecstasy are pretty harmless, or so everyone involved in the public discussion on soft drugs seems to agree. Judges, police and politicians rush to be more liberal than thou, while the feeblest objection brands dissenters as hopelessly out of touch with that most revered of all forces, "youth culture". Yet the evidence I see around me totally contradicts this prevailing view. Among young people and those who provide services for them, especially psychological services, there is plenty of evidence for the opposite. These drugs are not harmless at all and are heavily implicated in the growing numbers of adolescents with mental health problems. Talk to families with teenagers and the anecdotal evidence is startling. Many have a family member or friend who has experienced some kind of mental breakdown or an episode of severe mental disturbance. In every case that person had been a regular user of cannabis, ecstasy or speed. These crises are not identical and the individuals concerned have all been given different diagnoses, such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and manic depression. But in all there is the common theme of what the teenagers themselves call "copious amounts of drugs". Young people themselves recognise that cannabis can induce feelings of paranoia and know it when they see it in others. One told me recently that all her friends now find it "quite amusing" when they recognise other young people looking at them in strange and hostile ways. "We all know what's going on in their heads, that paranoia when you think everyone is looking at you." The "drugs are harmless" brigade have a knee-jerk response to anecdotal tales of psychiatric breakdowns: drugs do not cause these states. The recent official report from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs summed up the dominant thinking. "Although cannabis may worsen existing mental health problems, the medical experts say there is no evidence that it causes brain damage but the jury is still out on whether chronic use can lead to mental illness." Normally if a jury is out on a serious public health issue you might expect them to err on the side of caution. But the council does the opposite, recommending downgrading cannabis from class B to class C, concluding that "high use of cannabis is not associated with major health problems for individuals or society". Mental heath problems are so multi-causal that hard and fast explanations are always difficult. With drugs involved, it is especially complex to separate cause and effect because heavy drug users are often people struggling with painful emotions. Despite these understandable cautions, there is something very odd about the readiness with which the government accepts the view that drugs only exacerbate pre-existing conditions. All the experts I meet take a different view. One psychoanalyst told me that heavy use of cannabis and ecstasy during adolescence can cause mental health problems. "Drugs overlay existing mental health problems," she said, "but they also create their own logic of confusion and disorder." That view is also common among psychiatrists, who have coined the term "cannabis psychosis". Dr Neil Brenner, medical director of The Priory psychiatric hospital, is in little doubt that cannabis and ecstasy are implicated in the increase in adolescent mental health problems. "Cannabis can certainly lead to psychological problems," he says. "I am very wary of the concept of soft drugs. Cannabis was 20 to 30 times weaker in the 70s than it is now. It's much more potent." He does not blame cannabis for causing breakdowns in large numbers of cases. But, he says, "it can certainly precipitate psychological problems for the vulnerable, and it is never something that can be taken without consequences." These are hardly the views of marginal cranks. Professor Susan Greenfield, one of the country's foremost experts on brain processes, agrees about the dangers of inducing chemical changes in the brain, especially in adolescence. She campaigns in schools on this subject, saying: "The big risk is you will change the person you are. Blowing your mind is exactly what you are doing. I oppose the view that cannabis is OK. You need only 0.7mg - as opposed to 2,000mg of alcohol - to achieve an observable effect in the brain." The latest international review of cannabis by the World Health Organisation highlights dangers such as throat and lung cancer and "increasing incidence of mental health problems due to prolonged heavy use in a minority of users". Yet Peter Wilson, director of Young Minds, says he feels silenced. "If you talk about problems with drugs, you are bashed over the head by those insisting there is no real evidence of harm. To contradict them makes you feel like Colonel Blimp." These voices are not being listened to because of a pernicious muddle around the issue. The public policy of illegality has failed, so there is finally a commendable move towards tolerance of use combined with "realistic education" - an approach recommended in the recent select committee report. But realistic education ought surely to put these mental health issues in the foreground. Instead, such views are silenced; all talk is of legalisation of "less harmful" or even "harmless" substances. This constitutes a disregard for public safety. Perhaps this is because drug use is mainly a youth problem, and there is a feeling that they are in such a mess anyway that a few drugs won't make much difference. Somehow we have become so accustomed to the torment which characterises adolescence that we no longer notice when another difficulty is added to their lives. Instead we abdicate responsibility - in this case on the spurious grounds that causes of psychological problems can't be proved. Even those who reject clear causal connections between drug use and adolescent psychological problems admit that the increase in mental health problems is fuelling drug use. What an indictment. You might think a society would do everything in its power to understand and alleviate the pressures on its young people instead of using the evidence of misery as an excuse to do nothing. This is a muddle caused by a craven deference to youth fashion, a cynical ignorance encouraged by the desire to appease an imaginary group, to appear culturally cool. A recent Observer special report on drugs didn't even list mental health problems as a possible side-effect of cannabis. Meanwhile, the government's latest drug campaign shows the bloated image of a dead heroin addict, an image which could easily feed a perverse teenage romanticism of despair. If it's "realistic education" they are after, how about starting with the sad, shifty-eyed, self-ostracising cannabis paranoids young people will all recognise?
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