According to youth counsellor Jill Pearman the number of people presenting to mental hospitals in New South Wales for cannabis-induced psychosis has gone from 15 to 26 percent over a two-year period and experts now estimate the figure is closer to 40 or 50 percent.Adding weight to the trend is new research, which paints a startling picture of the impact of modern marijuana on our country. For seven years, 2000 Australian teenagers were tracked. By their 21st birthdays, one in 25 women met the criteria for being cannabis dependent. Among men, the rate was much higher with one in 10 found to be dependent.
Professor George Patton, who conducted the groundbreaking study, found that regular alcohol drinkers are less likely to develop cannabis dependence while cigarette smokers are more likely. He also found that the younger you experiment, the greater the chance you’ll have a problem later on.
“Thirty percent of teenagers who reported weekly use sometime between the age of 14 and 17 were dependent at the age of 20 to 21,” he says.
Father Chris Reilly has helped tens of thousands of troubled teenagers try and overcome their addiction. He says one of the problems is many people are unaware of how significantly the drug has changed.
“People who are advocating it from the ’60s haven’t factored in to it that this [cannabis] is now 70 to 90 percent stronger than what they were using back in the old days,” he says.
For Chris, who was once addicted to marijuana, the experience was all-consuming.
“People think it’s harmless, they don’t take it as a harmful drug – that’s probably why,” he says. “People don’t know much about it. I had drug-induced psychosis and went to jail for a night.”
Similarly, Rupert also suffered terribly while addicted to cannabis.
“I couldn’t sleep when I was smoking and got headaches,” he says. “I got really angry with everyone – really angry with friends and parents. You don’t realise till problems come on, no friends, social life goes down the drain and it’s too late, by then, it’s really hard to quit,” he says.
Source: Reporter: Ben Fordham; Australia’s TV Channel 9 “A Current Affair” program (ACA) August 11th 2003