'Pot-heads' filling our hospital wards

[AB Asks]

Mental hospital admissions due to cannabis use have increased by 85% under Labour. Over the last five years there has been a 65% rise and this is said to only be the tip of the iceberg. Cannabis is one of the most commonly used drugs and can cause severe mental problems. People often see it as a soft and relatively harmless drug. What do you think? How can we stop people using this drug?

[nat_84]

His mum thought he was on crack skreech... and she still thought it when he was put into the mental hospital. But i have no idea whether he was or not.

His mum was in a terrible state apparently, couldnt actually beleive what was happening. She too has now stopped smoking cannabis (which she has smoked all her life!) in order for her son to get back to normal.

[beryllium]

I'm not going to stop using it for pain relief. And medical science will continue to experiment with it. And doctors will continue to prescribe it.
85% increase under Labour eh? what does that tell you about our leaders? that everyone is so ruddy depressed by this government they'd rather be stoned? or drinking 24/7? or gambling in our super casinos? because of course, loosing all your money from gambling wont cause depression. Will it?
Drinking because the liver is evil and must be destroyed. That's not going to cause depression either. Is it?
What are the percentages based on figuritively please?
As the consevatives closed a lot of psychiatric wards down, and labour most certainly did not reopen them.
Make the drug available legally through chemists and an age of 18 before you can buy it.

[Kaylz1988]

My ex is a regular smoker. He smokes on average bout 3-4spliffs a day probably. Maybe more on a sunday when he aint working. But he hasnt had any funny side affects yet!!! Although ppl say that it affects younger people more. I asked him to stop on several occasions but he couldn't. When he goes without it (coz he aint got no money) he'd be such a grouch!)

[Skreecheeboy]

Weed smoking affects your bodies ability to absorb vitamins, this has a knock on affect of affecting your sleep, your mood, your overall health and well being. What I'm saying is it's bad for you but the only harm that an occasional puff is going to do to you is perhaps get you hooked on nicotine which in itself is a terrible thing too. It's true what you say about young people being worse affected by it but dealers arent' obliged to id you when you buy them because the only controls on it are whether or not the person that you get it from has been busted or not. It currently isn't well controlled and I would favour controlled and taxed outlets for it, think there'll be a lot less trouble than there currently is.

[beryllium]

Nowt wrong with a vapouriser though. No nicotine :-)

[sophie_1003]

Anything is bad in excess but there's no way to stop people using it. I would question whether the 85% is due to Labour being in power, don't really see the correlation, maybe this government is just better at labelling people? But I think the fact that (apparently) there are stronger strains of cannabis now than ever before has something to do with it rather than more people smoking it!

[IggyB]

I see that you offer no source for your assertion that mental health admissions due to cannabis use have increased, and it is the DUE part of this statement that i think you should explain, as i think the link is highly arguable. Yes a lot of people with mental health issues have used or do use cannabis BUT did this cause the problem - or could it just be that many many people do use this drug in the first place AND that those with mental health problems use the drug to control their feelings to some extent.

Cannabis is one of the most commonly used drugs BUT nicotine is much much more commonly used, here again you will find that patients with mental illness use this a lot more than health people, and where schizophrenia is concerned the rate of smoking is extraordinarily high with extimates ranging from 50 - 85% (Dalack, Healy, and Meador-Woodruff, 1998). However instead of simply stating that smoking cigarettes causes schizophrenia it is much more useful to question "WHY" do schizophrenics smoke - studies in this area suggest that these patients are in someways able to alleviate their symptoms through this drug use (relaxation, focus).

I think it can be misleading to to band round statistics without first examining the possibility that though linked one is not the cause of the other - for example there is a strong relationship between the number of ice creams sold and the number of people who drown each month, but this doesn't mean the to are related, the fact is probably that warm weather increases ice cream sales and also increases the number of people swimming to cool down which in turn leads to more drownings.

I think the arguments surrounding cannabis use and mental health are complex but are not really helped by biast
question construction.