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Question and Answer Session All Party Parliamentary Group Meeting

by CanSS, posted 21 11 2011

 

Charles Walker:  

Richard, I would like to thank you for your very honest presentation on behalf of the audience.  I will now throw the floor open to questions.

Dr Barry Twigg:

If there had been services available to help you as a child, do you think you would have been able to avoid what ultimately happened in your life?

Richard:

Maybe.  But I didn’t know how to access it.  The way I was brought up seemed normal to me at the time.  We need to educate both parents and children early.  We also need to educate health professionals to spot these types of behaviour earlier.

Kathy Gyngell: 

I would like to thank you very much for your presentation which obviously came from the heart.  Your powers of analysis are most remarkable.  Rather than education (which we know can be controversial) what do you feel about family interventions?  How do you feel that your family would have reacted to outside intervention?

Richard: 

I don’t know.  As I said in my presentation, my mother was a child psychologist anyway, but with problems with her own addictions.  If the “system” was able to spot behaviours that are linked to these issues, may be it would help.  Also, drugs are now very different to the drugs associated with use back in the sixties and early seventies.  I think it may come down in some part to education of the strengths of drugs now.  People do need to be bombarded with information so that it sinks in.  GPs are not adequately trained in addiction – neither are the police.  When talking to people not involved in the genetic side of addiction, people are shocked at the link.

Barry Twigg: 

It isn’t just education of young people that is needed.  We also must concentrate on educating teachers, police and the general health services.

Surjit Basra: 

I work with CanSS.  I have just managed to secure funding from my borough council to put on three drug education seminars next year between March and September.  Mary Brett, Peter Walker, Marilyn and Lesley from the Luke and Marcus Trust as well as Drugsline and other local agencies will be involved.  When CanSS first became involved with Drugsline last year they had 25 volunteers manning the helpline telephones.  Now they have 42 volunteers and have opened another new drug help centre.  The general public need to know the full facts of what cannabis does.  Children are being used by dealers to transport drugs.  The seminars that we are proposing to run are to educate parents, medics and teachers about what cannabis can do to children and the damage it can cause to their developing brains.  We really do need to educate the community.  What we would like to do is to return here at the end of next year and be able to report that the seminars have been a great success.

Cara Lavan: 

Thank you for your presentation.  With the myriad of things that contributed to your addiction and the myriad of things that you used, why do you choose cannabis as the reason for all your problems?

Richard: 

I accept the health problems that my other addictions caused me, such as the problems with my liver with alcohol, but it was cannabis that brought me to my knees.  It was cannabis that changed the way I feel, it changed my behaviour, it stopped me working and functioning.

Charles Walker:  What would you say to those people who are advocating the legalisation of cannabis?

Richard:    People writing these things are ill informed, relying only on their own experiences.  They have not done their research.  There is a lot of social pressure to use and join in.  Cannabis is a gateway drug and many go on to unhealthy addictions.  It was definitely cannabis that got me into other drugs.  I deal with many other people on a daily basis who use lots of other drugs as well as cannabis.  All state that they started with cannabis.

Kathy Gyngell: 

James Langton of Clearhead says that cannabis is boy’s first love affair.  They will never put that in FRANK.

Richard: 

When I first started using cannabis, I felt at home with it.  25 years later I hated it and what it did to me.

Lesley Jakeman:

I lost sons to heroin but cannabis started it. Listening to Richard was like listening to my son talking.  Although cannabis didn’t directly kill our sons, it killed them by implication.

Richard: 

8 out of 10 users would endorse this.

Mary Brett:  

The truth about cannabis has still to come out.  I am currently fighting FRANK at the moment.  The information used still does not tell the truth.  Anne Milton listened but her civil servants don’t.  Under labour harm reduction there were many untruths put out about cannabis.  Despite being given my big report about cannabis which is fully referenced, they still say there is no evidence of the gateway effect.  There are thirty references in the book citing evidence of the gateway effect.

The people responsible for FRANK say they need to talk at children’s level.  On 30th November there was an internal review of PHSE.  Once again I sent information to update them.  This went to Michael Gove, Nick Gibb and Graham Stuart – Chair of Education Select Committee.  Having done that, the next time I looked at the FRANK website they had actually put some of the information on.

Charles Walker: 

We are going in the right direction.

Mary Brett: 

Perhaps people could write to Anne Milton.

Charles Walker:  Please write to your MPs

Ros Richardson: 

I am the mother of three boys.  There is an unconscious draw of society if you don’t know what drugs do.  Richard, did you control as a child?

Richard: 

Yes, I controlled through my use of food.  It was a way that I had some control of my life.

Ros Richardson: 

We all need to join them fight against drugs.  I shall be doing so.

Karen Richardson:  

The Youth Offending Teams are really letting these kids down.  They don’t actually do what they say they are doing.  More often than not the kids are not followed up.

Kathy Gyngell: 

Dr Mirza was invited to day – he was unable to attend at the last minute because he has been trying desperately to help a homeless seventeen year old girl.  He is unable to resolve the situation and doesn’t know what to do.  There are no resources available to help her.  This is a situation that really needs to change.

Karen Richardson: 

It is virtually impossible to obtain counselling.

Hugh Brett: 

Thank you Richard for an inspiring speech.  I know a lot of middle aged people who smoked cannabis in their youth.  Now their kids have gone a bit dotty through using cannabis now.  Perhaps there should be more clarity about the strength of cannabis these days compared with in their youth.

Richard: 

It is still cannabis just the same.

Mary Brett: 

What was smoked in the 60s and 70s doesn’t really exist anymore.

Kathy Gyngell: 

We need to realise that those parents are in denial.  We should be dubious about making a distinction.  It was still cannabis and still illegal.

Hugh Brett:  One is more harmful?

Mary Brett: 

The effects may have been slower but Robin Murray has proved that it is just the amount of THC that is used.

Charles Walker: 

The skunk varieties are more toxic than the old cannabis used to be.

Mary Brett: 

The Dutch now class anything over 15% a class A drug. By their reckoning our kids are now using “hard drugs”.

Julia Couchman: 

I am a carer for my son who is s paranoid schizophrenic.  I have been on a steering group committee for dual diagnosis for five years.  It covers alcohol, cannabis, khat plus an assortment of other substances.  We have produced leaflets.  There is also a need to stop smoking.  We need to list risk factors.

Nigel Price: 

Did your personal tolerance levels increase?  Did you find you needed more cannabis to get the same effect?

Richard: 

I found that I needed more.  I needed much stronger as time went on.  I was lucky because although a drugs habit is costly, I was still able to fund my use.

Marilyn Shaw: 

People don’t understand what addiction is.  They don’t realise that addiction is a life long illness.

Tony Smeeton: 

Anybody who understands marketing realises that people need to read something three times.  We are constantly bombarded in the press with high profile people saying legalise.  We really do need to combat this.  How do you persuade parents and kids that taking drugs is dangerous?  Is the government going to answer the legalisers formally?

Charles Walker: 

We are not listening to the legalisers.  If the government were to respond formally, it would give them even more credibility.  Let me re-assure you that the government is not on the same page as these people.

Cara Lavan: 

The Beckworth Foundation issued a statement last weekend.  Are you going to refute it?

Nigel Price: 

We need a strong statement from the government

Charles Walker: 

The Government won’t endorse that.  We have stated we are not going down the legalisation route.  They are on the wrong side of the argument.  We can’t say that this argument won’t be re-visited under another government though.

Mary Brett: 

That huge advertisement they put in the paper cost about £20,000 per advert.

Kathy Gyngell: 

They are spending huge amounts of money.

Lucy Dawe:

Legalisers are constantly telling us that legalisation would stop the criminal element of drug taking and that there would be safe guards for our children.  Both points are wrong.  We already have legal alcohol and tobacco, but that does not stop people going to the continent and smuggling goods in at a cheaper rate.  We also have an over 18 rule in place for alcohol and cigarettes but it has not proved to be effective in stopping under 18’s from obtaining them.  Why should it be any different for cannabis?

Charles Walker: 

Lucy makes a very good point. 

Barry Twigg: 

We need to start sending out emails to counteract the legalisers.  Drug education is even worse than before.   We need to start battling for better drug education.

Richard: 

We need earlier intervention.  Addicts need support.  We need to spread the word and spread drug education so that all young people receive it from an early age.

Hugh Brett: 

The problem seems to be confounded by the fact that certain people are affected more than others.  Some can take it some can’t.

Mary Brett: 

The study by Robin Murray revealed that anyone can become temporarily psychotic if given enough THC.  He gave THC to healthy colleagues – all became psychotic.  There has also been shown that there is a genetic link with schizophrenia.

Kathy Gyngell: 

There has now been shown to have a far higher level of psychosis than at first thought.

Julia Couchman:  

Smokers need much higher levels of medication for psychosis than those who have stopped.

Karen Richardson: 

Those parents that Hugh refers to may think that they are ok, but maybe they are not.

Hugh Brett: 

THEY are, but their kids are not.

Charles Walker: 

Not enough time has been spent in educating the parents.

Karen Richardson: 

Unfortunately, people who have drug problems will introduce their children to cannabis.

Charles Walker: 

Not all parents are responsible.  My young daughter went to a supervised party where the supervising parents gave her alcohol.  I have told my daughter that in future if she is offered alcohol she should say no, but parents should be responsible. 

Karen Richardson: 

We need to be more prepared to make scenes if other parents risk our children.

Kathy Gyngell: 

When I discovered that my son had been given alcohol I did make a scene.  The parents concerned could see no problem.

Charles Walker: 

We must now draw the meeting to a close.  I would like to thank Richard for a very enlightening talk.  His honesty is very much appreciated and has given everybody a much greater understanding of addiction.