Buzzby

Alarm Over Rising Cannabis Use: France Launches Campaign
Political Gateway | 02/02/2005

PARIS, Feb 2 (AFP) - Alarmed by the rising consumption of cannabis among French teenagers, the government on Wednesday launched a 10-million euro (13 million dollar) campaign to warn of the drug's harmful effects on physical and mental health.

With more than one in five 18 year-old boys claiming to be regular users -- and more than half of all 17 year-olds having smoked cannabis at least once -- France has the highest consumption rate in Europe along with Britain and the Czech Republic, according to official figures.

The media campaign -- including a series of radio and television advertisements and the distribution of hundreds of thousands of leaflets -- is to "set the myth of cannabis against the reality in order to debunk notions about its alleged harmlessness," the ministry said.

Nearly 250 consultation centres are also to be established across the country, and a telephone hotline set up to advise those tempted by the drug. From the start of the next academic year, the campaign will be extended inside secondary schools.

According to the French Observatory on Drugs and Addiction (OFDT), there are 850,000 regular consumers of cannabis in the country -- of whom 450,000 smoke cannabis every day. The number of 17 year-olds who have experimented with it has doubled in ten years, the OFDT calcalates.

Toxicologists have established that the cannabis widely consumed today is far stronger than the drug that became current in university campuses in the 1960s and 70s, and warn that the psychological damage is greatly underestimated.

Among the harmful effects to be highlighted in the campaign are memory loss, concentration lapses, altered perception and alienation from friends and family.

"There is a syndrome of demotivation which results in a lack of interest in school work and a gradual desocialisation. At the same time we now have proof of the link between cannabis abuse and certain acute or chronic psychotic conditions," said Dr Michel Reynaud, author of Cannabis and Health.

Recent studies have established that cannabis can be a contributory cause in triggering schizophrenia.

Concern over cannabis use has grown in recent years after a series of fatal road accidents in which it was shown that the drug was a cause. In 2003 a law was passed that makes driving under the influence of cannabis a criminal offence, and urine tests are being extended.

"Cannabis has been shown to be responsible for 20 percent of accidents caused by people under 30 years of age," said Patrick Mura, president of the French Society for Analytical Toxicology.

The government is also alarmed by the power of the drug economy in the country's high-immigration city suburbs, to where much the cannabis is initially smuggled from Morocco.

__________________