{"id":143435,"date":"2018-06-19T17:35:12","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T17:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/my-generation-sees-cannabis-as-safer-than-alcohol\/"},"modified":"2018-06-19T17:35:12","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T17:35:12","slug":"my-generation-sees-cannabis-as-safer-than-alcohol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/my-generation-sees-cannabis-as-safer-than-alcohol\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;My generation sees cannabis as safer than alcohol&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>                                  <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"smoking cannabis\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/61A9\/production\/_102110052_gettyimages-527892292.jpg\"\/>Image copyright                  Getty Images                                                    <\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">&quot;For me, having cannabis in the evening is the equivalent of having a glass of wine on a Friday night.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;People of my generation see cannabis as safer than drinking and safer than smoking,&quot; says Faye, 22.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The health risks [of drinking and smoking] have been drummed into us.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Faye&#039;s comments come as Lord Hague has said he wants to see &quot;decisive change&quot; in the law on cannabis and that the government should consider legalising recreational use of the drug.<\/p>\n<p>Faye (not her real name) says the message at her school was simply: &quot;Under no circumstances must you do drugs.&quot; Meanwhile, however, pupils were given much more specific information about the dangers of alcoholism and smoking tobacco.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We were just taught to say, &#039;No.&#039; But young people are going to come into contact with drugs at some point in their lives,&quot; Faye says.<\/p>\n<p>She believes the education system is struggling to keep up with drug trends and that a message of: &quot;Just say no,&quot; does not prepare for youngsters for the realities of a society where drugs are widely available.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;You&#039;re told your whole life, &#039;These drugs are bad for you and they could kill you,&#039; and then when you do these drugs and you&#039;re fine and having fun, you reflect on your education and think that maybe everything you&#039;ve been told is wrong,&quot; Faye says.<\/p>\n<h2>Negative effects of taking cannabis <\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It may make you feel faint or sick<\/li>\n<li>It can make you sleepy and lethargic<\/li>\n<li>It can affect your memory<\/li>\n<li>It makes some people feel confused, anxious or paranoid, and some experience panic attacks and hallucinations<\/li>\n<li>It interferes with your ability to drive safely<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Source: NHS Choices<\/p>\n<p>In some cases cannabis can increase anxiety and paranoia, lead to confusion and even hallucinations, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists.<\/p>\n<p>There is also &quot;compelling evidence&quot; that regular cannabis use increases the risk of developing psychotic illnesses, such as schizophrenia, particularly in adolescents, according to Dr Marta Di Forti, from King&#039;s College London. <\/p>\n<p>Writing in the Telegraph newspaper, Lord Hague says that as far as cannabis is concerned &quot;any war has been comprehensively and irreversibly lost&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The idea that the drug can be driven off the streets and out of people&#039;s lives by the state is nothing short of deluded,&quot; he writes.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Surveys of young people attest that they find it easier to purchase cannabis than virtually anything else, including fast food, cigarettes and alcohol.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Statistics from NHS Digital have recently found secondary school children in England are more likely to have tried drugs than cigarettes.<\/p>\n<p>The research, published in November, interviewed 12,051 pupils in 177 schools in the autumn term of 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Analysis of the results showed 24% of the 11- to 15-year-olds interviewed said they had tried recreational drugs at least once in their lives - a nine percentage point rise on the last survey conducted in 2014.<\/p>\n<h2>&#039;I love the way it makes me feel&#039;<\/h2>\n<p>Darren (not his real name), now 24, has been smoking cannabis since he was 13.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;After a busy day at work, you go home and light up and it just relaxes the mind, the body. And, all of a sudden, everything&#039;s OK,&quot; he says.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I love the way it makes me feel relaxed.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Darren agrees with Faye that many young people see cannabis as the safer option to drinking alcohol.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;You hear how alcohol can kill, cause liver damage, affect your speech,&quot; he says. &quot;People lose limbs and life by doing silly things.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;But you don&#039;t hear that so much about weed. So, it sounds like a softer option - &#039;I&#039;m getting a buzz, but I&#039;m not going to die.&#039;&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Darren admits that smoking cannabis may have had a detrimental affect on his exam grades and general achievement. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;I&#039;ve done great. But maybe I could have done better? That&#039;s the conflict I have daily with smoking weed,&quot; he says.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s lovely in the moment. But then the guilt kicks in an hour later.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;And it&#039;s costly. And it makes me lazy, sometimes.&quot;<\/p>\n<h2>&#039;More normalised now&#039;<\/h2>\n<p>But Darren says that, whatever the positives or negatives of cannabis, the idea of its use being confined to seedy pubs and clubs is far from reality.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;You walk out of work or the shopping centre and there are people who sell weed and they&#039;ll have no issue approaching you,&quot; he says.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s much more normalised now. People think of it as teenagers on the street corner - but it goes far beyond that, I know.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;There are mothers out there smoking it. There are grandparents, police officers, teachers.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Faye adds: &quot;It&#039;s not just school kids - it stretches far beyond the people you think would do drugs.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>She believes the taboo around the use of cannabis for private recreational use should be challenged.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I did some ecstasy because they&#039;re cheap - but now I do cannabis,&quot; Faye says. &quot;It&#039;s a treat. It&#039;s not something I do regularly.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I just think we need to stop judging people, at the end of the day.&quot;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Getty Images &quot;For me, having cannabis in the evening is the equivalent of having a glass of wine on a Friday night. &quot;People of my generation see cannabis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":143436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}