"Drugs
are not dangerous because they are illegal"…..
"Drugs are illegal
because
they are insidiously dangerous to mental health and the wellbeing of our society"
they are insidiously dangerous to mental health and the wellbeing of our society"
.
This website is a sincere attempt to share our life shattering experience as a way of highlighting the inevitable tragic outcomes that may occur as a result of the subtle and evil influences of cannabis/marijuana use.
Our only son Warren's pot smoking habit which slowly developed into an addiction then eventually lead to his suicide has resulted in unbelievable and ongoing grief for all of his family and friends.
It is our aim to utilise this website facility to advise and warn others that inappropriate cannabis/marijuana use can unexpectedly impose similar problems on many other loving but unsuspecting families.
We share this painful experience in the hope that maybe better informed parents and/or grand parents will be able to make use of this information in their efforts to protect their children and ensure that they can look forward confidently to a positive and productive future.
We tragically lost this long and too often pain filled struggle, which went on for nineteen years, as we all endeavoured to help Warren overcome the dire effects of his cannabis/marijuana addiction.
On 13th December 2000, our beloved son chose suicide to terminate his ongoing anguish and hanged himself on his 33rd birthday, in the basement garage of the house he was renting in Warkworth.
His lifeless body was discovered by his mother and father that same evening.
We share this painful experience in the hope that maybe better informed parents and/or grand parents will be able to make use of this information in their efforts to protect their children and ensure that they can look forward confidently to a positive and productive future.
We tragically lost this long and too often pain filled struggle, which went on for nineteen years, as we all endeavoured to help Warren overcome the dire effects of his cannabis/marijuana addiction.
On 13th December 2000, our beloved son chose suicide to terminate his ongoing anguish and hanged himself on his 33rd birthday, in the basement garage of the house he was renting in Warkworth.
His lifeless body was discovered by his mother and father that same evening.
Those who knew Warren before he discovered cannabis/marijuana at the age of 14, (when he subsequently became hooked), have aptly described him as being ‘a real neat kid’, that sort of person one would love to have as a son, a brother or as a good friend.
The path of Warren's decline was both subtle and insidious.
As concerned parents with very limited knowledge or experience of the problems associated with cannabis/marijuana use we sought early advice.
Unfortunately we were misled into believing that our opinions and 'instinctive' misgivings were probably out of date.
Warren’s use of cannabis/marijuana was deemed by far too many 'healthcare experts' to be quite normal for these times.
Sadly, we were incorrectly advised not to worry, as cannabis was a
'a benign and relatively harmless herb'.....
"He would grow out of it."
The path of Warren's decline was both subtle and insidious.
As concerned parents with very limited knowledge or experience of the problems associated with cannabis/marijuana use we sought early advice.
Unfortunately we were misled into believing that our opinions and 'instinctive' misgivings were probably out of date.
Warren’s use of cannabis/marijuana was deemed by far too many 'healthcare experts' to be quite normal for these times.
Sadly, we were incorrectly advised not to worry, as cannabis was a
'a benign and relatively harmless herb'.....
"He would grow out of it."
If only we had known back then, what we have now since learned ????
Pot was even suggested by some badly ill informed counsellors as being a safer option than the consumption of alcohol for youth transiting that difficult period from childhood through puberty and on into the stark realities and responsibilities of adulthood.
Are these dangerous myths still being perpetuated?
Are responsible parents still being mislead by some of those claiming to be experts?
As a result, are parents and care givers remaining unaware of the serious potential mental health risks and the addictive nature of cannabis/marijuana?
This raises these attendant downstream questions of.....
Pot was even suggested by some badly ill informed counsellors as being a safer option than the consumption of alcohol for youth transiting that difficult period from childhood through puberty and on into the stark realities and responsibilities of adulthood.
Are these dangerous myths still being perpetuated?
Are responsible parents still being mislead by some of those claiming to be experts?
As a result, are parents and care givers remaining unaware of the serious potential mental health risks and the addictive nature of cannabis/marijuana?
This raises these attendant downstream questions of.....
- Whether cannabis/marijuana use by teenagers may seriously inhibit their maturing process by allowing them to obliviously 'smoke' their way through many crisis situations and hence avoid the pain, reality and the chance to learn something from the experiences they should be confronting, rather than getting stoned and denying such situations exist or need addressing?
- How is the readily apparent lack of or loss of motivation, absence of forward planning or direction, the inability to set goals, and poor time management, as demonstrated by many young people, in any way going to be improved if the laws with regard to cannabis/marijuana were to be liberalized?
- How do you educate unsuspecting parents when we see politicians from the NZ Green Party appearing on prime time television and promoting as part of their agenda, the idea that in the hands of responsible mature adults cannabis/marijuana use is not a problem?
- As the number of children and youth using cannabis/marijuana now appears to be ever increasing, what chance does this bunch have of ever becoming the so called responsible mature adults of the future?
- Given that many 25 to 40 year olds may have now been using cannabis/marijuana for more than half of their lives, should it be any great surprise that this is the group that appear to most strongly promote the liberalization of NZ's current cannabis/marijuana laws? Just how mature and responsible are this group?
- The NZ Government initiatives to target alcohol abuse, in their drive to lower the road toll, now at long last appear to be having some success. Just how much does the injudicious use of cannabis/marijuana add to our road carnage?
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Away back in October 1991, when visiting New Zealand, Professor Gabriel Nahas, a physiologist and pharmacologist and professor of anaesthesiology at Columbia University in New York, also a consultant to the United Nations Commission on Narcotics and to the World Health Organization, was reported in NZ Herald, Thursday October 17 1991 as saying
"People who advocated the free use of marijuana were 'social nihilists'
They are a bunch of misdirected intellectuals who do not want their own marijuana use disturbed and libertarians who want people to have the freedom to destroy themselves. They are denying scientific realities."
"The long-term effects of the free use of marijuana in the 60s and 70s were only now being measured in the United States." he said
"There were increased rates of schizophrenia, rare leukemia's and other medical problems coming to light. The rates of which these disorders were reported would increase further."
Professor Nahas said American high school students were accepting the anti-drug warnings, but New Zealand was about 10 years behind and locked in the belief that marijuana was harmless.
"People who believe marijuana smoking is okay will have a big vacuum in their brain in years to come."
"The expansion of consciousness that marijuana users talk about is actually an impairment of brain function that leads to mental disorganization."
Are people who advocate the free use of marijuana 'social nihilists'?
nihilist [noun] 1 a : a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless.
b : a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths.
2 : a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility
If we were 10 years behind in 1991, how much further behind are we now?
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In a letter published in NZ Herald 4 June 1997 Dr K.M. Ewen, MB ChB, FRCS, FRACS(retd) stated:
Cannabis indifference
I am amazed and dismayed by the superficial debate by our politicians about cannabis.
Successive Ministers of Health and of Social Welfare have failed to address this problem adequately.
Cannabis is a fat-soluble drug which lodges in all tissues, especially the brain. It has a "half life" of about 7 days and therefore anyone who smokes it at least weekly has a steadily rising blood level.
It has all the bad properties of alcohol excess and thus the "foetal alcohol syndrome" as it crosses the placenta readily.
Brain damage occurs in the foetus more severely than in adults and effects the higher centers involving conscience, moral behaviour, short-term memory and later long-term memory.
These deficits become obvious in regular users.
We face a social and economic crisis as a result of this. Road accidents, violence in the home, the rising crime rate all receive a contribution from cannabis.
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That cannabis use is having a severe detrimental effect on New Zealand society is not in contention.
Anecdotal and increasing medical evidence suggests that the surge in the number of people now experiencing schizophrenic like hallucinations and delusions or voices commanding them towards inappropriate behaviour is directly related to the ever increasing numbers of users of cannabis.
The role that marijuana use played in major NZ tragedies like the mass shootings of innocent victims at Aramoana
This MASS MURDERER was a CANNABIS GROWER (David Gray). He killed 13 people at Aramoana on the 13 November, 1990.
https://aramoanmassacre.weebly.com/significance-of-the-aramoana-massacre-to-new-zealanders.html
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10685887
and Raurimu
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11788645
https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/5259161/Raurimu-killer-back-in-custody
will always remain a matter for conjecture?
This is the first post to http://cannabisvictim.blogspot.com/ and future items will contain thought provoking data and information that will hopefully challenge the currently held beliefs of many children and their parents/grand parents and may possibly threaten their comfort zones.
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NZ Primary School pupils in drugs figures
Last updated 05:00 04/01/2011
Children as young as seven have been removed from schools for drug, smoking and alcohol offences, new figures show.
Ministry of Education figures show that seven-year-old pupils had been suspended or stood down from school for these offences every year between 2007 and 2010.
The figures were released to The Press under the Official Information Act.
Nearly all the children involved got the substances from home, said Canterbury police district youth services co-ordinator Senior Sergeant John Robinson.
"We can feel sorry for the seven-year-olds, but we have to look at who is behind them and influencing them as they are the real culprits who need to be sorted out," he said.
"These children live in an environment where this behaviour is accepted, and they're learning a behaviour that's very hard to unlearn."
New Zealand Principals' Federation immediate past-president Ernie Buutveld said primary school pupils with drugs, cigarettes or alcohol were generally showing off to friends.
Intermediate pupils, however, were selling them or giving them to classmates.
Consumption at school was a minor problem and generally confined to secondary pupils on camps or trips
The figures show that the number of seven-year-olds stood down for "drugs, including substance abuse" was small, "fewer than five". A handful were suspended.
Similar figures were recorded for smoking and alcohol offences.
Buutveld said he had heard of cases in Auckland where drugs had been sold at primary and intermediate schools as part of a gang-recruitment process.
"The tricky thing is having the resources to extract and deal with these kids as you can't just pull them out of school for six weeks and expect all will be well when they return."
Schools were not equipped to deal with the root of the problem.
Police and agencies like Child, Youth and Family (CYF) were responsible, but there needed to be a collective response and better communication between the parties.
In 2009, a study found that nine-year-olds were using cannabis and children as young as four were trying alcohol.
The study of 12,000 young people, led by Christchurch researcher Elisabeth Wells of Otago University, found that the onset of drinking rose "very steeply from age 12", while many were smoking cannabis by 15.
Several schools had raised the drug problem with police, said Robinson.
Drugs were being acquired from home.
The drug doing the most damage to Canterbury secondary school pupils was alcohol, he said.
Stand-down and suspension figures have remained fairly static since 2007, with between 20,000 and 21,000 stand-downs and 4000 to 5000 suspensions a year.
Pupils were most often removed from school for continual disobedience or assault.
Fourteen-year-olds were the most likely to be suspended or stood down, and they were the largest represented in each year's data.
A principal can stand down a pupil for up to five days.
A suspension is the formal removal of a pupil until the school's board of trustees decides the outcome at a special meeting.
SCHOOL STATS
By October there had been, in 2010:
1451 stand-downs and 1036 suspensions for drug offences.
4321 stand-downs and 620 suspensions for assaulting other pupils.
457 stand-downs and 156 suspensions for assaulting staff.
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http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/4510313/Primary-pupils-in-drugs-figures#comments
