THE FAMILIES TORN APART BY TEENAGE SKUNK EPIDEMIC

It is the end of a taboo: articulate, middle-class parents are
speaking out about the nightmare of seeing their children spiral into
drug abuse and, all too often, mental illness. Many blame themselves
for staying silent, assuming that modern strains of cannabis were
little different from the pot that baby boomers smoked at college. The
reality is very different

Tracy McVeigh, chief reporter The Observer,

In the front room of a stucco-fronted three-bedroom home in Chiswick,
a deeply middle-class suburb in comfortable west London, Susanne
apologises for the smell of the recently walked dog, but it is the
sweetly oppressive stink of skunk cannabis that lingers most strongly
among the plumped-up Ikea cushions.

"It does reek," said the 52-year-old mother-of-two, sniffing. "That
bloody boy has been smoking that stuff down here when I've been out
with the bloody dog." She puts her head in her hands. "The smell gives
me such a headache."

John and Susanne were happy to talk about life with a son who
regularly uses cannabis, but changed their minds about giving their
real names or occupations after watching the fallout that has engulfed
author Julie Myerson, whose estrangement from her cannabis-smoking son
Jake was deepened when she wrote a book about his behaviour that
culminated in him being thrown out of the family home.

The couple's own 17-year-old son, also called Jake, insists on the use
of his name. "I'm not ashamed, you know. I have looked it all up and
read a lot of research and I am quite well informed," he said.
"Actually, all my friends are; it's the so-called adults who have
forgotten that they did a bit of this themselves when they were young
- - a long time ago," he added with a sarcastic grin at his mother.

"He reads what he wants to read, hippy websites mostly," said his
mother, who has a whole folder of clipped-out newspaper articles and
internet printouts full of research and opinion on cannabis that she
regularly tries to get Jake to read. It sounds like a well rehearsed
exchange between the pair.

"We certainly have had these discussions again and again for two
years. Paradoxically, it's when he's stoned that he actually engages,"
she said.

His parents had thought it was the au pair who was smoking in the
house when Jake began using cannabis at the age of 15. "We thought we
were ready for a bit of pot," said John. "Our daughter came back from
a party and was really ill from it when she was 15 and we teased her
about it - of course, she never touched it again. I smoked at
university, we all did, and always envisaged how I'd tackle it
chummily with my kids, play the cool dad. God, how stupid. This stuff
is not the same ballgame."

Then came the school truancy and the stealing. "All for a drug they
try to tell us isn't addictive," said Susanne. "His life is
disintegrating before our eyes."

Debra Bell will use her real name. From south London, her son William
is now 21 and also through the worst of what she believes was a skunk
addiction that turned a sporty public schoolboy into a violent,
aggressive thief.

"We knew about cannabis, but nothing about skunk. It was all such a
shock," she said.

"We were undermined as parents, by the government downgrading it, by
doctors not taking it seriously. William could just shrug his
shoulders and say everybody at school was doing it, and it was pretty
obvious in the months that followed that they were.

"My husband is a barrister and he started to see that this was a drug
addiction. He began to wash his hands of him, but this was my
beautiful boy. we fell out a lot over it. Guy's stance was tough and
eventually we did throw him out of the house and I didn't see him for
a year. It was a nightmare."

All her efforts to get help foundered. "The professionals were just
out of date in their understanding. We felt deeply ashamed that we
couldn't get a good outcome for our son, as he was sliding more and
more into this nightmare."

Now reconciled with William, Bell set up her own website in the end
and found a flood of other families desperate for such a helpline.
"Suddenly we were just hearing all these carbon-copy stories,
thousands. It is such a hidden subject, but such a huge phenomenon. No
respect for class or creed or colour. I think we have betrayed our
children through our ignorance. Our generation smoked, but here and
there. Everybody did it - but children didn't smoke it, children whose
brains were still developing."

Whether or not there is a new middle-class phenomenon of teenagers -
mostly boys but also some girls - who are at best losing great swaths
of their youth and at worst endangering their mental health to the
mind-numbing effects of skunk is at the moment only anecdotal. But
=ADcertainly there is a huge rise in the numbers of articulate parents
who are prepared to speak out about their experiences.

Strong cannabis is nothing new: its hallucinogenic effects were
recorded at the beginning of civilisation and echoed in literature in
stories of writers from Alexandre Dumas to Paul Bowles. But many
believe that the new, hydroponically grown strain is a thoroughly
modern threat to a generation who see traditionally "addictive" drugs
like heroin and crack as "dirty", and cannabis as somehow the healthy
herb despite its genetically modified new form.

In the foreword to a 1972 report to US President Richard Nixon and
Congress of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, the
commission's chairman wrote: "Seldom in the nation's history has there
been a phenomenon more divisive, more misunderstood, more fraught with
impact on family, personal, and community relationships than the
marihuana phenomenon."

As the commission noted more than 30 years ago, the concept of
cannabis dependency or addiction and its impact on health and
psychology was highly prone to misunderstanding and disagreement,
something that seems to be the same today.

Over decades, successive government committees, books, research
papers, medical studies and experts have taken robust views, opposing
views and speculative ones. In the US at the moment there is a
movement to use cannabis to treat hyperactive primary age children,
while other experts claim it has links to schizophrenia, depression
and even =ADtesticular cancer.

"What is clear is that nothing is clear," said Harry Shapiro, the
director of communications at the charity Drugscope.

"There are problems associated with cannabis and nobody has ever
denied that. A lot of our members who are active in young people's
drug treatment services or psychiatry will of course only be seeing
the worst-case scenarios. If a million or so people are using cannabis
in the country, then obviously that is not the normal experience. An
issue that is coming up now is this idea that cannabis is 20 or 50
times stronger than it used to be, but the forensic data makes it
clear that, as more and more cannabis is grown in this country, that
will be producing a stronger kind of cannabis, about twice the
strength, maybe, of what you would expect from the resin of the 1970s.
But you can't say that that means it is twice the danger," he said.

Shapiro stresses that vulnerable groups or those, especially young
men, with a pre-existing tendency to mental health problems, are more
likely to get into difficulty with cannabis.

"But for a lot of young boys it is about wasting time. And wasting
time is the biggest threat they'll face. Smoke it regularly for a
couple of years and you're doing nothing else. So while obviously the
mental health issues we know about are at the more dramatic end of
things, there are other issues and we have to be careful and look out
for the people likely to get into the most serious problems, who are
those self-medicating against problems in the family, at school, with
their friends." He feels there are myths around skunk and that strong
cannabis is nothing new. "Even in the 1960s we had Nepalese temple
balls and Thai sticks, the connoisseurs' cannabis if you like."

General statistics on drug use show the heroin-using population is
ageing: it is not attracting new users. But cheap alcohol and cannabis
are more attractive as patterns of drug use shift. "At the moment,
skunk is supplied by gangs growing it in houses and flats, and the
police are getting good at shutting those down. There is evidence
there is a growing demand for imported cannabis again, so if that goes
on you might just see another shift away from it."

Many people believe that waiting for change is not enough and
legislation is needed to deal with the problem. Helen Sello is in her
mid-50s and her son is schizophrenic. "I'm not sure which one thing
caused the other," she said. "Did the schizophrenia come from the drug
or was he self-medicating? It's not really a useful thing to do if you
have any high risk toward mental illness, and who knows who can pick
and choose?

"I thought it was perfectly harmless. I thought I'd prefer him to do
that more than getting drunk. I support legalisation, not because I
think young people take a great deal of notice of the law - they don't
- - but because I think that with legalisation comes control. Give
people more information: vulnerable young people need to know what
this drug can do. If anything makes me really angry it is that this is
such a polarised debate, an immature debate. It's either that cannabis
is good or it's bad."

For Tory MP Charles Walker, the chair of the all-party parliamentary
committee looking at children and cannabis, the damage that has been
done both by the historical and generational tolerance of cannabis and
by the government's out-of-date attitudes has meant that a seriously
dangerous drug is not recognised as such.

"I have met and spoken to so many families who have been devastated -
I mean devastated - by this drug," he said. "It is clearly highly
addictive both psychically and psychologically and the damage is
terrible: high-achieving children turning into shadows of their former
selves and creating widespread misery.

"I think there is a historical legacy, which is why cannabis has been
so downgraded by people in their 40s and 50s like me who don't
understand that we are facing a different drug from the one everyone
smoked in their youth. I wish we could change its name from cannabis
to emphasise that.

"It's a hallucinogenic drug and it's having a far greater effect on
the teenage mind, whose chemical make-up is so delicate. I think we
need a new awareness. Better education in schools, far less tolerance
from society. Let's intervene earlier and let's forget the historical
legacy of our own experiences because they are obsolete. Thank God, as
a parent myself, that I found out about this in order to talk to my
own children before they reach their teenage years."

But not everyone is convinced we are sitting on an enormous
generational time bomb. Author Anthony Horowitz attacked what he
called the "Myerson angst" of fearful parenting. The author of the boy
spy Alex Ryder books has two teenage sons. "Frankly, we need to
lighten up a bit. We need a little less angst and fear about teenage
boys - after all, we have to remember they grow up to be us."

He said he could not be a children's writer if he didn't have a belief
in the essentially positive nature of young people. "The constant
demonising of them by press and government and now by parents is a
drip-drip of venom that will only erode their faith in
themselves."

A 60-year-old mother from Plymouth agrees with not giving up on the
child. Her son is now 24 and lives in Wales. He began smoking cannabis
on a family camping holiday at the age of 15. "He doesn't like to come
back to Plymouth now, because many of his old friends are still in
their bedrooms, smoking dope. It's a nonsense that this is not an
addictive drug, a nonsense. I think he felt very guilty and knew he
was throwing these precious years down the drain.

"I pinned up articles in his bedroom, talked to him and talked to him.
It was a four-year nightmare: he stole his sisters' pocket money, he
frightened his sisters and he would kick their doors in to get money
or in rage. I had thought at first 'OK, he's a 15-year-old boy, he's
going to dabble' - I was so innocent at first."

But she believes she was right to wait it out until her son got fed up
of wasting his life. "Don't throw them out," she said. "Just love
them, give them nice food, make sure they know you are there for them.
Never give up on them and they'll come back to you."

Cannabis: a history

. Cannabis has been used for more than 4,000 years, including for medicinal
purposes in
Indian, Chinese and middle eastern civilisations. In China, it has been used
to treat
such conditions as malaria, constipation and rheumatism.

. Doctors in the west began to take an interest in its medicinal use
in the middle of the 19th century. Queen Victoria was prescribed
cannabis by her doctor to relieve period pain.

. The drug was outlawed in the United Kingdom in 1928, following an
international drugs conference in Geneva, at which an Egyptian
delegate claimed that it was a threat to society and as dangerous as
opium.

. Recreational use in the UK began in the 1950s as migrants from the
Caribbean arrived. It soared in popularity during the "flower power"
years in the 1960s.

. A Home Office investigation in 1968 concluded: "There is no evidence
that this activity is causing violent crime or aggression, anti-social
behaviour, or is producing in otherwise normal people conditions of
dependence or psychosis requiring medical treatment."

. Advanced cultivation techniques have led to an increase in potency
over the past 20 years. Average levels of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol,
the main psychoactive ingredient) in marijuana sold in America rose
from 3.5% in 1988 to 8.5% in 2006. "Skunk" is the most potent strain
and now dominates the UK market, according to Home Office research.