Australia: Psychosis link to soft drug laws

CRIMINAL sanctions for growing and possessing cannabis should be tightened, according to the Howard Government, which is increasingly concerned by the havoc drugs are wreaking on Australia's young minds.

One drug expert warned yesterday that the rising number of people using illicit substances was a mental health "time bomb".

The warning came just days after a report exposed how psychologically ill patients were dying because of poorly co-ordinated care.

Parliamentary secretary for health Christopher Pyne, who has oversight on drugs, also blasted relaxed state cannabis laws, saying the states "all need to toughen up their laws dramatically", especially in regard to cultivation and personal use.

A separate report this week also revealed that one in 10 Australians had tried the so-called "party drug" methamphetamine and were 11 times more likely to suffer psychosis.

But methamphetamine is just one of many recreational drugs experts now say can lead directly to mental health problems such as schizophrenia.

NSW figures show usage rates for cannabis, amphetamines and ecstasy are all rising. While there are no national statistics for new cases of psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia, figures this week from South Australia show a disturbing link between drug use and mental health problems - and a further association with criminality.

Forensic psychologist Craig Raeside reviewed more than 2000 people facing criminal charges whom he assessed from 2001 to 2005, and found more than 75per cent used marijuana, and 58 per cent amphetamines.

Of the marijuana users, 60per cent had a mental illness, compared with 71per cent of the amphetamine users.

While 27per cent of Australians aged 14 and over confessed in a national survey in 1985 to having tried cannabis, by last year that had risen to 33.6per cent - a proportion drug experts claim would have been 10percentage points higher had the question's wording not been changed in 2001.

Amphetamine use also rose, from 7per cent to 9.1per cent over the same time. Ecstasy use shot up from 2.2per cent in 1991 to 7.5per cent last year.

One of the authors of last week's report on the crumbling mental health system, Ian Hickie, said amphetamine-related drugs were "very clearly associated with schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses" and that the rising use of methamphetamine alone "would be expected to have a very dramatic effect on the incidence rates and increase in severity" of mental health problems.

The rising use of recreational drugs was "a major issue for public policy", because the evidence now seemed conclusive that use of cannabis and several other substances wrongly thought of as harmless "party drugs" contributed both to psychotic mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and to non-psychotic complaints including anxiety and depression.

"It's a bit like cigarette smoking 50 years ago, when it was associated with a lot of vascular and lung diseases," he said.

"A lot of people said: 'Well, it's not the cause (of lung cancer) on its own and you shouldn't do anything until you know the actual cause.'

"But in reality, the epidemiological evidence is there to suggest we should be trying to minimise exposure to cannabis in young teenagers, and certainly trying to minimise the total use."

Another expert, Paul Dillon, information manager of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, said that while the figures on people using cannabis were rising relatively slowly, this concealed the fact that young people were using the drug more often, using more of it, smoking the stronger parts of the plant and doing so in a riskier way.

"You put those factors together and what you have got is a real time bomb in terms of what this could do to some young people," he said.

Mr Pyne singled out South Australia as "the most lax", for issuing on-the-spot fines for growing cannabis for personal use.

He called on all state governments to ensure that there was no lessening of the severity of penalties between cannabis and other drugs.

"It concerns me that the penalties at the state level for private use and cultivation are solacking in seriousness," Mr Pyne said.

"The states should recognise their role in sending the right message."

Professor Hickie said any further moves towards decriminalisation should be resisted, and there was also a problem with suggestions of making cannabis available for medical use, if this promoted an idea that it was healthy.

South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson defended the state's laws. "We have strengthened laws so that anyone caught growing cannabis hydroponically has to front court, as does anyone growing more than one plant in a way other than hydroponically," he said.

NSW Premier Morris Iemma has already written to John Howard and state and territory leaders calling for a mental health summit early next year. His spokesman said the Government was "concerned about ... the impact these substances can have".

Additional reporting: Jeremy Roberts

Newshawk: http://www.napnt.org
Pubdate: Sat, 29 Oct 2005
Source: The Australian
Author: Author: Adam Cresswell and Simon Kearney
Website: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/