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Heather D’Alessio remembers drug education in high school that consisted mainly of dire warnings about the consequences of using any of them.
She was smoking pot by Grade 9, so she disregarded the advice.
“Most of the time, they would give us these fact sheets on cannabis. Then we’d all take it out to the corner and get high and laugh at it because we thought it was stupid.”
Governments and public health advocates are now launching new education campaigns to warn young people about the health risks of marijuana, which will soon be legal across Canada.
D’Alessio, an articulate and self-aware 22-year-old, has some advice about what might work and what definitely won’t, based on her own experience as an independent-minded teenager.
For starters, she could have used a few facts to counter her assumption, common among teenagers, that “everyone is doing it.” Canadian youth have some of the highest rates of marijuana use in the world, but teenage pot smokers still constitute a minority, and the vast majority of them are not heavy users. About 20 per cent of teenagers aged 15 to 19 reported using marijuana at least once in 2015, according to Statistics Canada, while the rate for 20 to 24-year-olds was nearly 30 per cent.
D’Alessio says the “just say no” message she heard at school did not acknowledge there is a spectrum that ranges from occasional users to addicts, which led her to distrust everything the authorities had to say about cannabis.
“They said if you use at all it’s problematic. I knew that wasn’t true, because I saw a lot of people using that didn’t have a problem with it.
“They really try to scare you, using fear tactics. So it kind of blurs the line for you: What information can I trust? What kind of things are they lying about?”
D’Alessio nailed what experts say has been a major failure of traditional drug-education programs. “The evidence shows that an abstinence, fear-based message does not resonate with the majority of kids,” says David Hammond, a professor of public health at the University of Waterloo. “It tends to work best with the kids who are the least likely to use drugs in the first place.”
With marijuana, there is an added legacy of decades of false or exaggerated health claims that go back to the infamous “Reefer Madness” propaganda film from the 1930s that showed crazed people jumping out windows after smoking “the burning weed with its roots in hell.”
That was followed by decades of campaigns that lumped marijuana in with more dangerous drugs.
The federal government has launched several cannabis education campaigns, which politicians say are a critical part of their bid to keep marijuana out of the hands of youth when the drug becomes legal for recreational use.
One of the biggest challenges faced by the government is to gain credibility, says Hammond.
“It’s almost saying to kids, ‘Look, the way we’ve communicated with you in the past hasn’t always been effective.’ Part of that is acknowledging they used to lump it together with every other illicit drug and just say, ‘This is your brain on drugs.’
“They need to somehow distinguish their new messaging from that, and say, ‘You have to believe it when we say there are additional risks when you use cannabis when you are a teenager and when you are younger.'”
Here is a vintage “This is your brain on drugs” commercial from the 1980s, followed by a parody of it:
The fact the federal government is legalizing pot may help, says Hammond said. “Because it’s kind of the most public way of saying, ‘Look, this is a new era for cannabis.’ And we are not in the business of just fear-mongering it anymore.”
Experts agree on a few other things when it comes to cannabis education for young people: It should be a conversation, not a lecture. And being judgmental or vilifying drug users isn’t helpful.
“We don’t know exactly what works in drug education, but we know what doesn’t work,” says Jenna Valleriani, a cannabis policy researcher who is a strategic adviser to the group Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Involving youth in creating and even delivering education programs is important, she says.
D’Alessio is a board member for the student group, which recently produced a toolkit for educators and parents on cannabis education that was funded by Canopy Growth Corp., the medical marijuana company based in Smiths Falls.
The toolkit stresses the importance of evidence-based education that also includes information about how to reduce the harms of cannabis use, such as avoiding high-potency products like “shatter,” not mixing pot with tobacco and reducing the amount and frequency of use.
Educators say there is a huge appetite for information because there are still many myths around cannabis.
Many teenagers, for example, don’t realize that pot impairs driving.
“Everybody knows you shouldn’t drink and drive, even the people who do it,” said Jane McCarthy, manager of program development for the organization Parent Action on Drugs.
“But there is a perception out there that cannabis is not such a big deal, it might even make you a better driver.”
There is also a widespread perception that marijuana is essentially harmless.
Dr. Sinthuja Suntharalingam, a staff psychiatrist at CHEO, says she has treated teenagers who have suffered a psychotic episode triggered by too much marijuana.
The teens — and their parents — are usually shocked. Many associate pot more with giggling fits or an attack of the munchies than a scary episode of losing touch with reality.
“They are quite taken aback that cannabis can do this,” she says. “Some of the parents are using it themselves, so it’s really hard for them to accept it can be causing this.”
Others don’t realize that starting cannabis use in early adolescence and using it heavily is associated with cognitive impairments and increased risk for mental health problems.
D’Alessio said she struggled with anxiety and depression as a teenager, but had no idea how that was related to her cannabis use. “There was no discussion around lifestyle, or what makes some individuals more likely to have an (addiction) issue.
“If they would have said, ‘If you have mental-health issues you are more likely to use (cannabis) as a coping mechanism,’ I might have reflected on that.”
Instead, her pot habit escalated until D’Alessio was smoking daily by Grade 11 and became addicted. Better education may have equipped her to realize when her use was becoming problematic, D’Alessio said.
The trajectory only changed after she suffered a psychotic episode triggered by cannabis and was hospitalized for a week or two. D’Alessio recovered with the help of a course of anti-psychotic medication and returned to school.
Her pot use dwindled as she got older. “I moved out, went to college, left the town where there wasn’t much to do. I was just too busy to be getting high and not doing anything.”
D’Alessio still uses cannabis occasionally, but doesn’t usually smoke it because she plays baseball and other sports and doesn’t want to impair her lungs. Besides, she works full-time and is planning to go to university. “I’m saving up for school. I have other priorities.”
jmiller@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JacquieAMiller
This is an example of a Health Canada ad campaign about cannabis aimed at youth that provides questions and answers. Some of the advertisements are featured on social media sites such as Instagram.
查看原文...
She was smoking pot by Grade 9, so she disregarded the advice.
“Most of the time, they would give us these fact sheets on cannabis. Then we’d all take it out to the corner and get high and laugh at it because we thought it was stupid.”
Governments and public health advocates are now launching new education campaigns to warn young people about the health risks of marijuana, which will soon be legal across Canada.
D’Alessio, an articulate and self-aware 22-year-old, has some advice about what might work and what definitely won’t, based on her own experience as an independent-minded teenager.
For starters, she could have used a few facts to counter her assumption, common among teenagers, that “everyone is doing it.” Canadian youth have some of the highest rates of marijuana use in the world, but teenage pot smokers still constitute a minority, and the vast majority of them are not heavy users. About 20 per cent of teenagers aged 15 to 19 reported using marijuana at least once in 2015, according to Statistics Canada, while the rate for 20 to 24-year-olds was nearly 30 per cent.
D’Alessio says the “just say no” message she heard at school did not acknowledge there is a spectrum that ranges from occasional users to addicts, which led her to distrust everything the authorities had to say about cannabis.
“They said if you use at all it’s problematic. I knew that wasn’t true, because I saw a lot of people using that didn’t have a problem with it.
“They really try to scare you, using fear tactics. So it kind of blurs the line for you: What information can I trust? What kind of things are they lying about?”
D’Alessio nailed what experts say has been a major failure of traditional drug-education programs. “The evidence shows that an abstinence, fear-based message does not resonate with the majority of kids,” says David Hammond, a professor of public health at the University of Waterloo. “It tends to work best with the kids who are the least likely to use drugs in the first place.”
With marijuana, there is an added legacy of decades of false or exaggerated health claims that go back to the infamous “Reefer Madness” propaganda film from the 1930s that showed crazed people jumping out windows after smoking “the burning weed with its roots in hell.”
That was followed by decades of campaigns that lumped marijuana in with more dangerous drugs.
The federal government has launched several cannabis education campaigns, which politicians say are a critical part of their bid to keep marijuana out of the hands of youth when the drug becomes legal for recreational use.
One of the biggest challenges faced by the government is to gain credibility, says Hammond.
“It’s almost saying to kids, ‘Look, the way we’ve communicated with you in the past hasn’t always been effective.’ Part of that is acknowledging they used to lump it together with every other illicit drug and just say, ‘This is your brain on drugs.’
“They need to somehow distinguish their new messaging from that, and say, ‘You have to believe it when we say there are additional risks when you use cannabis when you are a teenager and when you are younger.'”
Here is a vintage “This is your brain on drugs” commercial from the 1980s, followed by a parody of it:
The fact the federal government is legalizing pot may help, says Hammond said. “Because it’s kind of the most public way of saying, ‘Look, this is a new era for cannabis.’ And we are not in the business of just fear-mongering it anymore.”
Experts agree on a few other things when it comes to cannabis education for young people: It should be a conversation, not a lecture. And being judgmental or vilifying drug users isn’t helpful.
“We don’t know exactly what works in drug education, but we know what doesn’t work,” says Jenna Valleriani, a cannabis policy researcher who is a strategic adviser to the group Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Involving youth in creating and even delivering education programs is important, she says.
D’Alessio is a board member for the student group, which recently produced a toolkit for educators and parents on cannabis education that was funded by Canopy Growth Corp., the medical marijuana company based in Smiths Falls.
The toolkit stresses the importance of evidence-based education that also includes information about how to reduce the harms of cannabis use, such as avoiding high-potency products like “shatter,” not mixing pot with tobacco and reducing the amount and frequency of use.
Educators say there is a huge appetite for information because there are still many myths around cannabis.
Many teenagers, for example, don’t realize that pot impairs driving.
“Everybody knows you shouldn’t drink and drive, even the people who do it,” said Jane McCarthy, manager of program development for the organization Parent Action on Drugs.
“But there is a perception out there that cannabis is not such a big deal, it might even make you a better driver.”
There is also a widespread perception that marijuana is essentially harmless.
Dr. Sinthuja Suntharalingam, a staff psychiatrist at CHEO, says she has treated teenagers who have suffered a psychotic episode triggered by too much marijuana.
The teens — and their parents — are usually shocked. Many associate pot more with giggling fits or an attack of the munchies than a scary episode of losing touch with reality.
“They are quite taken aback that cannabis can do this,” she says. “Some of the parents are using it themselves, so it’s really hard for them to accept it can be causing this.”
Others don’t realize that starting cannabis use in early adolescence and using it heavily is associated with cognitive impairments and increased risk for mental health problems.
D’Alessio said she struggled with anxiety and depression as a teenager, but had no idea how that was related to her cannabis use. “There was no discussion around lifestyle, or what makes some individuals more likely to have an (addiction) issue.
“If they would have said, ‘If you have mental-health issues you are more likely to use (cannabis) as a coping mechanism,’ I might have reflected on that.”
Instead, her pot habit escalated until D’Alessio was smoking daily by Grade 11 and became addicted. Better education may have equipped her to realize when her use was becoming problematic, D’Alessio said.
The trajectory only changed after she suffered a psychotic episode triggered by cannabis and was hospitalized for a week or two. D’Alessio recovered with the help of a course of anti-psychotic medication and returned to school.
Her pot use dwindled as she got older. “I moved out, went to college, left the town where there wasn’t much to do. I was just too busy to be getting high and not doing anything.”
D’Alessio still uses cannabis occasionally, but doesn’t usually smoke it because she plays baseball and other sports and doesn’t want to impair her lungs. Besides, she works full-time and is planning to go to university. “I’m saving up for school. I have other priorities.”
jmiller@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JacquieAMiller
This is an example of a Health Canada ad campaign about cannabis aimed at youth that provides questions and answers. Some of the advertisements are featured on social media sites such as Instagram.
查看原文...
