The streets of Barcelona reek of marijuana. As in New York or other cities in the United States, as correspondent Francesc Peirón explained at the beginning of this month. We have not yet given up tobacco – one in five Spaniards over the age of 15 continue to smoke daily – and we are getting hooked on joints.
2.9% of the population aged 15 to 64 consumes cannabis (marijuana or hashish) every day (9%, alcohol, for comparison), according to surveys by the Ministry of Health and the Observatory of Drugs and Addictions. Up to 15% of teenagers aged 14 to 18 and of the population aged between 15 and 35 have consumed it in the last month. Usually smoked and mixed with tobacco.
There is a widespread misconception among teenagers that cannabis is healthier than tobacco. The Fundación contra la Drogadicción (FAD Juventud) launched a campaign this summer to debunk myths like this one about leeks, which are a symbol of nothing more than getting hooked on an addictive substance.
Those who have been treating addictions for years or studying the effects of cannabis on the body are categorical: it is addictive and harmful. It causes cognitive alterations that affect brain reaction time and motor coordination; like alcohol, it alters perception and has a disinhibiting effect, which can encourage, for example, risky sexual behaviour. From emotional to cardiac disorders, it affects memory and favors psychoses are attributed to cannabis. The psychotropic it contains, THC, acts like brain neuromodulators and confuses brain maturation.
Peirón explained that the Department of Health of the United States has asked to reduce the federal restrictions on cannabis, that the anti-drug agency (DEA) lower its risk category. It could be the step towards its federal legalization (it is already authorized to a greater or lesser extent in 40 states). It seems that the Biden Administration is throwing in the towel on health in the face of the magnitude of drug trafficking. Perhaps he has calculated that it will make more sense to pay for addiction treatment or that the problem will not be more worrying than the almost 70,000 deaths in 2022 due to fentanyl overdose.
In Spain, the illegal cultivation and trafficking of cannabis has also become industrialized, overflowing police controls. Will we also end up throwing in the towel on addiction?
