Cannabis dependency is affecting tens of thousands of people and nobody is really sure what to do about them, expert says

Legalising the drug could allow for the more help and research for those that are hit by dependency, expert claims

(Reuters)

Tens of thousands may have problems with cannabis and are unable or unwilling to get help, according to one expert.

The number of people presenting themselves for treatment with cannabis problems is a huge proportion of the number of people with drug problems and is getting bigger, according to research by Ian Hamilton from the University of York. And those people may represent only a small fraction of the total number of people with problems.

As many as nine out of ten people with problems are not presenting themselves for treatment because they are afraid or otherwise unwilling to seek treatment, or that treatment does not exist. Of those people that do seek treatment, it is unlikely that they will be spotted and no real evidence-based treatment yet exists.

Spotting the presenting problems at all can be difficult, Ian said.

Identifying the relatively well-known cannabis psychosis is more easy and those people can then be diverted into relevant services.

“But people are reporting with dependency — an inability to control their cannabis use,” Ian. “And also anger management problems, such as irritability and an inability to manage their feelings.

“Interestingly these people weren’t your classic heroin users — these people were usually in employment, juggling their problems along with work. And they were basically just were looking for some support and some ideas.”

Many drug treatment workers see cannabis problems as less significant than those caused by harder drugs. But they can cause huge problems for those experiencing them, with huge legal and financial consequences.

“You’ve got a culture within drug services of seeing harder drugs like heroin and crack cocaine as very problematic, and cannabis being seen as a lesser problem, “Ian. “The cannabis users themselves may not think that it’s something that warrants treatment, or that treatment has something to offer.”

Because drug treatment workers have little training in cannabis dependency and related problems, they might miss the opportunity to diagnose people undergoing them.

“You have this paradoxical situation where you’ve got cannabis clients who are the experts and treatment workers who are the novices,” Ian. “We coined the term ‘cannabis connoisseur’: someone who’s very aware of the different types of cannabis and the effects it can have, versus treatment staff who are pretty naïve about cannabis and tend to think in terms of resin.”

One of the ways of reducing the number of people with problems would be decriminilisation, Ian suggests. That makes more people likely to seek treatment, as well as reducing or removing the other problems like those that are caused by people getting criminal records for cannabis possession.