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In the deep, dark infinite expanses of outer space, there exists what are commonly referred to as “black holes”. Invisible to the most powerful telescopes, black holes are an area of such immense gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape.

Well, you might be surprised to know that we have black holes right here on Earth and, in fact, right here in Australia, and they exist in clever disguise. For as well as preventing light from escaping, they are curiously designed to stop light from getting in. These earthly black holes are invisible to the naked eye and identifiable more by what they don’t reveal, than what they do.

Take, for example, two national and well-established government-funded surveys focusing on, among other things, adolescent illicit drug use. Both these surveys seem more remarkable for the questions that they do not ask – along with answers they do not seek to know – than the questions they do.

The 2022-23 Australian Secondary School Students’ Alcohol and Drug survey (ASSAD, released in December 2023) reveals that about 10 per cent of 12-15-year-old Australian high-school students have smoked cannabis. That equates to about 300,000 Australian kids.

Frighteningly, this figure almost triples for students by the time they reach the ages of 16 and 17. Results from survey questions tied to age cohorts unequivocally demonstrate cannabis use dramatically increases as a child grows from age 12 to age 17.

Danger Zone

This data conclusively shows that cannabis use among adolescents increases exponentially as they progress through their high-school years, yet this important conclusion is not recognised in the survey. It beggars belief that such an obvious conclusion is not drawn out from the data and is just swallowed and submerged under the crowd of data. There for all not to see.

It should not be left up to authorities and parents to read between the lines of reams of data, paid for by the taxpayer, to understand the gradual, increasing dangers facing adolescents as they move through high school.

With more than a third of Australians having used cannabis in their lifetime, there is now strong evidence that they started using it as teenagers.

Furthermore, while ASSAD asks students where and when they smoke cannabis, it doesn’t ask the blatantly obvious question of where they obtained the cannabis in the first place. Which is a bit odd when you consider that the same survey asks this very question about alcohol.

Does a teenager come to possess cannabis at home, at the shopping centre, on the street, at the local park or at the movies? Or do they acquire drugs in school? If we remember that cannabis is an illegal substance and that supplying it is a crime, it is a sure bet that the kids are not queuing up to tell their parents or other adults where they get their cannabis from.

One thing is clear, though: If surveys do not ask this question, how will anyone ever know?

Obtaining cannabis is the first critical step a young person takes on the road to self-destruction and a lifetime of misery. So, if a national survey does not seek to learn where kids get their cannabis, what is the point of the survey?

Other recent Australian research comes from the taxpayer-funded 2022–23 National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS). The NDSHS, released in February, informs us that 61 per cent of over 14-year-olds sourced their cannabis from friends but, as with the ASSAD survey, it doesn’t say where these friends are when this supply of cannabis occurs.

Internationally, the answers to some of these black-hole questions are explored by research at “Michael’s House” Treatment Centre in Palm Springs, California. This research reveals that at least 60 per cent of all illicit drugs that pass through adolescent hands are stored, sold and/or used at their schools. And it is a fact that adolescents spend more than 80 per cent of the time they are in the company or proximity of friends, at school.

So, does this not strongly suggest that in Australia, most kids get their cannabis while they are at or in proximity of their school?

The aforementioned “hidden” Australian data, coupled with more rigorous overseas research, offers a gut-wrenching conclusion of a cannabis-dealing supply network going on under everyone’s nose in the nation’s high schools.

I wonder how parents might view this when preparing to send their precious primary-school graduates off on their first day of high school?

More Potent

Another data vortex rarely spoken of in Australia is that the potency of cannabis has risen over the last couple of decades. Rewind to the last century, when tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient of cannabis, registered on average about 3 per cent content. Fast-forward to the present, and, with the help of advanced cultivation techniques, growth additives and the introduction of different cannabis strains, the THC potency of some cannabis (including “medicinal”) has sky-rocketed into the galactical cosmos.

In Britain, the long-established and respected journal, Addiction, has been publishing addiction-related research for over a century. Recent studies have confirmed that between 2000 and 2017, the THC concentration in cannabis has tripled to an average of 25 per cent.

The studies also show that cannabis use in adolescence approximately doubles the risks of early school-leaving, cognitive impairment and psychoses; and cannabis use in adolescence is also associated strongly with the use of other illicit drugs.

The task of finding recent research into the potency of cannabis in Australia can be accurately described as “looking for a needle in a haystack”. By contrast, the United States provides valuable insights and tragic examples of the impacts of highly potent cannabis. See, for example, the Youth Marijuana Prevention site, Johnny’s Ambassadors (johnnysambassadors.org).

Further, in the review article, “Adverse Health Effects of Marijuana Use” (The New England Journal of Medicine, June 5, 2014), Dr Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse et al. caution that, during the developmental periods of an adolescent brain, it is intrinsically more vulnerable than a mature brain to the adverse long-term effects of environmental insults, such as exposure to THC.

Lifelong Damage

Dr Volkow and her co-authors write that greater drug potency and exposure at a younger age may result in long-lasting changes in brain function that can jeopardise educational, professional, and social achievements.

In Schizophrenia Bulletin (November 2014), published by the National Library of Medicine, the article, “Daily Use, Especially of High-Potency Cannabis, Drives the Earlier Onset of Psychosis in Cannabis Users” (Marta Di Forti et al.), discusses and confirms that cannabis use is associated with an earlier age of onset of psychosis, with the use of high-potency cannabis independently associated with a significantly higher likelihood to require contact with services for psychosis.

Results from taxpayer-funded adolescent health surveys inform government, government agencies, health professionals, youth workers, teachers and parents about the dangers facing emerging generations of young people. This information then aids in identifying best practice and solutions for the devastating effects of cannabis on young people and, by extension, the wider community.

Surveys such as the ASSAD and NDSHS must ask more direct questions of the people that they survey and draw attention to the answers so that important information is not lost amid the mass of data.

Ultimately, black holes – unasked questions and information vacuums – do more to hide than expose what needs to be shouted from the rooftops: that highly potent cannabis is being traded in high schools right across Australia, and no one is doing anything about it.

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Republished with thanks to News Weekly.

Kevin McDonald is a retired detective sergeant from Perth and is a member of the DACA executive.