Whether or not there is a new middle-class phenomenon of teenagers – mostly boys but also some girls – who are at best losing great swaths of their youth and at worst endangering their mental health to the mind-numbing effects of skunk is at the moment only anecdotal. But certainly there is a huge rise in the numbers of articulate parents who are prepared to speak out about their experiences.
Strong cannabis is nothing new: its hallucinogenic effects were recorded at the beginning of civilisation and echoed in literature in stories of writers from Alexandre Dumas to Paul Bowles. But many believe that the new, hydroponically grown strain is a thoroughly modern threat to a generation who see traditionally "addictive" drugs like heroin and crack as "dirty", and cannabis as somehow the healthy herb despite its genetically modified new form.
In the foreword to a 1972 report to US President Richard Nixon and Congress of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, the commission's chairman wrote: "Seldom in the nation's history has there been a phenomenon more divisive, more misunderstood, more fraught with impact on family, personal, and community relationships than the marihuana phenomenon."
As the commission noted more than 30 years ago, the concept of cannabis dependency or addiction and its impact on health and psychology was highly prone to misunderstanding and disagreement, something that seems to be the same today.
Over decades, successive government committees, books, research papers, medical studies and experts have taken robust views, opposing views and speculative ones. In the US at the moment there is a movement to use cannabis to treat hyperactive primary age children, while other experts claim it has links to schizophrenia, depression and even testicular cancer.
"What is clear is that nothing is clear," said Harry Shapiro, the director of communications at the charity Drugscope.
"There are problems associated with cannabis and nobody has ever denied that. A lot of our members who are active in young people's drug treatment services or psychiatry will of course only be seeing the worst-case scenarios. If a million or so people are using cannabis in the country, then obviously that is not the normal experience. An issue that is coming up now is this idea that cannabis is 20 or 50 times stronger than it used to be, but the forensic data makes it clear that, as more and more cannabis is grown in this country, that will be producing a stronger kind of cannabis, about twice the strength, maybe, of what you would expect from the resin of the 1970s. But you can't say that that means it is twice the danger," he said.
