For Tory MP Charles Walker, the chair of the all-party parliamentary committee looking at children and cannabis, the damage that has been done both by the historical and generational tolerance of cannabis and by the government's out-of-date attitudes has meant that a seriously dangerous drug is not recognised as such.
"I have met and spoken to so many families who have been devastated – I mean devastated – by this drug," he said. "It is clearly highly addictive both psychically and psychologically and the damage is terrible: high-achieving children turning into shadows of their former selves and creating widespread misery.
"I think there is a historical legacy, which is why cannabis has been so downgraded by people in their 40s and 50s like me who don't understand that we are facing a different drug from the one everyone smoked in their youth. I wish we could change its name from cannabis to emphasise that.
"It's a hallucinogenic drug and it's having a far greater effect on the teenage mind, whose chemical make-up is so delicate. I think we need a new awareness. Better education in schools, far less tolerance from society. Let's intervene earlier and let's forget the historical legacy of our own experiences because they are obsolete. Thank God, as a parent myself, that I found out about this in order to talk to my own children before they reach their teenage years."
But not everyone is convinced we are sitting on an enormous generational time bomb. Author Anthony Horowitz attacked what he called the "Myerson angst" of fearful parenting. The author of the boy spy Alex Ryder books has two teenage sons. "Frankly, we need to lighten up a bit. We need a little less angst and fear about teenage boys – after all, we have to remember they grow up to be us."
He said he could not be a children's writer if he didn't have a belief in the essentially positive nature of young people. "The constant demonising of them by press and government and now by parents is a drip-drip of venom that will only erode their faith in themselves."
