Wes­ley Gib­bings

A re­cent­ly-re­leased re­port by the In­ter-Amer­i­can Drug Abuse Con­trol Com­mis­sion (CI­CAD) of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) has found that a grow­ing num­ber of T&T sec­ondary school stu­dents are turn­ing to the recre­ation­al use of mar­i­jua­na.

The re­port notes an in­crease in preva­lence from 6.4 per cent in 2010 to 10.7 per cent in 2013 in T&T. The re­gion­al av­er­age is 8.8 per cent. Over 4,100 lo­cal stu­dents were sur­veyed.

The CI­CAD re­port re­flects re­search con­duct­ed in 13 coun­tries, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, The Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Guyana, Haiti, Ja­maica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and T&T.

Re­searchers not­ed that while "by far the most wide­ly con­sumed sub­stance is al­co­hol," that was fol­lowed by mar­i­jua­na, which "con­tin­ues to be the most wide­ly used il­le­gal sub­stance re­port­ed by stu­dents."

It was al­so recog­nised as be­ing read­i­ly avail­able in most coun­tries of the re­gion and, in some in­stances, more wide­ly used than to­bac­co, with an av­er­age "first use" age of 13.

Iron­i­cal­ly, in Ja­maica, which has more re­laxed laws on the use of mar­i­jua­na, there has been lit­tle change in preva­lence among sec­ondary school stu­dents, 21.1 per cent of whom have tried it at least once, low­er than in coun­tries such as Do­mini­ca, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and St Kitts and Nevis.

In T&T, close to 70 per cent of stu­dents said they had tried al­co­hol at least once, about 49.4 per cent with­in the pre­vi­ous 12 months and 27.6 per cent less than a month be­fore be­ing sur­veyed, with girls mar­gin­al­ly out­num­ber­ing boys. This was al­most three times the preva­lence for re­cent mar­i­jua­na use.

A ma­jor­i­ty of stu­dents sur­veyed re­gion­al­ly for the re­port said they be­lieved that fre­quent mar­i­jua­na use was "very harm­ful." This per­cep­tion, how­ev­er, was not­ed to be in de­cline, 71.4 per cent in 2010 and 63 per cent in 2013.

There is al­so con­cern about the ef­fects of sec­ond-hand mar­i­jua­na smoke. More than half of all stu­dents sur­veyed (53.4 per cent) felt that in­hal­ing sec­ond-hand mar­i­jua­na smoke was al­so "very harm­ful." In T&T, the sta­tis­tic was 56.7 per cent.

A Cannabis Abuse Screen­ing Test (CAST) was used to de­ter­mine the lev­el of risk of abuse. It was found that the risk of cannabis abuse was 64 per cent re­gion-wide, 37.3 per cent at low risk and 26.6 per cent at high risk. The "high risk" fac­tor in T&T is 30 per cent.

The study al­so looked at the use of oth­er il­le­gal sub­stances, such as crack co­caine. A lit­tle more than two per cent of stu­dents sur­veyed in T&T re­port­ed ei­ther in the past year or dur­ing the course of their life­time hav­ing tried the drug. Up to 11.1 per cent al­so re­port­ed that crack co­caine was "easy to ob­tain."

Life­time ex­pe­ri­ence with co­caine was mar­gin­al­ly high­er, though the "past year" re­port was much low­er at un­der 1.5 per cent. Up to 15 per cent of T&T stu­dents al­so re­port­ed that co­caine was rel­a­tive­ly easy to find.

Though up to 9.4 per cent of T&T stu­dents re­port­ed that ec­sta­sy was easy to ac­cess, just over 1.5 per cent re­port­ed they had used it at least once.

The study re­ports a "con­sis­tent pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ship, be­tween past year preva­lence and be­hav­iour­al prob­lems," in­clud­ing low grades, as­so­ci­at­ed as much with al­co­hol use as with cig­a­rettes, in­halants and mar­i­jua­na, though there is spe­cif­ic con­cern about al­co­hol use.

In T&T, stu­dents were most con­cerned about the im­pact of sub­stance abuse on im­por­tant school grades, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion, mem­o­ry loss and fam­i­ly con­flict.

The CI­CAD re­port says its find­ings point to the need for "poli­cies and strate­gies that are ap­pro­pri­ate to the lo­cal con­di­tions in each ge­o­graph­ic lo­cale" and that "coun­try spe­cif­ic da­ta must be used to for­mu­late poli­cies and pro­vide for pre­ven­tion ini­tia­tives."

"Al­co­hol and mar­i­jua­na are the main drugs of use in most coun­tries," it con­cludes.

"Preva­lence is rel­a­tive­ly high but there is sub­stan­tial vari­abil­i­ty from coun­try to coun­try."

"To­bac­co," the re­port adds, "is al­so used through­out the re­gion but to a less­er ex­tent than al­co­hol and even mar­i­jua­na.

"Preva­lence sug­gests that cig­a­rette use is main­ly for the pur­pose of ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, giv­en that cur­rent use rates are very low.

"What is in­ter­est­ing is the com­par­i­son of use of cig­a­rettes ver­sus mar­i­jua­na, past year mar­i­jua­na preva­lence sur­passed past year cig­a­rette preva­lence in most of the coun­tries by a fac­tor of two to three times in some in­stances and past month preva­lence for mar­i­jua­na was al­so no­tably high­er than past month cig­a­rette use in most coun­tries," the re­port says.