Letters to the editor: No complacency when it comes to teen cannabis use

Parents should not be complacent about the risks posed by cannabis, writes a reader. Photo / File

Thank you to your correspondent D McPherson (Letters, August 26) for warning against complacency when voting in the legalisation of cannabis referendum.

His views reflect the serious concerns voiced by your correspondent Patrick Walsh, John Paul College principal, in an earlier letter.

Many voters seem unaware that this referendum is not on medicinal cannabis, (already legalised), but on recreational cannabis. Research in the UK and Canada reveals as follows: "Robust evidence shows that cannabis use in adolescence increases the risk of developing depression in adulthood by 37 per cent."

A young man known to me whose parents encouraged cannabis use throughout his adolescence has now not only become seriously mentally ill, but is unemployable.

In my view, parents should not be complacent about the risks posed by cannabis use in teenagers, whose still developing brains are highly vulnerable.

Jackie Evans
Rotorua

Lives lost

We've locked away the Christchurch gunman for life, thrown the key over our shoulders and sworn to never again speak his name in public.

Our history will quite rightly record him as the unnamed perpetrator of heinous merciless acts, previously unknown in our fair land that were committed against a minority religious group who came bringing messages of peace and goodwill and whose only desire was to find the peace that they'd not found in their homelands.

They expressed a desire to live simply among us, plying their trades and worshipping the god of their choosing.

We've embraced them as us and assured them of their safety by banning military style weapons and seizing such arms from legitimate ownership. That's arguable, of course.

But every day, that is, every day, in our fair country, about 35 babies are terminated legally in their mothers' wombs.

In my opinion, the perpetrators of this atrocity walk free and are hailed as enlightened liberators, freeing women from the constraints of unwanted pregnancy.

John Williams
Ngongotahā

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