Worsening toll of teens hooked on cannabis is a ‘silent epidemic’
Bobby Smyth, consultant psychiatrist at the HSE’s adolescent addiction service, was employed at the height of the heroin epidemic in the early 2000s in Dublin to help wean teenagers off the opioid .
In the intervening years, he has seen the numbers of youngsters hooked on the drug fall by 99pc.
Now Dr Smyth is dealing with a much more insidious addiction in adolescents. While heroin addiction is almost eradicated in that age group and cocaine addiction is grabbing all the headlines, cannabis addiction in under-18s has been snowballing silently in the background to unprecedented numbers.
Source: Independent.ie, December 15th 2021
